HMC150 Capture .... PPC vs. Intel Mac (FYI)

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simplyfemales

Member
Just an FYI for anyone that's interested. Don't know if it's been posted yet, but I will put the information out there anyway.

I run on a PPC PowerMac G5 Quad Core. It's been a great machine for some time, but unfortunately, Apple, in their ultimate wisdom, made the AVCHD capture option only viable with an Intel Mac (SUX!!!!). I was lamenting the day I had to deep six this machine just to get an Intel based machine and be able to work so nicely with my HMC150.

Long story short. I decided to hook up my beautiful HMC150 to my son's Intel based iMac and capture the footage directly to my drive on my PPC machine via our home network. The biggest question was......... would the PPC machine recognize the captured material?

No problem on all fronts. Capture (probably from the auto settings) brought the footage in as Apple ProRes 422 and requires roughly 1GB per minute of footage. I will mess with the settings to see how "native" it can get on space and hopefully match the space taken on the SDHC card (anyone have information on this as of yet for FCP??)

One side note. I originally captured the material to a Western Digital 1TB MyBook External Harddrive as I did not want to clog up my main drives and figured I could just edit straight from the external. BAD IDEA. Big time lag when using the external drive. BIG TIME!!!

I have a second internal drive, so I wiped it clean and I now use it strictly for FCP and all is perfect. No lag. Beautiful footage running smoothly from my HMC150 on my Quad-Core PPC G5.

Thankfully. I can wait to buy the Intel based machine now. EXCELLENT!!!!
 
Thanks for this post. I'll have to test it out on my non-quad core Dual 2.5 G5. I'll report back.

EDIT Just reread your post. Thought you said you logged and transferred directly to the G5. Still cool, but not as cool. :)
 
Thanks thrillcat... just realized I didn't post enough info about the specs on the two machines I was am using.

MY Machine: PowerMac G5 Quad Core 2.5GHz, 8GB Ram (8x1GB), 2 Internal Drives (1-750GB WD, 1-250GB WD), 1TB MyBook External Drive.

As I said, all the FCP material is running on the 250GB internal drive. When I ran it on the External, I had BAD lag problems. I do run my iTunes library from the external with no skipping or lag at all, even when working in FCP on the HMC150 source material.

Son's Machine: Intel Duo-Core iMac (2GHz), 1GB Ram (2x512MB)

Captured material via home network straight to my #2 drive on my machine.

BTW Thrillcat. Who did your avatar? I have seen them with other guys I know.
 
Been working with a dual 2.0 G5 and my 150 for about a month now. DVCPROHD footage is no problem and the transcoding is done with Toast 9. If you have the Prores on your system you should be able to transcode to it thru toast. just another option.
 
When the PPC machines came out, AVCHD wasn't available. Apple didn't limit importing to Intel Macs; instead, the Intel chips were necessary to decode footage to prores.

There is a simple workaround. Toast 9 will convert MTS files to any codec on your computer.
 
simplyfemales said:
Long story short. I decided to hook up my beautiful HMC150 to my son's Intel based iMac and capture the footage directly to my drive on my PPC machine via our home network. The biggest question was......... would the PPC machine recognize the captured material?
Click to expand...

I have a Mac Book Pro 17" and used it to transfer my HMC150 footage shot over the weekend. I rented the HMC150 and was a bit concerned about 'getting the footage'. As it is, I also have a Sony HDR-SR11 which also uses AVCHD and the Mac Book Pro and that seems to work as well.

The one strange thing... the files that I transfered from the HMC150, seemed to be 'smaller' than the transfers from the Sony. I set the HMC150 for the PH 1080 24p configuration, and oddly the Sony is set up for a lower res form of 1080i... I'll see if I can determine more on this...

I used Final Cut Express for the transfers in both cases. The resulting .mov file according to Quicktime is "1920x1080 @ 24 fps" using the AIC... so what can I say...

