HVX to Powerbook stress test?

ullanta

Veteran
Greetings all. Just a brief report... in the last few days I've been capturing an opera using an HVX through firewire to a FCP on a Powerbook, recorded to a Glyph drive on the same firewire bus.

The Opera has 3 hour-long acts; I recorded 6 performances - that's 24 1-hour-long clips, all captured without a hitch. Or a glitch! This is in a ddition to a lot of shorter clips for testing. So, for me, the HVX->FCP on Powerbook has been flawless.

This was at 720p30; FCP removed all the duplicate frames and thus saved the 100Mb/s data from the camera at a rate of 50Mb/s, which is the only way this woulda all worked.

So, I'm pleased! I hope this helps to ease the worries some people have about this workflow.

I'll write later about how the footage came out... the HVX was a "second" unattended camera, set on auto-iris. The opera had drastic lighting, extreme contrast, spotlighting and backlighting in rapid succession... I have to go through the footage! In my tests, Cine-D handled the lighting best, but was sometimes very noisy... it had the mojo and captured the most realistic representation of the complex lighting situations... but I have to see what I can do with the noise in post to see how acceptable it is. The highlights were so bright in almost every scene that the majority of the frame is almost always in the HVX's noisiest range... but crushing it down leaves... well... pretty much nothing! My intention was to take it down to SD (with some reframing) - we'll see if that averages out the noise in any useful way. However, it's the Saru-G5 type noise that seems like it would be helped more by temporal blending than spatial blending... ah, we'll see...
 
Last edited:
What is everybody doing to protect the firewire input into the camera when capturing live?

Anybody have a piece of hardware to keep it from stressing the plug?
 
David S. said:
What is everybody doing to protect the firewire input into the camera when capturing live?

Anybody have a piece of hardware to keep it from stressing the plug?

Yeah, I would like to find out about that myself, if you come across anything, let me know!
 
I use bongo ties for strain relief on every cable that connects to the camera. Basically, I've got a bundle of cables (2 XLRs, power, and firewire) held very tightly to some part of the tripod close to the camera, with enough slack between there and the connectors for no-strain camera motion. Gaffer's tape will work, too, if you don't have the bongo ties or something similar.
 
Nice report, Ullanta! That's quite confidence-inspiring.

David S. said:
Anybody have a piece of hardware to keep it from stressing the plug?
If no other options are available I usually loop all cables through the top handle. One thing you can do with a thin cable like firewire is route it through the handstrap velcro.
 
A right angled cable is useful as well, much easier to tape to the body
CFA-64R01-24large.jpg

You can get a 4.5m one for $30
http://ww4.aitsafe.com/cf/add.cfm?userid=6667638&product=CFA-64R01-4.5M:%20FW%206-4p%20right%20angle%20cable,%204.5m&price=30&units=1&return=www.ntcdistributing.com/products/fwangled.htm
 
Life in a Box Films said:
What kind of specs do you have on your powerbook? Ram?

I was thinking of getting an intel mac mini for this purpose.

It's a 15" 1.67 GHz model... the last one, with the extra screen real estate. 1.5 GB or RAM. And don't ignore the word "Glyph". I swear by those, and haven't had a problem or stutter with them in many years of recording.
 
Anders Holck said:

Thanks a lot, I ordered one straight away. 30$ is even under 200 kroner, which is our upper tax limit. So, It's not any "hidden" taxes to this that would increase it's price.

- Thanks again,
 
We plan to use this capture method in the coming days. Can anyone tell me whatthe correct capture settings for 24p DV50 would be? I don't believe there is a capture preset for that in Final Cut Pro. But if I take the "DV NTSC 23.98 (Advanced PullDown Removal)" Capture Preset and change the compression from DV/DVCPRO to DVCPRO50, will that be correct? Do you still use the pulldown removal when capturing live directly into the computer? Thanks!
 
ullanta said:
The Opera has 3 hour-long acts; I recorded 6 performances - that's 24 1-hour-long clips, all captured without a hitch. Or a glitch! This is in a ddition to a lot of shorter clips for testing. So, for me, the HVX->FCP on Powerbook has been flawless.

6 performances?!! It sounds like you got quite a punishing too.

Amazing test and thanks!!!!
 
steindj said:
6 performances?!! It sounds like you got quite a punishing too.

Amazing test and thanks!!!!


It's pretty grueling. I was hoping to be at NAB now - but I just couldn't get up.

Another note - after a long 2-performance day, packing up, loading the car, unloading and unloading the car, backing up the data from the HVX adds another 2-3 hours... so find a way to structure your drive space so you can do so unattended!
 
Ullanta, that is most reassuring. I can't wait to put It into practice.
Thanks for spreading the good news.

Kind regards
THE HONEST LIAR
 
Last edited:
I am having great luck editing on my 15" 1.25 from a weibetech firedrive in 1080.
Absolutely amazed at how flawless and easy the transition is using FCP. Editing commercials from footage shot on the HVX in MA.
 
Back
Top