You can do it in imovie but it says you "HAVE" to connect the camera? which I find wierd but whatever I guess for now thats pretty good... I need to get my paws in FCP6 now.....
HMC150 questions answered...
- Thread starter Barry_Green
- Start date
You can do it in imovie but it says you "HAVE" to connect the camera? which I find wierd but whatever I guess for now thats pretty good... I need to get my paws in FCP6 now.....
john deaver
Well-known member
not to be an idiot....
but how do you go about downloading the intire "private" directory of Barry's footage
I've tried everything i know of but it keeps giving me HTML files, not folders.
do i need to FTP all this stuff.
thanks
John
but how do you go about downloading the intire "private" directory of Barry's footage
I've tried everything i know of but it keeps giving me HTML files, not folders.
do i need to FTP all this stuff.
thanks
John
kurtmo
Eats with 2 Fists
As my father-in-law always said about desert, you don't want any, it tastes terrible. Same goes for the HMC150, you don't want this camera. Trust me. But if you do decide to get one...please, please wait until I've got mine....
Well, it took some heavy lifting, but I found a Sony Vegas workflow. This is my first interaction with HD, so I knew I'd have some adjusting to do. What follows is my saga and my reactions along the ride.
Watched the tail end of the Videomaker live then downloaded Videomaker files to my laptop (newer Intel Penryn chip running vista home premium). Oh, boy I'm on my way to HD at last.
Zip files won't extract with windows built in decompressor (thanks uncle Bill). Eventually, I extract just the MTS files from the stream folder. i open up sony vegas and dump the file into the timeline. Vegas hangs big time. No big deal, that was expected.
Next, I download the Panny transcoder and AVC-I decoder and install the tran. I attempt to run the transcode, but can't get the tool to recognize the file. I keep getting an error dialog.
I suspect that somehow the standalone files are missing some metadata that says that it is from an HMC camera (i've seen some warning to that effect before downloading.)
I take a break and come back and download a better compression util. I extract everything from the directory. Suddenly the transoder is much happier and so am I. The files transode before I have time to switch to another app. Niiiice!
I download and try to install the P2 viewer. It fails to install. Some driver is missing. :huh: I'm back to panny and eventually find the P2 drivers. I try installing them and choose the HVX200 P2 driver. Now the viewer will install:thumbup: , but I can't seem to find a way to point to the files.:-BlackEye(DBG Undaunted and unwilling to RTFM, I try my old buddy VLC. No dice there either.
I go back to the Panny viewer and play with all the menus until I find the virtual P2 or some such thing, that allows me to point to directories. After a bit of trial and error, I finally figure out what folder in the stack I need to point to.
And now (drum-roll) i get my first view of the HMC files and...the kinda stink. I see artifacting around the edges box on the low light shots and on the motion shots.:crybaby: looks like I'll be keeping my 100B for a while, which is OK, but I've been following this for a long time and I have a hard time believing that the codec could be that hosed.
By now the Olympics are in full swing on the TV, so I play with the clips and watch at the same time. It would be nice if I could complete the workflow test that I had hoped for, but I don't own Raylight (the P2-Vegas glue). Beach volleyball is over, so I check dvxuser for updates then head over to dvfilm.com and poke around a bit. I find a demo version and decide to give it a try.
I install Raylight and put it on green. I start up Vegas and import the first file. I preview the clip... Wait a minute, what happened to the artifacting? It's gone! I go to blue and try a render. Having not rendered any HD before, I try a QT file at 1080p using the photo JPEG codec. It renders pretty quickly. I open the file and have to downsize it to get to the QT controls. It's looking sweet! I try several more renders using other files and am blown away. The image is excellent; no artifacting. The colors are nice. The low light shots look fine, too.
This morning I pulled down some of Barry's clips. I found that as long as I replace a file with the same name in the stream folder, the transoder will transcode it. The first shot from Barry has a quick pan and it looked fine. I didn't see the codec breaking up. I plan to rename the other MTS files to replace some of the videomaker clips and try them later today.
Bottom line, the workflow seems about what I expected. Now that I've gone through the steps, getting files to my NLE should be easier than using tape and the transcode times seemed liveable. The image was as good as I expected for the price.
Well, it took some heavy lifting, but I found a Sony Vegas workflow. This is my first interaction with HD, so I knew I'd have some adjusting to do. What follows is my saga and my reactions along the ride.
Watched the tail end of the Videomaker live then downloaded Videomaker files to my laptop (newer Intel Penryn chip running vista home premium). Oh, boy I'm on my way to HD at last.
Zip files won't extract with windows built in decompressor (thanks uncle Bill). Eventually, I extract just the MTS files from the stream folder. i open up sony vegas and dump the file into the timeline. Vegas hangs big time. No big deal, that was expected.
