HMC150 & AVCHD Workflow Troubleshooting

B

Barry_Green

Moderator
Seems like we should keep a collection of tips & tricks to help folks out when adapting to the AVCHD workflow.

1) Are you using FCP and long spanned clips? And there's missing frames where the spanned clips are supposed to join together? If so, you've probably got an older version. Update to at least FCP 6.0.5 to fix that.

2) Are you seeing glitches or dropouts in your footage after you've copied it to your Mac? And, most importantly, the footage on your cards has no dropouts when played back from the camera (or other playback device?) If so, you've probably been hit by the same "glitch" that has bothered P2 users for years. The issue seems to be Mac-specific, and primarily (perhaps only) related to using firewire transfer with FAT32 devices. Your SD card is a FAT32 device. And if you're transferring the footage to an external drive, it's most likely a FAT32 drive. And if it's connected by firewire, that seems to increase the likelihood of encountering "the glitch". Rest assured that there's nothing wrong with your footage! You just need to transfer it properly; what you have is a computer problem with the reliability of external firewire FAT32 devices. The best recommendation is to transfer your footage again, you will probably find the glitches are gone. And to successfully transfer your footage, we highly highly highly recommend using a file transfer application that uses data verification. Such a program will do data integrity verification as it copies the card contents over, which should ensure that you never see "the glitch" again.

3) Does your footage look HORRIBLE on the computer? Be aware that some NLE programs (such as Adobe Premiere Pro CS4) can use low-res playback modes to increase the frame rate performance of playback. Make sure that you aren't using "draft" or "preview" quality in your NLE, if you're trying to see it in all its original quality.
 
Last edited:
To go with Barry's # 1--

If you are having trouble with Final Cut crashing during the log & transfer:

* Make sure you are upgraded to version 6.0.5 -- without it, you will crash on some formats (I experienced it at 720p60)

* if you have Perian installed, uninstall it from the System Preferences pane (if you have Boxee, you have Perian)
 
how come when i shoot 1280/720 30p when its in the project bin in vegas pro 8 it is being read as a 59.940 clip when it clearly should be a 29.970 clip? but when its shot on 1920/1080 30p it doesnt do this.
im curious as to why this would happen? any help would be greatly appreciated
 
Correct me if i am wrong..but you must set the project properties how you want it. Vegas does not read anything. So just set your properties and your good to go.
 
the project properties were correct

but heres the deal when i shot 1280/720 60p the footage didnt render right in vegas cause it cant handle it
but
when i filmed in 1280/720 30p and rendered it as 60p it didnt have the ghosting so it was like i was cutting the amount of frames in half the whole time
now im wondering if my camera is shooting 60p under the 30p setting??????
 
tmg93 said:
the project properties were correct

but heres the deal when i shot 1280/720 60p the footage didnt render right in vegas cause it cant handle it
but
when i filmed in 1280/720 30p and rendered it as 60p it didnt have the ghosting so it was like i was cutting the amount of frames in half the whole time
now im wondering if my camera is shooting 60p under the 30p setting??????
Click to expand...

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=154853&highlight=disable+resample

That will give you what you're looking for ;)

Vegas 9 still does not properly support the 30p mode, but you can use that work around to make it.

-Adam
 
HMC150 FCP 7 Workflow

HMC150 FCP 7 Workflow

Starting with the basics, what initial setting do I select? I am shooting 720p24 on the HMC150. Obviously, I don't see an option for AVCHD. So... please advise.

Once I get in to the project in FCP, any advice on Logging. I leave for Berlin and Helsinki Saturday and want to understand the workflow. I just want to log my footage. I have to rugged LaCie 500G drives to store it on.

thanks.
 
I just discovered that I can't log and transfer my AVCHD 720-24p footage into FCE because FCE doesn't support 24p AT ALLs--according to Apple. When I try it I get dropped frames and audio that gets further and further out of sync the longer the clip is. Here is what I need: a program that will take a clip, pull it down to 30p, compress it with AIC (apple intermediate codec) and wrap it in a .MOV file that I will then import to FCE. Does anyone know a program that will do this? Or is there another workaround besides what is out of the question for me right now--buying a more powerful MAC and FCP?
 
what is the best quality setting for exporting 1080 60i from Premiere Adobe Media Encoder? There are so many settings on top of settings I do not know what to use.
 
