Decision making headaches

[Nick_Lee]

hey guys,

It's 4 in the morning right now, so i apologize in advance for swaying in and out of the intended purpose of this post...

first of all...i'd just like to say that i searched and searched and came up with nothing. If anyone finds a thread that helps my situation, please feel free to post the link.

my problem here is that i have been using my dvx100b for 2 years give or take now and i really want to make the move to hd. reason 1 being that it hurts my feelings when i watch hd footage. reason 2 being i feel like retail value of dvx isn't going up anytime soon. I'm thinking of the hmc150 mostly because of the sdhc thing. i love everything about the camera....except for the crazy workflow workaround that seems to be troubling a lot of people. for that i turned to used hvx's but p2 prices are intense. to save me some trouble...i can edit p2 dvcprohd in fcp 5.0 correct? no workaround?

so...

can avchd footage be captured and edited in fcp 5.0? if so...my problems are solved. if not...which is more likely, i need to purchase toast 9? i really hate the idea of that and i would probably rather buy a second hand hvx than go through a crazy process just to get footage onto my computer. i may be able to afford toast 9 but i DEFINITELY cannot afford final cut studio 2.

on a side note...can you edit xha1 24f footage natively in fcp5?

thank you! hopefully this topic isn't beaten to death TOO badly.

[pailes]

FCP 5.0 can not deal with raw AVCHD footage. You will need to transcode to an intermediate codec like AIC, DVCPROHD and so on. Toast 9 is one transcoding solution, but there are plenty of them already. Some may even be free.

Btw. capturing AVCHD is no longer necessary, you just access the raw files on a mounted SD-HC card.

Depending on how fast your computer is, transcoding might be a slow process too. Slower than capturing HDV in real time.

As for your question on the XH-A1: Afaik HDV will be transcoded to AIC on the fly and you work with that. Maybe someone else can comment on this too.

[Mark Von Lanken]

Hi Nick,

I was just in Gainesville last weekend shooting a wedding. I could have let you check out the HMC150. I edit in Edius, so I cannot advise you with FCP. In my testing I found a free download on the Panasonic site that will convert AVCHD to DVCPROHD. It worked great. On my 2.0 Ghz Core 2 Duo it took about 2 mintes to transcode a one minute clip.

As I was taking a shooting and training tour through the South, I showed the HMC150 to several videographers. Those without a DVX background liked the camera. Those with a DVX background...well, it was love at first site.:)

[Nick_Lee]

thanks pailes, I appreciate the information. Do you happen to know why people choose toast 9 over free options like the one Mark is talking about? and tell me if i get this right...you plug your sdhc into a reader and you just drag and drop the files into your desktop...then import avchd>converter of my choice>export to dvcprohd>then edit in fcp?

Mark: DARN! i go to school in gainesville! that sucks. oh well...i'll mess with it some other time i suppose.

I'm using 2.4 core duo with 2g ram. this might be a little bit faster i hope? Also...is there an issue with transcoding 720/60p? thanks!

[Thomas Lew]

With Toast I just leave the card in the computer and use Toast 9 to find the card and then transcode the footage. It's not hard at all.

[Nick_Lee]

thanks thomas. so is that the selling point of actually purchasing toast instead of just using the available freeware? and can you transcode 720/60p footage?