Next, I download the Panny transcoder and AVC-I decoder and install the tran. I attempt to run the transcode, but can't get the tool to recognize the file. I keep getting an error dialog.
I suspect that somehow the standalone files are missing some metadata that says that it is from an HMC camera (i've seen some warning to that effect before downloading.)I take a break and come back and download a better compression util. I extract everything from the directory. Suddenly the transoder is much happier and so am I
. The files transode before I have time to switch to another app. Niiiice!I download and try to install the P2 viewer. It fails to install. Some driver is missing. :huh: I'm back to panny and eventually find the P2 drivers. I try installing them and choose the HVX200 P2 driver. Now the viewer will install:thumbup: , but I can't seem to find a way to point to the files.:-BlackEye(DBG Undaunted and unwilling to RTFM, I try my old buddy VLC. No dice there either.
I go back to the Panny viewer and play with all the menus until I find the virtual P2 or some such thing, that allows me to point to directories. After a bit of trial and error, I finally figure out what folder in the stack I need to point to.
And now (drum-roll) i get my first view of the HMC files and...the kinda stink. I see artifacting around the edges box on the low light shots and on the motion shots.:crybaby: looks like I'll be keeping my 100B for a while, which is OK, but I've been following this for a long time and I have a hard time believing that the codec could be that hosed.
By now the Olympics are in full swing on the TV, so I play with the clips and watch at the same time. It would be nice if I could complete the workflow test that I had hoped for, but I don't own Raylight (the P2-Vegas glue). Beach volleyball is over, so I check dvxuser for updates then head over to dvfilm.com and poke around a bit. I find a demo version and decide to give it a try.
I install Raylight and put it on green. I start up Vegas and import the first file. I preview the clip... Wait a minute, what happened to the artifacting? It's gone! I go to blue and try a render. Having not rendered any HD before, I try a QT file at 1080p using the photo JPEG codec. It renders pretty quickly. I open the file and have to downsize it to get to the QT controls. It's looking sweet! I try several more renders using other files and am blown away. The image is excellent; no artifacting. The colors are nice. The low light shots look fine, too.
This morning I pulled down some of Barry's clips. I found that as long as I replace a file with the same name in the stream folder, the transoder will transcode it. The first shot from Barry has a quick pan and it looked fine. I didn't see the codec breaking up. I plan to rename the other MTS files to replace some of the videomaker clips and try them later today.
Bottom line, the workflow seems about what I expected. Now that I've gone through the steps, getting files to my NLE should be easier than using tape and the transcode times seemed liveable. The image was as good as I expected for the price.
The HVX is a known quantity and at the moment is easier to work with in post. Computers and software will definitely catch up to the HMC150 though. It has to be a prioirity for any serious editing app maker. As rarely as I do major camera purchases, I want to seek out the "latest greatest" and will happily wait for everyone else to catch up to me and my shiny new HMC150.
My bottom line says that no matter how cheap I find a used HVX I *stilll* can't afford enough P2 cards for my shooting needs. And hauling my primary computer to offload footage isn't wise.
Barry_Green
Moderator
Yes. As long as you instruct your editor in how to handle the footage properly, it will yield frame-accurate slow motion that would look identical to overcranked 60fps HVX slow motion (in terms of motion, not necessarily in terms of compression efficiency etc.)
The HVX provides about 3 dozen frame rates; with the HMC150 you can get 24p, 30p, 15p and 60p.
Barry_Green
Moderator
Roger that, it definitely does.
Barry_Green
Moderator
No question that P2/DVCPRO-HD is definitely better supported for editing right now. There is no such thing as FCP-HD 4.1, is there? I thought it was 4.5 where they introduced HD. In any case, 4.5 can edit HVX footage but you'd have to "capture" it through firewire, just like tape. If you want to use P2 files you'd need to move up to at least 5.04.
Barry_Green
Moderator
GAAAA! Yes, I missed those files, they've been uploaded now. Try those and see.
I'll attempt to get a few different shots and do so.
Love to, but it's a full 8GB card! Full to the brim. I don't think Jason would want me posting 8GB of data, nor would you guys want to download a full 8GB... :thumbsup:
I wonder if it's my monitor (regular computer lcd) or maybe the transcoding in voltaic, but I'm definitely getting a mosaic type of pixeling in the sky areas on Barry's shots. The color is gorgeous though. Transcoding on my mac quad with voltaic is horribly slow. I'm hoping it's the transcoding that is causing the artifacts, because I definitely don't see this with my hvx.
smelni
Veteran
I just want to make sure i understand this correctly - are you saying that avc-hd is actually better then dvcprohd at 720?
