Tex In Motion
10-27-2006, 12:22 PM
We want to capture 60 fps, but without touching the camera on reloads, so that it stays locked in place. Can't afford the FS-100, so is there another way?
We've tried:
A) Good tripod: sometimes, but if I'm not super careful, the micro-nudge is too much, since the scene is calibrated very exactly (need precision for research).
B) DV Rack HD: they confirmed that we'd stumbled on a bug. In 720/60p and set to a framerate of 60fps, DV Rack only captures 30fps (and doubles them). They're working on a fix, but after waiting 2 weeks, we bought a P2 card instead... nice product otherwise though!
C) Homebrew software: can't find a driver that lets Windows or Linux see the firewire signal from the HVX. People have posted here complaining of the same thing. We can write capture software for other firewire cameras whose drivers give access to the live feed, I'm unable to find one from Panasonic (nor from 3rd party).
Have I missed a cool trick? Maybe another piece of software? Or maybe there's a way to hack a remote control to let us in and out of PC mode?
P.S. Some FYI's on slowmo for beginners (dvxuser & gear in hand helped me):
- Most people film to a P2 card, pop it out and into a laptop (camera shake).
- Other people (like me) who don't mind waiting between takes, record to the P2 card, then with the USB (or Firewire, though that's super-slow on my XP box! manual warns of this...) cable connected, I can _gently_ push the button on the back to put the cam into PC Mode. So far so good, but to resume filming, manual explains that you have to power-cycle the whole camera!
- DV Rack HD software costs about the same as 1 P2 card, and would have been perfect, except for the bug. As people explain throughout this forum, 60 (or other > 30) different frames / second get recorded one-by-one in 720/24pn and 720/30pn mode, but those modes don't send a signal out of the firewire port, so DV Rack has no incoming data. The answer is 720/60p mode, which should fill each of 60 slots with different images (or varying numbers of duplicates if you're shooting at < 60fps).
- We can now read the MXF format and dump to still images or .avi of some existing codec, but can't find a way access the camera's live feed, and not for a lack of trying.
We've tried:
A) Good tripod: sometimes, but if I'm not super careful, the micro-nudge is too much, since the scene is calibrated very exactly (need precision for research).
B) DV Rack HD: they confirmed that we'd stumbled on a bug. In 720/60p and set to a framerate of 60fps, DV Rack only captures 30fps (and doubles them). They're working on a fix, but after waiting 2 weeks, we bought a P2 card instead... nice product otherwise though!
C) Homebrew software: can't find a driver that lets Windows or Linux see the firewire signal from the HVX. People have posted here complaining of the same thing. We can write capture software for other firewire cameras whose drivers give access to the live feed, I'm unable to find one from Panasonic (nor from 3rd party).
Have I missed a cool trick? Maybe another piece of software? Or maybe there's a way to hack a remote control to let us in and out of PC mode?
P.S. Some FYI's on slowmo for beginners (dvxuser & gear in hand helped me):
- Most people film to a P2 card, pop it out and into a laptop (camera shake).
- Other people (like me) who don't mind waiting between takes, record to the P2 card, then with the USB (or Firewire, though that's super-slow on my XP box! manual warns of this...) cable connected, I can _gently_ push the button on the back to put the cam into PC Mode. So far so good, but to resume filming, manual explains that you have to power-cycle the whole camera!
- DV Rack HD software costs about the same as 1 P2 card, and would have been perfect, except for the bug. As people explain throughout this forum, 60 (or other > 30) different frames / second get recorded one-by-one in 720/24pn and 720/30pn mode, but those modes don't send a signal out of the firewire port, so DV Rack has no incoming data. The answer is 720/60p mode, which should fill each of 60 slots with different images (or varying numbers of duplicates if you're shooting at < 60fps).
- We can now read the MXF format and dump to still images or .avi of some existing codec, but can't find a way access the camera's live feed, and not for a lack of trying.