OT...Panasonic AJ-1200a and Sony M25U
by Rich Rubasch
on
Sep 6, 2006 at 7:53:06 pm
Ultimately I want to upconvert an HDV tape from the Sony M25U deck via firewire to the AJ-1200A deck with the firewire card and I wonder if the Sony properly upconverts so the Panasonic will record a DVCPro HD signal via its firewire input (optional card) and if the timecode will come across matching the source HDV tape.
Also, if you have the firewire card installed in the AJ-1200A is there a second slot for the HD/SD SDI optional card as well, or is it an either/or.
Thanks....I know it's off topic but I know at least one of you has these answers!
Re: OT...Panasonic AJ-1200a and Sony M25U by Shane Ross on Sep 6, 2006 at 8:04:26 pm
[Rich Rubasch]"Also, if you have the firewire card installed in the AJ-1200A is there a second slot for the HD/SD SDI optional card as well, or is it an either/or."
Dunno the answer to the first question, but as for this, you can have both firewire and HD SDI cards on this deck. I rent one that has both.
Re: OT...Panasonic AJ-1200a and Sony M25U by walter biscardi on Sep 6, 2006 at 8:10:05 pm
HDV to DVCPro HD is not an up-convert. It's a codec change and no you can't simply feed a firewire signal to the 1200A and expect it to convert the signal to DVCPro HD.
If you want the 1200A to record DVCPro HD, you need to feed it an HD-SDI signal.
[Rich Rubasch]"Also, if you have the firewire card installed in the AJ-1200A is there a second slot for the HD/SD SDI optional card as well, or is it an either/or."
There are two slots in the 1200A
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network's "Good Eats"
HD Editorial for "Assignment Earth"
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - Adam Savage, Mythbusters
Re: OT...Panasonic AJ-1200a and Sony M25U by Rich Rubasch on Sep 6, 2006 at 10:26:40 pm
But the Sony can output 720p HD via firewire, and wouldn't that be the correct frame size for DVCProHD and the Panasonic would simply write DVCProHD to the tape?
Guess I'm wrong on this one....but in Sony's case, what is the 720p HD it can convert to?
Re: OT...Panasonic AJ-1200a and Sony M25U by walter biscardi on Sep 6, 2006 at 10:36:24 pm
[Rich Rubasch]"But the Sony can output 720p HD via firewire, and wouldn't that be the correct frame size for DVCProHD and the Panasonic would simply write DVCProHD to the tape?"
It will be HDV 720p going down Firewire, not DVCPro HD. The footage needs to be DVCPro HD before it gets to the 1200A or it will not be able to record anything. The 1200A Only records DVCPro HD via Firewire from a DVCPro HD source, such as an FCP timeline.
Frame size has nothing to do with it. It's the wrong codec.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network's "Good Eats"
HD Editorial for "Assignment Earth"
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - Adam Savage, Mythbusters
Re: OT...Panasonic AJ-1200a and Sony M25U by Kevin Monahan on Sep 7, 2006 at 12:28:53 am
If you want to convert HDV to DVCPro HD, you're making a mistake. You'll have worse picture quality, according to Nattress. And I believe him. He says to stay native HDV for the record.
Re: OT...Panasonic AJ-1200a and Sony M25U by Shane Ross on Sep 7, 2006 at 12:34:32 am
Well Kevin, it appears that there are two camps on this. Jerry Hofmann says that it is best to convert it to DVCPRO HD. Sure, there is a slight (very slight) quality hit, but working with the footage is 8x faster than HDV native. Faster in terms of rendering and prepping for various types of output. Plus the people at AJA recommend converting it to DVCPRO HD.
I happen to agree with them. But then again, I wouldn't shoot HDV to begin with.
Re: OT...New route by Rich Rubasch on Sep 7, 2006 at 1:17:31 am
Ok, the client also wants to get an HDV clone of their source tape. So that would be a firewire camera to Sony HDV deck?
And if I did use the Sony deck via firewire into FCP coule I tell FCP to write the incoming Firewire stream to DVCPro HD and work with that on the timeline? Seems like that is a possible workflow into FCP if I want to cut everything DVCPro HD and have some HDV footage and the Sony deck.
Re: OT...New route by JeremyG on Sep 7, 2006 at 2:46:16 am
The best way to get HDV to DVCPRO HD is get an AJA HD10AVA and an addenda lanc to RS-422 converter and feed your Kona/Blackmagic/1200A deck an HD SDI signal with embedded audio.
Re: OT...New route by Bob Flood on Sep 7, 2006 at 3:30:01 pm
hey all
here are my observations about this HDV thang:
1. gosh this topic gets beaten senseless all the time. This is my experience just working with FCP. editing in hdv is really slow. the cpu has to process everything so even simpl dissolve have to be rendered etc etc
we find that working in either dvcpro50 or dvcprohd is a lot faster, and still gives us excellent picture quality
2. we use a Kona LH in conjunction with our M10U. we either output 1080 or 525 analog component to our kona, and capture at either of the 2 dvc codecs aforementioned (we shoot HDV, but we usually edit and finish SD 16x9, as no one we supply can or wants to playback HD) we control the M10u with firewire.
