DVCPro50 and FCP5

Paul Farmer

Paul Farmer

Active member
I thought I read a post where Barry Green said there are still some issues using Final Cut Pro 5 with the DVCPro50 format. Since this is exactly what I intended to do (for now) once I got my HVX, what kind of problem is there? Maybe it was an old post and the problem has been resolved with FCP 5.04.

Does anyone know for sure? Any help on this topic would be greatly appreciated since I'm an old BetaCam SP guy and fairly new to digital. Thanks!
 
As I understand it there was (is?) a problem with the gamma on the codec. With each generation pass footage gets lighter and lighter.

First generation footage looks acceptable. But if you render back to file, then import that file into FCP, then render that back to file... etc, within 5 passes the screen is more or less white.

Now I know this was true, because this was a problem for me recently (FCP 5.0). Having said that I've just tried it again (FCP 5.0.4) and it doesn't seem to be happening any more. Mind you, I can only get it to render in RGB... perhaps it's just an anomaly in YUV?
 
Alex Leith said:
As I understand it there was (is?) a problem with the gamma on the codec. With each generation pass footage gets lighter and lighter.

First generation footage looks acceptable. But if you render back to file, then import that file into FCP, then render that back to file... etc, within 5 passes the screen is more or less white.

Now I know this was true, because this was a problem for me recently (FCP 5.0). Having said that I've just tried it again (FCP 5.0.4) and it doesn't seem to be happening any more. Mind you, I can only get it to render in RGB... perhaps it's just an anomaly in YUV?
Click to expand...
Yes it was a problem in the YUV conversion.
 
bump the footage to digital betacam

bump the footage to digital betacam

would it make more sense to bump the footage to digital betacam prior to ingest or simply output the master onto dbeta?
 
Personally I'd import via firewire and transcode to uncompressed 8bit.

If you go to Digibeta you're losing an extra generation (DVCPro50 to Digibeta, Digibeta to SDI) - admitedly the extra loss is imperceptibly small.

So work in uncompressed (or you could work in DVCPro50 with rendering set to RGB).
 
kasdin said:
would it make more sense to bump the footage to digital betacam prior to ingest or simply output the master onto dbeta?
Click to expand...

Nope. As Alex pointed out, you'd then be recompressing it at least twice. DigiBeta is compressed, and most likely so is your output medium.

I wouldn't convert it to uncompressed, either, because you're not gaining anything and you're bloating the disk space and data payload. DV50 is my first choice for doing straightforward editing projects of any size from analog sources.

Lots of QuickTime codecs have gamma problems, and they all differ in severity. QuickTime still suffers from this mania for trying to "help" you; it thinks it knows the characteristics of your system, so it's continually fiddling with output. But experienced users ("professionals") will have tweaked their displays to match their needs or output media; these efforts are largely futile when dealing with QuickTime.

That said, there should be a system-wide switch to turn off QuickTime's gamma "help". Lacking that, there should be such a switch in FCP.

One app that tries to force QuickTime to cough up the frames without messing up their gamma is Shake. If you want to see what's happening to gamma, you can pull up some footage in FCP and then pull it up in Shake and compare them.
 
outputting to BetaCam from DVCPro50

outputting to BetaCam from DVCPro50

I have access to a BetaCam deck. Using FCP5, would I just print to video
and dub the DVCPro50 to Beta over a firewire connection or would I need some sort of video card (component or SDI)? I will be using the HVX to get DVCPro50 and then my laptop as a storage device and would like to send the footage to the client on BetaCam.

rick
 
You won't find firewire on a Beta deck... So you will need an SDI card. Blackmagic Decklink is a very good low cost SDI card for Mac & PC (for a machine with a spare PCI slot).
 
No analog out?

No analog out?

rfxs said:
I have access to a BetaCam deck. Using FCP5, would I just print to video
and dub the DVCPro50 to Beta over a firewire connection or would I need some sort of video card (component or SDI)? I will be using the HVX to get DVCPro50 and then my laptop as a storage device and would like to send the footage to the client on BetaCam.
Click to expand...

It's very common for people to use their DV camcorders as an A/D converter for previewing on a composite monitor. Does the HVX send to the component outputs the video it receives over FireWire? If it does, no problem. Just hook the HVX's component outputs to your Beta deck and record away as you play out your edited clip. Hm, I suppose this would require some setup for FCP to use the camera as a playback device.

If there's no live preview, how about writing your edited clip to the HVX over FireWire and then playing it out of your camera to the Beta over component?

Gavin
 
If I had P2 cards that would be a solution for sure. But I will be capturing on my
external and don't know if the camera has play through. I will probably test it
for sh*** and giggles because I have free access to a BetaCam SP deck.
 
No component output of high-def firewire input.

Don't know if it does component output of DV50 or standard-def DV firewire input though...
 
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