HVX WORKFLOW HELP.

Albert Smith · August 9, 2006

haha, ok, im about to start production on a short film and we plan to rent an hvx to shoot. I have spent about the last 3days researching online trying to figure out exactly how to make this work....and well.....I havent found many deffinte answers on anything.

My first question is about formats, we plan to shoot 720/24p. but I also saw there is a 720pn, why is there a pn, i thought 720p was true proggresive and therefore no pulldown would be neeeded so you could infact have 24true frames of video. I also heard there are some problems with horizantal lines in pn, we plan to submit this film to festivals and have it projected digitally, there are no plans of ever transfering to film so should i even bother with pn? also what format am I recording in with 720/24p is it dvcpro hd 50...are there options?

continuing with the format issues.....how do i get this stuff on a computer....

Ok, the biggest thing ive been trying to find out is what version of final cut I need I have heard everything from 5.0 will work to you absolutly need 5.1 so im at a lose.

Will 5.0 work? we have machines with 5.0, but 5.1 would be an issue for us.

what is the best way to capture 720/24p footage (i know u can either ingest or capture)....capture presets? if its not dvcprohd 50 what is it....cause i know there is a dvcprohd 24p preset in final cut....even my version 4.5 has that. Any drivers to download to make this stuff work, software?

Ok thats everything ahah, I know I asked a whole lot of stuff in there but if anyone can give me some deffinte answers on any of that I would greatlly appreciate it. Or if you could just explain to me how i should go about doing this best?

Anything at all will help

Thanks alot to anyone who takes the time to respond, I seriously greatly appreciate it....this has been one huge headache, AND WERE FILMING NEXT WEEK AHHHHHHH! ha. thanks again!

-Jake Zalutsky

Mark Allen · August 9, 2006

I can only answer that FCP 5.0.4 (the 4 matters!!!) on a G5 will work with the HVX200 just fine. 5.1 if you're on an intel (I believe).

I didn't need any additional drivers.

You'll need some way of bringing the data into the mac by way of either the camera itself, a p2store, a fs100, or (I THINK) using a g4 powerbook with a p2 slot.

Jamie Metzger · August 9, 2006

If you are shooting onto tape (DVCPRO 50) then you will need a deck (reccomended), or your camera via firewire to your computer.

720/24pn stands for Native, meaning it upres'es inside the camera natively, instead of interpolating in post. Looks great on a 30" monitor.

You should be fine.

Mark Allen · August 9, 2006

My comment was assuming that you were not using tape btw. I don't know anything about using tape with this camera.

Matt Irwin · August 9, 2006

I just finished a short with this camera shooting in 720/24pn. (To clarify, that is DVCPro HD, not Pro50. You can only shoot MiniDV format to tape.)

As mentioned above, the "n" stands for "Native." If you were shooting 720/24p on a Varicam, which uses tape, the camera still records the footage at 30 fps and then flags 24 of those 30 frames each second. When you capture the footage, the NLE only takes the flagged frames resulting in 24p footage. Because the HVX uses memory cards and not tape, and there is no need to be tied to a tape speed, only those flagged frames are recorded when in "native" mode. This will save space on the P2 cards as well as your work drives in post.

Don't know anything about a horizontal line problem with pn, although there is such an issue with HDV. There really is no difference in the look of 24p and 24pn, it's more of a practical consideration. Maybe you are referring to a studder that can sometimes be seen in fast pans? If so, that's just a characteristic of shooting 24p (or film).

As for capturing...

The setup we used was a PowerBook G4 with a pc card slot, two firewire hard drives of equal size, and a program called "P2 Genie." You can setup P2 Genie to offload the footage to two hard drives at the same time for redundant backup (HIGHLY recommended), so basically you just insert the card, click the "offload" button in Genie, wait, and then erase the card. When you bring the footage into FCP, click File>Import>Panasonic P2, then find the "reels" on the offoad drive and import. Make sure you are on the current version, and also make sure you import to a work drive that is NOT the samedrive you offloaded your footage to. Those offload drives are essentially your "negatives", so if they are damaged you have no masters.

There are of course other workflows, but this is what we used and it worked well. There is also another offload program called "P2 Log" that has a lot of features-- your choice.

Hope that helps some...

isaac_klotz · August 9, 2006

i just shot a short film using the fs-100 which worked out well. it holds about 100 minutes of DVCPRO HD footage (i was also shooting 720p24). this is enough storage to shoot for an entire day and offload at night (or during lunch if you are shooting a ton). it records p2 files to the fs-100 and i had trouble importing the p2 files into fcp 5.0 and had to upgrade to 5.1, which means I needed OSX 10.4 on my mac. if you only have fcp4.5 or 5.0, you could run a firewire cable directly from hvx to your computer and capture with capture now. but this method is obviously pretty limiting for camera movement and shooting setups.

looking back at the footage, everything looks great and the fs-100 saved valuable time on set. however, maybe 1 out of every 15 or 20 clips will have a dropout glitch which lasts 1 frame. they show up in random places, not just at the beginning or end of a clip. i do know how to fix this in post (if one of these frames even ends up in the final cut), but its still kind of annoying.. anyone else experience this?

-isaac

Matt Irwin · August 9, 2006

looking back at the footage, everything looks great and the fs-100 saved valuable time on set. however, maybe 1 out of every 15 or 20 clips will have a dropout glitch which lasts 1 frame. they show up in random places, not just at the beginning or end of a clip. i do know how to fix this in post (if one of these frames even ends up in the final cut), but its still kind of annoying.. anyone else experience this?

Haven't shot with one but from what I understand, that has been an ongoing problem with Firestore. Focus Enhancements has been catching a lot of flack lately about problems with the FS100. I think it has to do with the fact that firewire plugs are not designed for production/ field use, whereas more robust connections like BNC are.

Might be worth sticking with the new Cineporter (which actually uses the P2 slot and reenforced cables) until Focus works out their issues, IMHO.

August 11, 2006

I understand the differences between 24P and 24PN. However in reading up on 24PN I've read that audio is not recorded. I've also heard that audio is recorded when the same frame rate is used for both recording and playback. Is this some setting I need to be aware of? Am still doing a variety of test. I would be interested to hear your experiences with 24PN. I am really considering it for a shoot next week as it effectively doubles the amount of time you can shoot on an 8Gig card.

Matt Irwin · August 11, 2006

I understand the differences between 24P and 24PN. However in reading up on 24PN I've read that audio is not recorded. I've also heard that audio is recorded when the same frame rate is used for both recording and playback. Is this some setting I need to be aware of? Am still doing a variety of test. I would be interested to hear your experiences with 24PN. I am really considering it for a shoot next week as it effectively doubles the amount of time you can shoot on an 8Gig card.

Audio is recorded in native mode. The only time audio is not recorded is if you shoot over/undercranked.

I didn't really see any deviation in the look or performance between the 24p and 24pn settings. The only difference with native is the extra record time on the cards and the over/undercrank abilities. The way I see it, there's really no reason not to shoot native unless it conflicts with your post workflow in some way.

Phil Aupperle · August 14, 2006

Audio is recorded in native mode. The only time audio is not recorded is if you shoot over/undercranked.

I didn't really see any deviation in the look or performance between the 24p and 24pn settings. The only difference with native is the extra record time on the cards and the over/undercrank abilities. The way I see it, there's really no reason not to shoot native unless it conflicts with your post workflow in some way.

I agree.

It's also useful to shoot in PN so you can readily change the frame rate with only one setting, IMO.