Getting F900 footage to PC

C

calster.

Active member
Hey there, I'm a DVX'er but this weekend got access to a Sony F900 HDCAM for the music vid I shot.

It's looks amazing, but now I'm trying to figure out the best way to get the footage to my NLE.

I can edit in AVID XPRESS HD (no mojo) or Premiere pro.

I'll need to get someone with an HDCAM deck to transfer it for me. I'm thinking i'll bounce it down to 720x480 since that's my final output format. Is there any reason to edit 720P etc. if i'm going out to DVD ? (Storage and cost are a big issue)


Any advice on the best way to do this would be very helpful.

thanks
 
I'd recommend downconverting it at a posthouse to something more feasible (like DVCAM), as you probably don't have the computing power required for HDCAM...
check out this excellent article: http://www.dvxuser.com/articles/hdedit/

If you want to edit natively then you'll need a Blackmagic or Kona card to input through HD-SDI. HDCAM doesn't move over firewire. I really recommend the downconverting, it might cost a lot per tape but for a music video you probably don't have that much material.

My two cents..
 
It takes quite a lot of power to edit natively but I have been doing it recently on a dual 2.7 Mac. You also need a RAID to handle the bandwidth. 1080P off the F900 uses around 100 MB/Sec or a GB every 10 seconds.

I captured directly off the F900 SDI output using a Blackmagic card but you don't get timecode through the card. So, bottom line, unless you're set up with a beefy machine, fast RAID, lots of storage and don't need timecode you're better off getting downconverts made.
 
Assuming I down convert to Beta SP, and then capture off that, what happens to my 23.976 ? does that get messed up, or will i still be able to get a progressive image?

I'm not going back to HD in the end, i'll be outputting to DVD...does beta SP make sense as the intermediate step before capturing?

Does anywhere rent blackmagic cards?

thanks,
 
You can also go to a posthouse and have them transfer the HDCAM tape to any digital file through a DDR. Bring them your drive, they will transfer onto that. It's cheaper than renting a deck and buying a video card, and a RAID drive.
 
You can't edit HDCam natively, except on an Xpri system. Sony has never released the codec; the native format remains locked in the decks and in Xpri. When you transfer over SDI to any other system, you're decompressing the HDCam footage, so your only option to avoid quality loss is to capture uncompressed. But that takes a very fast drive array and oodles of disc space.

For editing purposes, you're better off capturing to DV50. Panasonic has bafflingly not delivered a DV50 codec for Windows (despite the fact that it's needed to edit anything from their DVCPro 50 line), but Avid has a DV50 QuickTime codec (not compatible with Apple's) and MainConcept has one for Windows Media. This codec is a good compromise between quality and data volume.

DVCam is just regular crappy DV25. It's time to move on from this low-end format.

Going to beta first would be pointless and even bad. You'd be adding a generation of degradation to the footage. My suggestion would be to take the downconverted SD output from HDCam and go right into DV50 for the Avid.
 
You can also have a post house downconvert the HDCAM to SD onto DigiBeta, rent a DigiBeta deck and capture that uncompressed via its SDI output, at 720x486, 10bit, 4:2:2 with a good capture card. Decklinks are good, and the cheapest one is only $300.
 
stokestack said:
Panasonic has bafflingly not delivered a DV50 codec for Windows (despite the fact that it's needed to edit anything from their DVCPro 50 line), but Avid has a DV50 QuickTime codec (not compatible with Apple's) and MainConcept has one for Windows Media.
Click to expand...

Matrox has also released a freely-downloadable Windows Media-compatible DVCPRO50 codec. The MainConcept one costs $349, but the Matrox one and the Avid one are free downloads.
 
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