Barry_Green
Moderator
"Better"? That's a loaded word. Better in what way? For editing, no. For color resolution, no. For codec resiliency, no. But in overall detail? MAYBE. It depends. See, DVCPRO-HD 720p is recorded at 960x720, whereas AVC-HD 720p is recorded at 1280x720. So you may see some more fine detail. Whereas in HDV that was usually easily trumped by the GOP issue, AVC at 720/24P is at least three times more resilient to GOP issues. So then it comes down to 33% more potential pixels horizontally, vs. 100% more chroma samples vertically. So then, it comes down to what's generating the images on the front end -- if we're talking about a VariCam HPX2700 vs. an HMC150, then unquestionably the HPX2700 is going to obliterate the HMC150, whether 960 or 1280. But HPX170 vs. HMC150, same imager to same imager, shooting strictly the same subject, recording to their relative 720/24p formats, I think it's going to be pretty hard to tell those two apart. (testing will prove whether this theory is correct, of course).
There's an inverse relationship between quality on these cams' recording formats. Whereas on the DVCPRO-HD cameras I actively advocate always using 1080P mode whenever possible, to extract the maximum performance the camera can deliver, in the HMC150 I might actually recommend the opposite. Reason being that the bandwidth is fixed, so whether you shoot 720 or 1080, 24p or 30p or 60p or 60i, the same # of bits are used to encode each second. So the fewer pixels you force the system to encode, the better the compression will perform. It's not that way with the HPX/HVX, where there's more bandwidth allocated for 1080 mode. So the HMC150 *gains* when going in 720p mode, whereas the HPX/HVX gain when going in 1080 mode.
So -- when would it be possible for AVC-HD 720p to look better than DVCPRO-HD 720p? A black & white resolution chart will undoubtedly look better. Scenes with tons of fine detail and not a lot of color information. Black & white footage. Maybe a monochromatic desert landscape... When would DVCPRO-HD 720p look better than AVC-HD 720p? Scenes awash with color, chroma keys, and any scenes where the long-GOP nature of AVC-HD might be taxed too far. I don't know if it's possible to tax AVC-HD into "breaking" in 720/24p mode, I really rather suspect that it's not possible -- but if it were, then DVCPRO-HD would excel over AVC-HD in those circumstances.
There's an inverse relationship between quality on these cams' recording formats. Whereas on the DVCPRO-HD cameras I actively advocate always using 1080P mode whenever possible, to extract the maximum performance the camera can deliver, in the HMC150 I might actually recommend the opposite. Reason being that the bandwidth is fixed, so whether you shoot 720 or 1080, 24p or 30p or 60p or 60i, the same # of bits are used to encode each second. So the fewer pixels you force the system to encode, the better the compression will perform. It's not that way with the HPX/HVX, where there's more bandwidth allocated for 1080 mode. So the HMC150 *gains* when going in 720p mode, whereas the HPX/HVX gain when going in 1080 mode.
So -- when would it be possible for AVC-HD 720p to look better than DVCPRO-HD 720p? A black & white resolution chart will undoubtedly look better. Scenes with tons of fine detail and not a lot of color information. Black & white footage. Maybe a monochromatic desert landscape... When would DVCPRO-HD 720p look better than AVC-HD 720p? Scenes awash with color, chroma keys, and any scenes where the long-GOP nature of AVC-HD might be taxed too far. I don't know if it's possible to tax AVC-HD into "breaking" in 720/24p mode, I really rather suspect that it's not possible -- but if it were, then DVCPRO-HD would excel over AVC-HD in those circumstances.
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If I download the individual MTS files, will those be seen and imported by Edius without the hierarchal structure?
Barry_Green
Moderator
Not yet.
Barry_Green
Moderator
PH mode isn't supported by today's version of EDIUS Broadcast (not sure about EDIUS Neo). I used the Edius AVC-2-HQ converter to convert the files into CanopusHQ files, which are then viewable in Windows Media Player or importable to any NLE on that Windows system. And you don't need the hierarchal file structure for that converter (hence why I didn't even think to post the whole directory structure the first time...)
I'm pretty certain that in the next version of EDIUS and EDIUS Neo, they'll have the ability to directly drag the MTS files right into the timeline or bin.
Thank you.
Mark Williams
Veteran
Barry, Thanks for all your hard work on answering everyone's questions. I know you don't have to do it. I am sure you have burned up a lot of hours here when you could have been doing something else.
ya so true thanks again :dankk2:
I noticed a fair amount of noise in the trees with the large bird (egret?) when you zoom back -- the 95 stream.
If you shot the same footage with the 170 or the 200a, what would your thoughts be on a comparison of noise levels?
If you shot the same footage with the 170 or the 200a, what would your thoughts be on a comparison of noise levels?