Canon XH-A1 HD/SD 24F Premiere Pro 2.0 problems

S

shivan11

New member
Hi all.

I tried doing a search in the forums but could not find a specific answer to the problems I'm having. Any words of help would be greatly appreciated!

(Situation)

I'm shooting a short film on a Canon XH-A1 (HDV/24F) and editing it
on Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 (I have the Canon 24F presets installed).
My laptop is an ACER 2012 WLMI, bought 4 years ago. The specs are
1.5ghz, 1gb ram, ati radeon mobility 9700 64mb etc. The firewire card installed is called Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller.

I've been making short films using the Canon GL2 and so this is my first time with the XH-A1.

(Problems)

1) My laptop can not recognize the XH-A1 when it is in HD mode. But when I change it to SD mode or simply enable the HD->SD downconversion in the menu, my laptop will have no problem recognizing it and capturing footage from it.

2) Because I couldn't get HD to work, I decided to downconvert my HD footage to SD through the camera. I turned on the downconversion feature in the camera, and for the Premiere project file, I selected the "DV-24 P Widescreen 48kHz" preset. (Is this the correct setting for SD 24F?)

However, every HD footage that I captured this way was 29.97 fps as opposed to 23.976 fps. Furthermore, the footage looks kind of choppy and "line-y" (?) when played in Premiere while editing.

(Conclusion)

I would like to shoot in HD and try editing in HD, but because HD is not being recognized at all, I might keep shooting in HD but just downconvert to SD. However, because I'm having problems with the HD->SD downconversion, I might just shoot in SD 24F from the beginning and edit from there. But, I'm not too sure how to set up my Premiere project setting for SD 24F because I tried capturing native SD 24F footage under the "DV-24 P Widescreen 48kHz" preset and for some reason all the footage was captured as 24.07fps.

Furthermore, I am wondering if it would be better to shoot in HD and downconvert to SD because some say that it produces a better picture quality as opposed to shooting SD from the beginning. But then again, I'm having downconversion issues so would it be better if I just shoot native SD.......

All this is making me think if I should just go back to the GL2 since from the problems I'm having it seems like I'll be shooting native SD and the SD in the XH-A1 or SD in the GL2 would pretty much have the same quality since they are both SD. or am I wrong...

As you can see, I'm very confused here! Any help at all would be great!

Thanks!
 
The problem with SD footage is a known bug in the A1. When you shoot 24p SD, there are pulldown frames added to make it into a 60i signal. Normally these frames are flagged so that they can be removed by your NLE. But if you use 24F mode and downconvert to SD mode in camera, the pulldown frame aren't flagged, so Premiere won't know how to remove them.
 
Thank you for your reply. However, I did not quite understand what you meant. So, are you saying that shooting native SD with 24p will cause problems on Premiere Pro no matter what?
 
shivan11 said:
So, are you saying that shooting native SD with 24p will cause problems on Premiere Pro no matter what?
Click to expand...

No. Shooting native SD you'll be fine, since you get to select the specific pulldown pattern (2:3:3:2 or 2:3) and the A1 will flag those just fine. But the problem shows up when you shot 24F HD and tries to downconvert to SD in camera. Then Premiere will just read the footage as 29.97 and it won't know which frame to discard.
 
Hmm I see.. Then, could you tell me what setting/preset I need to have when I make a new Premiere Pro project file if I shot SD 24F footage and want to edit it in SD 24F?

Also, I am not very clear on this whole 2:3:3:2 / 2:3, pull down thing.
 
shivan11 said:
Hmm I see.. Then, could you tell me what setting/preset I need to have when I make a new Premiere Pro project file if I shot SD 24F footage and want to edit it in SD 24F?
Click to expand...

This is a bug in the A1. I ran into it a while back and other people have reported the same thing. As far as I know there isn't a simple solution.

shivan11 said:
Also, I am not very clear on this whole 2:3:3:2 / 2:3, pull down thing.
Click to expand...

2:3:3:2 and 2:3 denotes pulldown pattern. Basically, you start with 24 progressive frames and you want to make 60 interlaced frame. With 2:3 it's pretty simple math: the program doubles and then triples every other frame, so that 12 x 2 + 12 x 3=60. 2:3:3:2 is more complicated, but it's the same idea. The duplicated frames are removed later to give you back 24 fps footage.
 
Trouble

Trouble

I know this is a very repeted topic, but no answer that i have read so far, has helped me. I filmed on a Canon XH1A, Format: HD 24f and 1080i. I can see the material fine on de LCD screen, and plugged on to my tv, but it is impossible for me to capture the material in HD. I don't think my hardware is the problem, I work on HD videos all the time on my computer, from my v1u. Premiere Pro, on the capture screen, says: "Wrong Imput Format, Try Changing Camera Format or Capture Settings" no matter what i put on the secuence settings (except for SD) it won't work. Final Cut Pro won't recognize the device, that is, if I insist in HD, no trouble with SD here either . I do have control on the camera from both programs. And I'm absolutely possitive that the camera settings were right when i was shooting the material. Working with the SD is hardly an option since this work is for a client who has specially demanded HD.

I really hope someone has some advice on the matter.
 
Download HDVsplit and use that to capture. Make sure that the A1 Playback setting is set to HD. If it's set to Auto sometimes the camera doesn't properly detect that there's HD footage on the tape and it won't be recognized.
 
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