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Economical way to copy DVCPRO HD?


David Wright

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I shoot with an HDX900 and need to find the most economic way to capture footage and allow me to select clips to pass onto a library. I need to send them uncompressed QT movies on a drive, starting out the process with DVCPRO HD tapes. Is my only way to get FCP or is there a more economical way?

 

Thanks

 

David

www.lunaseafilms.com

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DVCPRO HD is already quite heavily compressed, so you can send them quicktime movies in that codec without loss. This really has to be one of the most common misconceptions...

 

As far as I know the only thing capable of capturing DVHD, outside of very big expensive specialist boxes, is FCP.

 

P

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Thanks Phil,

 

I am a cameraman and don't do any editing, so was hoping that I could find a way other than FCP to log footage to send off to a library I work with. It would be good if there was a cheap alternative to just go firewire out of the camera and into the computer, sort and then output files. Looks like FCP is it. I have an old copy (4.5) but I don't think it has the correct codecs to talk with the HDX900.

 

David

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Yes, that's a problem with DVHD. It's a decent enough codec in itself, married to an extremely useful camera in Varicam, but Apple and Panavision seem to be working very hard to ensure it stays exclusive to their chosen platforms. There are in theory ways to work with it on other platforms, but it's not being very widely used and I don't know that there is any other capture solution.

 

Given a DVCPRO-HD studio deck you could capture it to a blackmagic card and deal with it as uncompressed from there on in, but you're talking big files then and the cost of hardware is probably not dissimilar to just going out and buying an FCP suite.

 

DVCPRO-HD - great format, pain in the arse post, unless you do Exactly What They Tell You.

 

P

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  • 1 month later...

David

What I've done is record to a Firestore using the QT record mode then offload the clips to your computer(a media hard drive), then using QT Pro you can trim the clips, save them, rename them and upload them. You maintain the DVCPROHD codec so it's all good.

Best

Dow Haynor

Golden Lamb Productions

 

 

I shoot with an HDX900 and need to find the most economic way to capture footage and allow me to select clips to pass onto a library. I need to send them uncompressed QT movies on a drive, starting out the process with DVCPRO HD tapes. Is my only way to get FCP or is there a more economical way?

 

Thanks

 

David

www.lunaseafilms.com

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