HMC 150 vs HVX200A

HMC 150 vs HVX200A

Barry,
If I have FCP Pro and iMac 10.6.4, which camera will be the easiest to work with in terms of editing footage? I'm ready to buy a 200A and work with P2 but I just wanted to check to see if you thought the HMC had equal merits.
ajay

Barry_Green said:
Seems like we should keep a collection of tips & tricks to help folks out when adapting to the AVCHD workflow.

1) Are you using FCP and long spanned clips? And there's missing frames where the spanned clips are supposed to join together? If so, you've probably got an older version. Update to at least FCP 6.0.5 to fix that.

2) Are you seeing glitches or dropouts in your footage after you've copied it to your Mac? And, most importantly, the footage on your cards has no dropouts when played back from the camera (or other playback device?) If so, you've probably been hit by the same "glitch" that has bothered P2 users for years. The issue seems to be Mac-specific, and primarily (perhaps only) related to using firewire transfer with FAT32 devices. Your SD card is a FAT32 device. And if you're transferring the footage to an external drive, it's most likely a FAT32 drive. And if it's connected by firewire, that seems to increase the likelihood of encountering "the glitch". Rest assured that there's nothing wrong with your footage! You just need to transfer it properly; what you have is a computer problem with the reliability of external firewire FAT32 devices. The best recommendation is to transfer your footage again, you will probably find the glitches are gone. And to successfully transfer your footage, we highly highly highly recommend using a file transfer application that uses data verification. Such a program will do data integrity verification as it copies the card contents over, which should ensure that you never see "the glitch" again.

3) Does your footage look HORRIBLE on the computer? Be aware that some NLE programs (such as Adobe Premiere Pro CS4) can use low-res playback modes to increase the frame rate performance of playback. Make sure that you aren't using "draft" or "preview" quality in your NLE, if you're trying to see it in all its original quality.
Click to expand...
 
The 200A vs. HMC150 is not really the right comparison, you should probalby more be comparing the HPX170 against the HMC150, since they're pretty much identical hardware and the 200A doesn't have a lot of features the 170 and 150 have. The 170 has many advantages over the 150, including variable frame rates, the ability to record standard-def, time-lapse, HD-SDI output, firewire streaming, all sorts of things. That's why it costs more. The HMC150 is a lower-cost alternative that uses cheaper SD cards instead of P2 cards; the difference there is ultimate performance and reliability vs. cost. If cost were no issue, unquestionably get the 170 over the 150, as it does everything the 150 does and several things the 150 doesn't. If cost is a major issue, get the 150, becuase SDHC cards are much less expensive and record for longer times than P2 cards do. For editing concerns, I'll let others weigh in on how they find the experience of working with P2 files vs. AVCCAM files, in Apple NLEs.
 
I don't own a Mac, but from what I've heard from others, you'll need to transcode footage from either camera before editing in FCP. P2 however transcodes pretty quickly, I think 4 or 5 times faster than AVCHD, which goes about real-time on a newer Macbook Pro.
 
Frame Rate Issues

Frame Rate Issues

When logging clips I am having trouble getting the right frame rate. I shoot on 60 and it is logging at 29.97. I went to sequence pref and capture pref and set them both to the desired frame rate. Regardless it comes up at 29.97. What should the devise control be set to?
 
60i or 60p? If you shot at 1080 then you have 60i footage, and because the i means each frame is just a half frame, it is technically just 29.97 frames per second, so NLE's will interpret it at 29.97.

But if you're shooting 720/60p, then it should be interpreting at 59.94fps, you're right.
 
I'm a little late to the party but have a question...I am on a quad core witrh 4 megs of ram, running Vegas 10.0e and all AVCHD files are on a HD connected via USB. Playback is very stuttery and I've been told to move to an esata raid which should make life easier. It's a bit confusing as some people here have no issues and others do, all things being somewhat equal.
Any thoughts would be apprecaited.​
 
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