Potential Clip Problems, Please check...

Problems here too...

Seems our clips (from two cameras shooting 720p 24fps) don't transfer into FCP 6.02 correctly. All clips break up (blocks) at the very end (1-2 secs) but more severely, when the clips are transfered into FCP there is always material missing at the end!

A 1 min clip has 1-2 secs just missing! A 15 minute take has over 30 secs missing!!!!! The "record extra material" work around doesn't cut it in that case!

The clips play OK in the FCP Log and Transfer Viewer (leaving out the break up at the end) but there's no way to explain the missing footage.

We are transferring data using a USB card reader ... we'll try using the camera as the card reader when they get back in.

Bit of a worry though!

Lee
 
For people that shoot weddings every weekend, transcoding to DVCPro HD seems like a very bulky & time consuming task - every wedding will need 500GB of HDD space instead of 70GB, plus time to transcode 5-8 hours of footage. The whole idea behind going solid state was to save time by skipping the tape capture step yet now we have to spend that time waiting for transcode operations. At least when you were capturing from tape you were also viewing and making notes - transcoding time seems completely unproductive!

My camera arrives sometime next week and I'm not feeling good about it after reading this - hmmm... maybe I should have gone with the EX1 after all - the issues with that camera are relatively minor compared to what I'm reading here! The HMC-150 can have the world's greatest low light abilities but if I loose one minute of footage for every 30 minutes I shoot I can get into serious trouble.

Can someone from Panasonic respond to these file corruption problems? Surely Panasonic would have tested & seen these issues before releasing the camera for distribution. Some of us rely on making our living & supporting our families through video production! I can live with the odd tape drop out now and then but I could NEVER forgive Panasonic if this camera's footage caused me the problems people are talking about here.

This whole thing reminds me of when Microsoft rushed the buggy release of Windows 95 to meet marketing demands, and to be followed by a string of service packs for the next year or so to patch the bugs.
 
Yeah, I should get my cam tomorrow and like Evro, I do weddings full time. This is what provides for my family. This will be the first thing I test out. If it messed up. It's going back. I am willing to wait for AVCHD to be supported natively in FCP, but if it's dropping frames and you can see it in your view finder. Ouch... I want this camera so bad.. but seriously, this is a major issue. I hope its just bassmans camera and not all of them. Itf3, are you having the same problem if you just watch your footage through the cameras view finder.

Thanks..
 
Update:

The clips play back seemlessly in camera.

So that rules out the camera recording malfunctioning, which is a very good thing.

The problem is how to get the spanned clips into my editor (Edius).

Every way I have tried brings the clips in as separate files and I think Edius does not know how to glue them back together and this messes with the GOP structure.

I am in need of suggestions as I have run out of things to try from what I know of.

The AVC viewer from panasonic is kind of clunky and ends up with the same information in the stream folder that I can get from a straight transfer from the SD card.

So, the camera is great, just need the know-how to properly work with the clips...
 
Hey Bassman-

I had a tiny issue with this as well and I'm using Edius 5.

I did exactly what you did in terms of checking the clip in camera and it plays perfectly but on one of my canopus HQ clips I had trouble encoding. I had the same problem when transcoding to DVCPro. I was in a rush and didn't need that clip anyway so it didn't occur to me that this could be a serious problem until I read this thread.

I think Edius and Panasonic need to create an update on their transcoding software. :(

This is not good news.

-G
 
Bassman2003 said:
I am in need of suggestions as I have run out of things to try from what I know of.
Click to expand...

at least the camera works. if these are straight .mts files, open a command prompt and try to the copy /b command to join the files together (binary). It works for the Canon. The problem obviously then becomes the "housekeeping" required in order to manually join the right files in the correct order. Definitely not ideal, but might work here...
 
I wish there was a way to bring the files in as entire clips so a spanned clip would be one long non-stop file for the editor.

There so many folders in the SD card structure, seems strange that what gets copied into the editor is just the stream folder contents.

This is probably the problem.
 
I'm trying the camera at this moment, I'll let it film my hands for half an hour and see what happens to the sppaned files.
 
Getting nervous here ...
Im about to place an order
Does David Jimerson know if this problem exists with Premiere CS4 seeing Bassman said its not the camera but the convertersoftware ?
Thanks .
 
Everts said:
...if this problem exists with Premiere CS4
Click to expand...
Yes, i see the same issue with native AVCHD footage in PPro CS4.

