Toast, VideoPier, or Voltaic?

[tbanucci]

I'm still on FCP 5, waiting for the new version to come out at NAB and cash strapped right now so can't upgrade to FCP 6.

What would you vote for:

Buying Toast 9
Buying VideoPier
Buying Voltaic (sp?)

What workflow has worked the best for you and FCP5 with your HMC150?

[matt s.]

been using Toast and FCP 5 no problems other than some clip spanning issue on long recorded clips
(which I rarely shoot). Toast is probably your best value as it can be used for so much more over the other 2 you mentioned.

[BobDiaz]

Right now Toast 9 appears to be the software of choice for the MAC. It's quick and does a good job. The following images were takes from different conversions and cropped to keep the pixels 1:1 with your screen.


TOAST 9:
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f103/KQ6WQ/Toast_9.png


VoltaicHD (Normal Mode):
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f103/KQ6WQ/VoltaicHD_Normal.png


VoltaicHD (Quick Mode):
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f103/KQ6WQ/VoltaicHD_Quick.png


The software is changing so, in the future, this could change as far as what to use. For example, VoltaicHD is now version 1.7.0, this test was run with 1.6. Both Toast 9 and VoltaicHD can NOT convert 720/30p properly. However, in version 1.7 of VoltaicHD the Quick mode came the closest to doing it correctly. There were several dropped frames that preventing it from being ideal.


Bob Diaz

[tbanucci]

OK guys, thanks for the suggestions. I bought Toast 9, but am now confused on the best method of converting the encoding. What is the proper avenue to convert or encode?

[David Saraceno]

The Video Tab is used with the mts files to convert.

Drop them in, click the big red button and set your QT output.

[tbanucci]

OK, after some experimentation, the video tab did not work out well for me, because i could not figure out how to save to a specific drive rather than a DVD. I went to the convert tab, selected "video files" and then saved as a QT movie file.

The first time, I tried saving with the AIC codec, but when importing to FCP 5, it would not work properly in FCP. I think the problem is that I could not find a way to make FCP work with AIC files in the sequences.

Instead, I converted to DVC Pro HD (1080 60i which was the original footage the client requested), and that worked out in FCP 5 after rendering the audio files out. DVC Pro HD had an "easy setup" mode in FCP, which made it convenient to work with. Not sure how I can save the audio as AIFF instead of ACC next time....

Is this what you folks are doing? Seems like this method takes a long time to convert and I'm not sure if this is the best quality I'm going to get.