Another Pre-purchase question

[Rob55]

I'm a newbie here so forgive me if this has been asked before. I've looked all over and can't seem to find what I'm looking for. I'm interested in buying an HPX170 but want to try out the P2/DVCProHD workflow on my 2-year-old 2.4 Ghz iMac w/4GB RAM first. I know the file sizes are quite large (1 GB/min. or so), but if someone would be willing to upload maybe 3 or 4 10-second clips in 1080i/60 to my MobileMe public disc it would be great. The reason I'm doing this is because I recently tried AVCHD and have had serious problems with 1080/60i clips with respect to judder and combing/interlacing artifacts. I'm pretty much ready to give up on AVCHD and try P2/DVCProHD instead. If anyone is willing to help out, I'm looking for some outdoor clips with a moderate amount of motion/panning in them. BTW, I'm running FCS2 with the latest updates. Contact info to follow.

Thanks,

Rob

[David Saraceno]

Rob:

I've edited DVCProHD on a 2Ghz Macbook not pro.

That Intel iMac should be fine.

[Rob55]

Thanks for the reply. I understand that it should be fine, but I really wanted to try it out for dropping $5,000 for a new camera. I wanted to try out the whole process from ingestion to export. AVCHD was supposed to be fine too, but I can't seem to solve my 1080/60i judder problem.

[David Saraceno]

AVCHD either natively or converted to pro res is materially different that DVCProHD footage. You really can't edit AVCHD natively on an iMac, and converting to pro res requires a fast FW800 drive and pro res may still shudder. But DVCProHD runs a maximum of 100 mbps and it is intra frame. It runs in a lower bandwidth at 720 variants.

There are many here editing it on an iMac such as yours.

[Rob55]

Yes, I understand that AVCHD is materially different than DVCProHD and that AVCHD can't be edited natively on any Mac (at least not yet anyway). I would prefer not to spend hundreds of dollars on renting an HVX200 or HPX170 just to try out the workflow. I was just hoping that someone would be generous enough to upload 3 or 4 10-second clips to my MobileMe public folder so I could try it out and see what kind of performance I get. Again, I appreciate your input.

[David Saraceno]

With what capture settings in the cam?

[Rob55]

Yeah, I see your point. I really don't know enough about the HVX200 or the HPX170 to say exactly. I guess I assumed whomever could use a generic or "favorite" setting and record at 1080/60i.

[Spec-Comm]

I can have something ready for download for you in the morning first thing. Do you still need something to edit with?

Sincerely,

Andrew Hoffman
Vice President
Specialized Communications Corp.
20940 Twin Springs Dr.
Smithsburg, MD 21783-1510 USA
800-359-1858 (US)
301-790-0103
Fax: 301-790-0173
andrewh@spec-comm.com
www.spec-comm.com
www.twitter.com/speccomm

[Rob55]

I can have something ready for download for you in the morning first thing. Do you still need something to edit with?


Yes, I'm still looking for some P2/DVCPROHD files to test out my workflow with. Thanks.