3, I dont know how the 1200 treats anolog component in, if it does some conversion or not, but Sony's flavor of HDV is only 1080i so you may have to knock down the frame size to 720p as well
4. we found that when cloning HDV from the camera to an m10u, we lost the timecode, so our clones had different timecode.
I do not know if that was the cameras fault, or the decks fault. I know the m25U supports TC in the hdv stream, but you might need 2 m25u machines to get TC accurate clones
Re: OT...New route by walter biscardi on Sep 7, 2006 at 5:09:31 pm
[Bob Flood]"3, I dont know how the 1200 treats anolog component in, if it does some conversion or not, but Sony's flavor of HDV is only 1080i so you may have to knock down the frame size to 720p as well"
There's no Analog input on the 1200A, HD-SDI and Firewire only. And the 1200A handles both 1080i and 720p.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network's "Good Eats"
HD Editorial for "Assignment Earth"
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - Adam Savage, Mythbusters
Re: OT...New route by walter biscardi on Sep 7, 2006 at 3:11:56 am
[Rich Rubasch]"And if I did use the Sony deck via firewire into FCP coule I tell FCP to write the incoming Firewire stream to DVCPro HD and work with that on the timeline? Seems like that is a possible workflow into FCP if I want to cut everything DVCPro HD and have some HDV footage and the Sony deck."
Nope. you need a capture card to do the conversion, FCP cannot convert one codec to another. the best product out there for conversions is the AJA Kona line. Any of them will do the conversion.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network's "Good Eats"
HD Editorial for "Assignment Earth"
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - Adam Savage, Mythbusters
Re: OT...Panasonic AJ-1200a and Sony M25U by JeremyG on Sep 7, 2006 at 2:43:13 am
Graeme is a smart guy and I like what he does, but he also says there's no reason to being in dv to another codec. While he may be right in a video sense (dv doesn't suddenly look any better when digitized to 10 bit), I cannot agree with him from a timeline/graphics/color correction sense. Anything timeline finished in dv is much less quality than an uncompressed timeline. Since FCP can't do multiple codecs in one timeline, I have to being in dv footage as uncompressed. I certainly don't see a degradation. Mathematically and scientifically I think he's proven there is one, but it's a measurement that can't be made to human eyes unless you stare and stare at certain parts of a frame and measure certain aspects of the signal. Now. Taking that into consideration, I'd certainly opt for an imperceptible degradation in transcoding to DVCPRO HD rather than wait 8 times longer to edit natively in HDV, but maybe that's just me.
Re: OT...Panasonic AJ-1200a and Sony M25U by walter biscardi on Sep 7, 2006 at 3:10:26 am
[Kevin Monahan]"If you want to convert HDV to DVCPro HD, you're making a mistake. You'll have worse picture quality, according to Nattress. And I believe him. He says to stay native HDV for the record."
I definitely disagree with that one. We're converting to DVCPro HD here and it's a much better workflow than staying in HDV.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network's "Good Eats"
HD Editorial for "Assignment Earth"
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - Adam Savage, Mythbusters
Re: OT...Panasonic AJ-1200a and Sony M25U by Sean ONeil on Sep 7, 2006 at 6:33:56 pm
Why not just capture everything as NTSC DV for offline editing? Problem solved. Then when you go to master it, just re-capture everything natively over FW. Bring HDV in as HDV, DVCProHD as DVCProHD. If they're the same framrate and frame size, this won't be a problem. Then render it on an Uncompressed timeline. Export a self-contained Uncompressed QT as your "pre-master" and use this file as your source footage for color-correction.
Lossless workflow, and you get the superior RT performence of doing your creative work in NTSC DV.
Re: OT...Panasonic AJ-1200a and Sony M25U by walter biscardi on Sep 8, 2006 at 11:52:30 am
[Sean ONeil]"Export a self-contained Uncompressed QT as your "pre-master" and use this file as your source footage for color-correction."
That's definitely not something I would recommend. A single QT file for color correction? Even in a project that has as few as 20 shots would be a huge hassle to color correct. Make it more realistic like 100 shots and you've got a complete headache.
For color correction you need all the individual shots to remain individual shots. You can't simply apply one color correction filter across an entire timeline and expect that your studio and outdoor locations are all going to match. Heck even 20 shots in the same room may not match.
A single file for color correction will make the editor frustrated and not yield optimal results for CC.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network's "Good Eats"
HD Editorial for "Assignment Earth"
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - Adam Savage, Mythbusters
Re: OT...Panasonic AJ-1200a and Sony M25U by Sean ONeil on Sep 16, 2006 at 7:43:02 am
[walter biscardi]"That's definitely not something I would recommend. A single QT file for color correction? Even in a project that has as few as 20 shots would be a huge hassle to color correct. Make it more realistic like 100 shots and you've got a complete headache."
Good point. But what about adding markers before exporting?
Re: OT...Panasonic AJ-1200a and Sony M25U by Kevin Monahan on Sep 8, 2006 at 4:03:25 pm
[walter biscardi]"definitely disagree with that one. We're converting to DVCPro HD here and it's a much better workflow than staying in HDV."
Well, Graeme was talking about picture quality, not workflow. According to you, Jer and Shane, It appears that the hit you take in conversion is worth it for an improved workflow.
