Anyone confirm best 24p reverse telecine for HF10/HF100 in FCP

[mico]

Canon AVCHD 24p Hf10 footage:

Since the 24p is in a 29.97 60i stream: Tried two procedures. Method one was to log and transfer to Prores then going to compressor to reverse telecine footage following part of apples document on the HV20 procedure here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306389

And method two was to import using log and transfer to Prores then taking into cinema tools to reverse telecine but this method you have to determine cadence which is a pain.

Can anyone confirm which is the best approach to reverse telecine Canon 24p AVCHD footage in Final cut 6.0.3. Method one you don't have to figure out cadence but I've already prores-ed the footage in log and transfer and this seems to be compressing twice.

Method two is a pain to determine cadence for each shot but its quick and easy otherwise and doesn't compress twice.

For those interested I'm using a macbook pro core 2duo 2.3 Ghz , 2GB Ram, and the log and transfer to Prores is really quick and easy. In the timeline I've put multiple clips with cross dissolves with no hiccups at all. All the noise about AVCHD being difficult to edit and convert is BS. I've had no problems except for this reverse lelecine issue which can be done but there is no confirmation on the proper approach.

Both methods looked great. Love this cam, footage looks great, but since I haven't seen this footage on a quality monitor I'm curious if one method is better than the other.

thanks

[Petter Granrud]

Hi Mico,

I also followed parts of the HV20 document you are referring to and used Compressor to reverse telecine my Canon AVCHD 24p HF10 footage. I'm not concerned about compressing my footage with ProRes twice, but my footage seems to be stuttering both when I open clips in Quicktime and when I bring it into FCP. Do you have that problem with your footage? If not, would you please let me know the exact procedure you followed to reverse telecine your footage in Compressor?

[mico]

I have not gotten any stuttering. The document I linked in the previous post is exactly what I followed except that you log and transfer instead of log and capture for flash based canon cameras.

One thing that might cause stuttering might be your computer specs. I'm using a 2.33 core2 duo macbook pro with 2gigs ram with an external sata firmtek dual 7200rpm drives mirrored that stores the footage.

Are you using an external drive? Is it fast enough? Is it a footage only drive thats not filled up? Updated final cut pro to 6.03? Fast enough computer? enough ram? Let us know what you're using to narrow down what may be going wrong.

All Apple says about requirements for AVCHD is that you need a Mac Pro :

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/specs/

Thats probably intentionally vague to make you spend money on a desktop. Others say you need a quad core. My specs say thats not true but other peripherals need to have some speed.

[OSV]

the bitrate for avchd on the hf-10 is lower than the bitrate for dv, so his hard drive speed shouldn't be a concern... if you can edit dv, then you have enough hdd for avchd.

the problem is with the decoding.

[mico]

the bitrate for avchd on the hf-10 is lower than the bitrate for dv, so his hard drive speed shouldn't be a concern... if you can edit dv, then you have enough hdd for avchd.

the problem is with the decoding.

The transcoded AVCHD footage becomes prores /prores(HQ) 1920x1080 and the file size gets huge. That might bog quicktime down if the machine, graphics or drive are not up to it. It ain't DV .

[OSV]

The transcoded AVCHD footage becomes prores /prores(HQ) 1920x1080 and the file size gets huge.

that ain't avchd... point being, there needs to be a native editing solution, so that it edits just like dv does, you wouldn't have to worry about hdd throughput.

although that won't help with this pulldown situation, i guess that i'm just off on a rant again

[mico]

If you're doing straight cuts with one video stream in DV yeah maybe hdd throughput isn't an issue. but if you intend to do more i certainly would pay attention to it.

The original poster never mentioned if he's using his OS drive as his capture drive or for that matter a dozen other little details that might give him the stuttering problem . Like even if he's followed the white paper instructions carefully, a slow computer might cause issues with the transcode.

You can wish there was native AVCHD editing all you want, I personally don't, but if you're working with a Mac and final cut transcoding is your only option right now.

I'm just trying to help someone with a problem. If you have a clue to what his problem might be feel free to express it.

[OSV]

i do plenty of dv editing with multiple streams, not a problem.

people are already doing rudimentary native avchd editing, with smart rendering, on the pc side of the fence... there are a couple of ulead programs, and nero, it requires a quad-core for best performance.

but that's not serious editing, and it's not a pulldown fix... can there ever be a native editing solution for avchd pulldown?? is it even possible? seems to me that you'd have to transcode no matter what.

for the time being, i think we are stuck with method 2.

[mikeshu]

What cadence settings worked for you guys?