Capturing straight to MacBook

J

justanothersuperstar

New member
I have a shoot coming up this weekend for some clients who were really interested in HD, so the PD-150 was out of the question. The decision was easy; I bought an HVX200 for the color space, the codec, etc. However, since this is a last minute project my budget does not allow for a Firestore or P2 at this moment. My preferred workflow would be to capture to the MacBook first and then offload to an external hard drive for storage while out of the office. I know Final Cut Pro 6 now has support for direct capture from the HVX but is too expensive as well. It seems like there should be some system for simply capturing footage from the camera- one with as few limitations as possible- allthough logistically speaking I don't understand why there should be any limitations as FireWire and most hard drives can handle a 100Mbit throughput, it seems that most times for whatever reason, things don't work that way.

Basically, this is an important project, and it needs to happen this weekend- I am asking for help from anyone with this situation, and it really would mean a lot.
 
Update

Update

I would rent a P2 deck and cards or a firestore, but I'm located in a fairly small center (~150,000), and there aren't any available. The FilmPool here is actually getting an HVX setup in about a week, which of course is too late.

This shoot really is the epitamy of last minute; the camera should be arriving thursday or friday, so I will only have a day, or most probably a half day to prepare all of the parts and was hoping to avoid any known difficulties that can be troubleshot now; it's amazing how little information there is available from official sources that I can find - I do prefer to research these things a lot in advance, and have a nice relaxed lead up and shoot where all the actors and crew can feel comfortable - I'm really glad the community knows about these things and disseminates- and I hope you can forgive me for asking more questions- the best way to go through this stuff is trial and error, and I usually don't need more than a point in the right direction, but this is my first HD project.

I think I can get my hands on a copy of FCP 5.1.4, but I've actually never used it, and I don't know what ScopeBox or DVCmonitorProHD are- usually knowing what they are named and that they exist is enough but I don't want to push my luck this time - a half day with the equiment isn't really enough, so I'm going to ask a few more questions;

How do the programs interact with FCP?
Do I need to run FCP, or do I just need the codec?
Does the codec come standard with 5.1.4, or is it an update?
If it is standard, do I need to install the entire suite, or just the base program.
What is the workflow outline?
What are the limitations? Are variable framerates and resolutions a problem?
What is your experience with getting a MacBook to capture while closed?
What are the settings to allow the MacBook to capture while closed?
Have you ever experienced dropped frames? Under what circumstances?
 
That's a lot of questions.

I installed FCP 5.1.4 on a MacBook with two GBs of RAM and a substituted Hitachi Travelstar 7200 rpm drive. I then set the cam and FCP to record out Firewire, which means to pNative modes.

Close the MacBook and it goes to sleep.

Scopebox and DVCMonitorProHD are capture utilities that use the DVCProHD codecs. Google them.

You need something to edit with. What do you intend?

Exactly how much experience do you have with a NLE, which one and on what computer?
 
Final Cut 6 allows you to capture straight from the HVX? How do you do that? I just bought both (and 2 firestore drives!).
 
Match the FCP sequence settings to the cam settings for anything but pNative.

Log and capture to non controllable device and hit capture now.

There are literally dozens of posts on this.
 
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