I'm going to look at the footage on my G4 iBook... since I do love to use minimal systems... but I digress... as for 'render' or 'playback'... well, that's what coffee breaks are for...
 
manglerBMX said:
usb sucks for video, go with fw800 and you'll be golden.
Click to expand...

eSATA is faster yet if your system can connect to it..... The Seagate FreeAgent Pro external drives commonly seen at BestBuy have both USB 2.0 and eSATA interfaces. Notably faster than even FW800!!
 
David S. said:
When the PPC machines came out, AVCHD wasn't available. Apple didn't limit importing to Intel Macs; instead, the Intel chips were necessary to decode footage to prores.

There is a simple workaround. Toast 9 will convert MTS files to any codec on your computer.
Click to expand...

I have done the conversions with Toast 9 and didn't like what it did to my footage.

shrigg said:
eSATA is faster yet if your system can connect to it..... The Seagate FreeAgent Pro external drives commonly seen at BestBuy have both USB 2.0 and eSATA interfaces. Notably faster than even FW800!!
Click to expand...

Heya Shrigg.... your test shots with the 150 convinced me that it was a good buy.

I will look into the eSATA setup as well.
 
What did it do to your footage that you didn't like?

The reason I ask is that many here use that conversion without problems.

Perhaps we can identify the issue and assist others.
 
I agree with David S.
AFAIK the Toast conversion is still basically using the Quicktime engine as would FCP for the transcode. There really shouldnt be any difference in the final outcome.
 
David S. said:
What did it do to your footage that you didn't like?

The reason I ask is that many here use that conversion without problems.

Perhaps we can identify the issue and assist others.
Click to expand...

I am assuming its something to do with the settings, but then again it's not a piece of software I use frequently, so that wouldn't be surprising.

My first attempt using it was with 1080/30p source and it viewed as if it were interlaced. That turned me off instantly. I attempted some other camera settings (1080/24p, 60i, 720p options), but was probably biased already at that point at not being pleased with what it did initially.

On the other hand, I like utilizing the iMac in this workflow as it frees up my system from doing the transcoding/capture work, which would basically almost make my G5 unavailable to me during that time frame. Doing the Toast 9 on my system would still be doing the crunching and processing on my system.

I realize that this isn't for everyone, but felt the information might be helpful to someone like me that has the two available and didn't want to abandon the PPC just yet. It at least gave me the option of letting FCP do the capture work rather than another bit of software. I couldn't do the editing on the iMac as it is running only a 17" single monitor and a 160GB HD. Reasonable, but not enough to do what I want it to. My G5 is dual 24" monitors and just over 1TB of internal space with the additional external drive. So as I said... just an option for people that have the possibility out there.

Thanks for the comments though.
 
Well, then it wouldn't be Toast that is doing this, would it?

Because I just tested each of the settings, and the conversions were fine.

My point is simply that Toast is one tool and if used correctly, works real well as we all muddle through AVCHD conversion issues.
 
I am assuming its something to do with the settings, but then again it's not a piece of software I use frequently, so that wouldn't be surprising.
Click to expand...

Never said Toast was the problem, just said I didn't like what it did to my footage.
Click to expand...

Toast is a tool that many use to convert MTS footage to any codec on your computer.

If you don't know how to use it, it seems unfair to claim that IT did something to your footage -- especially if you don't know its capabilities.
 
I'm not crazy about the way the test footage posted came out with toast either. Definitely better than voltaic but to my eye I saw more clipped highlights than from what would be coming from an HVX under similar circumstances and the footage just seemed somehow more coarse. Now it wasn't my footage in it may be just how Toast converted it on my machine. (g5 quad)- but I didn't like it. I'm sure others are having better results because the enthusiasm that is being generated over this camera sertainly wouldn't be there if they had the same results as i did. I'm just waiting to see this live with a good set up.
 
How are you comparing it to assess that Toast converted differently than something else?

You need a comparison. Was the Toast conversion worse that FCP's pro res conversion for example?
 
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