HVX 200A and Final Cut Pro

C

Country Roads

Member
Questions I have about the HVX 200A, Final Cut, Adobe Photoshop, and HD editing ...

1. How smooth is the transfer of video from the 200A into a Mac?
2. Can you import pics from Photoshop?
3. Can you edit HD video with Final Cut Studio 2?

Does anyone use the 200A with Final Cut Studio 2? How does it work for you? I'm thinking of going the Final Cut route rather than the Avid Media Composer route.

Your input ... please.
 
1. transfer is smooth via P2 CMS or commercial products like P2LogPro
2. yes
3. I can edit P2 footage in 720 p 50 with FCP2 on a macbookpro 2.5 GHz with no problem. make sure you have at least 3 GB ram.
 
Mount the card or access a previous copy p2 card and ingest via Log and Transfer. Or use Raylight for the Mac to ingest natively.

You can import png, tiff, jpeg, etc. still photos.

Thousands of editors use DVCProHD footage from the 200, 200a, 170 and other p2 based cams with FCS2.
 
To ingest into the Mac, what other software do I need?

I know I can ingest via firewire, but what program do I need to ingest the video? Or does Final Cut Studio already have that capability?
 
1. How smooth is the transfer of video from the 200A into a Mac?
damn near pain free - you dont NEED any software other than FCP and the p2 drivers.
in fact all you NEED is p2 drivers if youre just talking about getting footage ON TO a mac.
2. Can you import pics from Photoshop?
you bet!
3. Can you edit HD video with Final Cut Studio 2?
yep as well! dvcproHD is a JOY To work with in FCP. as well as after effects and dvd studio... been doing it for about 2 years without so much a s hiccup.

i used to ingest and edit from p2 cards on my old 1.0 ghz powerbook G4 and it worked GREAT - until FC studio 2 which requires a minimum of 1.5 ghz G4 to run - WHAAAAAAHHH! : (
now i just use my old powerbook to ingest p2 content then i copy it all to a firewire800 drive to edit on my desktop mac.
 
actually, you don't even need the P2 drivers, if you just want to use firewire to transfer card data to the Mac, either to HDD, or using FCP to Log&Transfer.
 
A few clarifications

Country Roads said:
1. How smooth is the transfer of video from the 200A into a Mac?
Click to expand...
Easy, smooth, reliable. The one tricky thing these days (on any platform) is finding devices with Cardbus slots if you don't want to use the camera as a card reader (which works fine). IMO, at this point, the best deal in card readers is a used IBM ThinkPad with a ThinkPad Dock II (less than $250 on ebay) that works as a 4-slot reader connected by Gigabit ethernet. Panny makes FireWire/USB2 readers with 5 slots, but they're pricey (over $1200).

On some PC editors, you can edit directly from the cards. FCP does not allow you to do this directly, but you can buy the RayLight plugin to allow this. I don't find it necessary; if you do wedding same-day-edits or something like that it's likely very useful; it seems that some production workflows find it helpful. My postproduction lasts a lot longer than i want to keep data on the cards, so my workflow always involves getting the data off the cards (and backed up to multiple locations) as soon as possible, so editing off the cards isn't useful.

2. Can you import pics from Photoshop?
Click to expand...
Yup... FCP and DSP both recognize separate layers in photoshop images, and let you operate on them seperately or as a whole. They DON'T recognize/render layer effects, so you'll want to render those in Photoshop before saving, or re-create them with FCP's features.


3. Can you edit HD video with Final Cut Studio 2?
Click to expand...

You can pretty much edit anything, from DV to RED. FCP handles or transcodes all common formats. Certainly it works great with DVCProHD. (AVCHD works, but hopefully will be made a little more convenient in an upcoming release!)

Does anyone use the 200A with Final Cut Studio 2? How does it work for you? I'm thinking of going the Final Cut route rather than the Avid Media Composer route.
Click to expand...

Almost every day, since getting the HVX in 2006 and the "A" in 2009!

Really... no worries on this combination!
 
Country Roads,

You don't need any software other than FCP Studio 2 to edit your footage shot on P2. Import via firewire if you'd like or through the PCMIA slot if available and then go to Log and Transfer and load your directory.

Cheers,

Matt
 
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