If i convert the footage to DVCPro HD or capture via HDMI into a Intensity card the problem is totally gone. It takes more time but it is workaround that i will use since it works and solves the problem.

I have seen the very same issue with a Canon AVCHD camera, so it not the HMC-150 that is faulty.

/Roger
 
Hi

More Info :

If you Log and Transfer 720p 24fps footage from a card reader *or* the Camera into FCP 6.02, transcoding to Apple Intermediate Codec, a certain amount of material is chopped off of each clip. The longer the clip, the more is lost (13 mins loses 35 secs!)

We are now using Toast 9 in its Convert mode to transcode to Quicktime, AIC, 24p, and it does it perfectly.

Then import into FCP.

No reason to expect other footage frame rates/resolutions to be any different. My bet is an FCP issue.

We'll forward to Apple feedback...

Lee
 
ajcourtney said:
Well I guess I'll be the first to say this problem renders this cam completely useless for any serious work. I must also say that it does not surprise me one bit since those of us who have been fooling around with AVCHD consumer cam's for the past 10 months have encountered the 2GB (FAT) hard file limit with every AVCHD cam created to date. Some manufacturers (Sony) have written software that will seamlessly resplice these files back to the original contiguous clip, while others (Canon) continue to ignore the issue altogether and hope that a third party ISV (Pixela) will eventually fix it for them (not happening).

The fact that this issue continues to resurface even with today's advanced filesystems proves that AVCHD clearly cannot be taken seriously. I firmly believe that the consortium is either directly or indirectly responsible for this extreme shortsightedness and the irresponsibility of the committee driving this format is entirely to blame for the complete hit-or-miss extended contiguous recording capabilities that we are currently witnessing in these consumer electronics manufacturers' products.

....
[/rant]
Click to expand...

What we are seeing here is a software problem, not a hardware problem.

Depending on the software used, some video may be lost, resulting in the glitch between spanned clips. For now, work a rounds are required, but I would hope that Panasonic is working with the software companies to help fix the the glitch in the conversion.


Bob Diaz
 
Bassman2003 said:
I wish there was a way to bring the files in as entire clips so a spanned clip would be one long non-stop file for the editor.

There so many folders in the SD card structure, seems strange that what gets copied into the editor is just the stream folder contents.

This is probably the problem.
Click to expand...
So, am I correct in the saying the cam does not include software designed to re-splice the clips back into the original contiguous clip upon transfer to a PC/Mac?
 
BobDiaz said:
What we are seeing here is a software problem, not a hardware problem.

Depending on the software used, some video may be lost, resulting in the glitch between spanned clips. For now, work a rounds are required, but I would hope that Panasonic is working with the software companies to help fix the the glitch in the conversion.


Bob Diaz
Click to expand...
I understand Bob because those of us who have been using the AVCHD consumer cams for the past 10 months have already dealt with this issue. My point is it is Panasonic's responsibility to provide software with the cam to correctly re-splice the various <4GB clips back to the original contiguous clip perfectly upon transfer to the editing computer. If they cannot do this, then THEY are the problem since THEY have decided to impose an outdated filesystem restriction upon the user that is completely irrelevant in today's world.
 
HEY CE MANUFACTURERS - GET A F'ING CLUE ALREADY.
Click to expand...
The problem is actually with Mac users. They can't use NTFS, so solid state cards intentionally screw the majority (PC users) by formatting their drives with FAT32 to accommodate the minority (Mac users).

A very simple solution would be for solid state card makers to allow us to format the cards as we see fit (or drives in the case of Firestore). With NTFS (or HFS for Macs), long record runs would be a single file - problem solved.

Lacking that, different cards for PC and Mac users should be made available.

Bottom line is, all solid state devices/external drives should at a minimum allow full functionality for the vast majority, meaning NTFS formatting. If they still want to accommodate Mac users, fine. Just don't screw the majority in the process.

(OK, that's off my chest. I'm better now.)
 
Jim, that's so far off from the actual truth. Macintosh users are actually more of a majority in this business that PC users. 60 percent of all HVX users were on a Mac and I'm sure that the trend will follow suit with the 150 and such. PC's are not the majority in the creative arts and far from it... certainly in terms of the working and successful people that I know. Maybe 1 in 20 people I know use a PC.. and God bless them for taking that route... so I suggest you might even want to conduct a poll, but I'm sure you'll get some results that confirm what I'm saying.. and at the least, it will be 50/50 and maybe more and more are going with the better value in this 150.


cheers.
 
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