HVX and Final Cut Help!

S

Sean Kearney

New member
Hi Everyone,

I am writing this because I have been helping a friend with a short documentary she is shooting, and we are having some problems with HDV footage she shot. Essentially, much of the film was shot in standard definition, using a DVX100 set to 24p (not advanced). Lately, my friend has gone back to shoot some reenactment footage, choosing to instead shoot these elements on an HVX camera, using P2 cards in HD. Now we are trying to put everything together on one timeline, and we are both unsure as how to bring in the HD footage. Essentially, what I am wondering is two-fold, one, is how exactly HDV footage should be brought into Final Cut Pro, and two, how do I setup a timeline to accept both types of media? In most cases, I have been able to just lay the different media down in the same timeline, but I want to make sure I do this right. If anyone could help us out, or point us in the right direction of some help, that would be much appreciated. Oh, and we are working currently on a Macbook Pro with Final Cut Pro 5.

Thank You,

Sean Kearney
 
Hey Sean,

Not sure if this is a typo or not but you said you are trying to import HDV footage? The HVX-200 records a variety of DVCPRO encoded footage. I assume she probably shot at highest quality meaning DVCPRO50HD @ 1920x1080 resolution and either 30i or 60i frame rate, maybe 24fps depending on what kind of frame rate she was trying to match.

Regardless, the HVX does not record HDV....so maybe your project settings are incorrect?

FCP 5+ should not care what kind of footage you have with regards to the time line, however, footage might appear smaller or distorted depending on what your project settings are. for example if your project id 1080i and you have both 1080i and 720p footage in your timel ine then the 720p footage will be smaller and "shrunk" compared to the 1080i footage which would fill the preview screen.

Chris
 
Sean,
Are you using FCP 5.0.x or 5.1.x (4 was the latest update i believe)?5.1.4 is known to be stable in regards to ingesting p2 footage, while 5.0.x has been known to have issues (Though I never personally encountered them) so that might be something to keep in mind as you edit this footage.

As Dabizion mentioned the HVX in HD mode would record DvcProHD (DvcPro50 is a standard def format with 4:2:2 color resolution that the hvx also records)

As for ingesting the media, the simplest way would be to use the Import>P2 option in FCP, then simply point FCP in the direction of your P2 cards. This will ingest the p2 footage into FCP and allow you to edit it.

You will not be able to edit two different formats in the same timeline without having to re-render every time you make a change. I am not familiar with FCP 6.0 but it is supposed to support real time editing of multiple formats in the same timeline. In my experience in FCP 5.1.4 and with a MacbookPro you will not be able to do this, and converting HD files into SD without some kind of standalone card or hardware downconvert will take a very long time.

I think editing the HD footage in an HD timeline, to at least cut it down to selects or pre edited scenes to then drop into the SD timeline would be the most effective workflow. Then you simply use compressor to make an 720x480 DV NTSC .mov file and bring that into your SD timeline to edit/drop in.

If you have access to the HVX, you might want to copy the footage back to the p2 cards (can p2 folders simply be dragged back onto the p2 card? I'm not sure if this is possible with the mac, otherwise you can use FCP to print back out to the card, though thats not very effective) and then use the HVX to make mini DV SD dubs of the HD footage, this is a real time downconvert, and may or may not save you time. I would think its faster than using FCP to re-encode the footage into SD, since it seems like it takes forever to re-encode HD into any format.
 
Upgrade to Final Cut Pro 6 and utilize the open format timeline.

Probably the fastest and most cost effective solution.
 
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