DV Rack Avid Quick Import

C

cmus

Active member
I feel dumb. When I was first learning my way around DV Rack and Avid Media Composer, I stumbled onto some combination of settings that allowed me to import footage recorded by DV Rack into Media Composer really fast. Now I can't find the right combination of settings again.

I have DV Rack set to record QTAVID format. I have my HVX set at 1080/30p. I am recording some timelapse sequences with DV Rack directly to an external hard drive connected via firewire. Recording goes smoothly, I can play back the clips great in DV Rack. I shut down DV Rack, start up Media Composer, and create a new project at 1080/59.94. I import the clips into the project using the DVCPro HD MXF video resolution and with the video drive set to the same drive letter as the external drive I used to capture the clips in DV Rack. Now I have to sit and wait (longer than real time) while Media Composer is "Creating video from QT." The clips work just fine in the project after this process, but I know I once successfully imported DV Rack captured footage nearly instantaneously and saw a message flash by that said something like "Quick Import from QT."

Does anybody know what I need to do to find this combination of settings again?

Aloha,
Cmus
 
If it's any comfort, neither have I. The problem is even bigger, because of some memory leak in Avid/Quicktime, after about an hour of importing, I get a memory overflow, and have to restart Avid. So no way to let it import overnight. Still looking for a solution. Since all media have been imported for my current project( feature length movie, a LONG time), I'm not looking actively at the moment. Once this project is out of the way, and another comes along, I'm gonna go and find a better way.

One thing I've noticed: we use a RRock 35mm adapter which flips the image. DV rack lets you flip the window for monitoring. They state the original firewire-stream isn't altered, but when I import into Avid, all footage is magically the right side up. There is no way DV-rack can do the flip on the fly. The only option I see, is that a flag in the Quicktime header is checked, which tells the decoder to flip on playback/import. This probably breaks the Avid compatibility. Other flags might also be checked to break fast import. When I find the time, I'm gonna dig in a bit deeper into the Qt headers for some comparisons. It might be possible to find the offending flags and change them.

I don't have to many hopes for SeriousMagic to solve the problem, now that they're Adobe.
 
Eleventy -

Thanks for the reply. Geez, sounds like you have a worse problem with DV Rack than I do. I wonder if any compatibility will remain built in to this software for us Avid users after it becomes OnLocation. Please don't forget about us Adobe....

Aloha,
Cmus
 
Cmus,

I use Avid Express Pro and its technology is based on the MXF and OMF file formats. In fact the easy way to mount (not import) files from an HVX is to simply insert the P2 card into a cardbus slot and copy the audio and video files into a <disk>:\Avid MediaFiles\MXF\# directory. They will then show up in the media tool, ready to use. Any other file type will have to be imported and will end up as an MXF file in the previously mentioned directory structure.

eLeventy,

I think your assumption that the video is flipped on import is false. If you capture a QTAVID file and open it in quicktime you will see that the image is already flipped. I think it was relatively easy for them to do as they stream everything to memory and then to disk. By doing it this way they give themselves the capability to do a bit of processing without endangering the stream from the camera.

Bob
 
Bob -

I have no problem working with footage captured to P2. What I am having trouble with are files captured to laptop hard drive with DV Rack. In camera, you can not record time lapse (interval in Panasonic speak) at 1080, but DV Rack can do this. It is supposed to be fast and easy to import the QTAVID files that DV Rack records. This function does not work - or at least I haven't figured out how to make it work. I would love for someone to tell me I am wrong and suggest how to make this work.

By the way, the P2 to Avid workflow you suggest is not what I would suggest to Avid users. Mounting virtual P2 directories is a better approach as it allows you to keep the folder structure the same as on a P2 card. This means the files will be available to other applications that acccess P2 cards (like P2 viewer), whereas the disk:\Avid MediaFiles\MXF\# structure means only Avid can read those files.

Aloha,
Cmus
 
@bob: As I stated, the image is flipped on playback/import. This means the image is flipped when played back in a quicktime window, or when imported into Avid. This doesn't mean that Avid does the flipping. It means that the output of the quicktime renderer is flipped. And it is this that is displayed on the quicktime overlay window, or what Avid receives when opening the file. There are 2 possibilities: Either the DVCproHD-stream is flipped in realtime by DVrack, on-the-fly, and recorded as such to disk. Or, the stream is recorded unaltered. That is, there is no on-the-fly conversion, and the image remains unflipped. But, in the Qt-headers, a few bytes are altered,
instructing the Qt-renderer to output the image upsidedown on the window overlay, ie using a negative output plane.

Either way, something is causing the compatibillity problem importing into Avid. If it is some Qt-header issue, it might be resolved by fixing the headers. If DVrack is using another codec than the standard DV codec to do the flipping itself, the only option is a slow -import.

@Cmus: Both workflows have advantages and disadvantages. The main drawback when using virtual P2 cards, is the annoying scanning/indexing everytime you launch Avid: The CONTENTS directories have to be rescanned everytime. This becomes an issue when you have several hours of footage, and hundreds of clips.

Other possible workflows P2-2-Avid:
-Mount a real P2-card in Avid, and consolidate to a mediadrive. Disadvantage: a bit slower that windows-level copying. Advantage: all media becomes associated to your current project ( no more orphanes).
-Mount ( virtual) P2 into Avid, export as a Qt-reference file( into the CONTENTS folder), and then reimport this Qt-ref file into Avid. I admit, a bit of a weird approach, but I used this method for a large project. The advantages here is that you can throw your media offline, and do a batch import later on( you keep the original virtual p2 drives as archive media). This is impossible to do with consolidated media.
-Opencube has a new, advanced P2-Viewer software( not yet announced on their website). It has basic timeline support, resizable windows,... It also has an abbility to 'consolidate' these timelines to a virtual P2 card. This would mean you could build large virtual cards, containing only a few very long clips. For example, each card with dozens of clips becomes 1 long clip. I haven't tested this workflow yet, but I will look at it in the comming weeks. Disadvantage: not free.
 
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