Final Cut Studio 2 HV20 24p Workflow - final?

[coloradosti]

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=98411

i'm going to try this when i get home and verify it for the masses.

Truly, this would be great news for everyone with HV20s. The ONLY downside i see to it is that there's no more pre-selection of clips.. its drop a tape to hard drive option... i can live with that, as i'm going to want to do that anyway.. besides, it will also get me ready for working with P2. ;-)

so as not to keep you in suspense....
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[from the link:]
1 Shoot 24p with the HV20

2 Capture to Final Cut Pro using HDV out through the firewire

3 When all of the clips are in the bin you can export them straight to compressor.

4 In compressor i choose the preset for Apple ProRes 422 for progresive material HQ and leave all options on default except i enable the reverse telecine option.

5 Choose the output for the file or files and submit the batch for processing.

6 Re Import footage into Final Cut.

The revamp of compressor looks a lot different than the previous version, finding the preset and reverse telecine option may take a second. in the main window right click on the clip choose
new target with setting - Apple - Other Workflows - Advanced Format Conversions - Apple Codecs - ProRes 422 for progresive material HQ
Once You choose the output setting, if you double click the setting on the clip, an inspector window opens. There is a tab called Frame Controls, under that tab enable changes by clicking on the button. This will allow you to choose On in the field marked frame controls then toward the bottom there is a field marked deinterlace, there just choose Reverse Telecine from the dropdown menu.
Next Choose Save As down at the bottom. and next time all you have to do is load your custom preset.
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btw: compressor 3 is incredibly fast (if you're using Intel)... so i'd rather do this any day of the week than use external applications. MPEG Streamclip is really slow (not real-time) when converting from .m2t streams to AIC, so this should be waaaaay faster.

doing it all in a couple of automated steps in the fastest app i've got on my MacPro is way better than all the other steps i was doing manually.

[Fair Witness]

Edit: Ok, after some testing I believe that FCP is really saving the raw mpeg stream into the "Apple HDV/1080i" preset. However, why does Quicktime show the file as being 1888x1062? Compressor shows it as 1440x1080 as it should be. Also, is there any way to get Compressor to resize the clip to 1920x1080 without it looking pixelated?

[treyvollmer]

Hi,

I've been fighting with this for a week straight now. I can't seem to get past the same problem over and over.

When I export my 24p footage from FC to Compressor it plays back blurry. Before I even do anything to it, the browser plays it blurry. It plays just fine in FC though. The stuff looks down right horrible. Is there any advice you can give to help?

thanks,

Trey

[koolpenguin89]

Trey, Prores is an editing codec, not a viewing codec, so it is meant to play back choppy and blurry. It plays back in FCP because FCP down-res's the footage during playback in your canvas, but unless your running an 8-core with 16gb of ram, Prores 442 will NOT play back smooth on its own (and even with that setup, its iffy).

Dylan

[Huffster]

FYI: Here is Apple's official HV20 Final Cut Pro 6 workflow:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306389

[Dmitriy]

koolpenguin,

My practice tells a different story. I have a Macbook Pro 2.33 with 3 Gigs of RAM. Prores WILL playback without dropping a single frame on my computer and at full 1440x1080 resolution. Also the speed of playback never drops below 24fps in quicktime. Editing codecs are not meant to be choppy and blurry.

treyvollmer,

I used to have the problem of blurry footage if I exported directly from FCP to Compressor and converted the footage to 1920x1080(square pixels). Leaving the default size of 1440x1080(1.33 ratio pixels) solved the issue. For some reason that occurs because the Resize Filter is set to Low quality by default, and you cannot change it if you have the Reverse Telecine selected in the Frame Controls.

Besides, I no longer use Compressor because it has major issues detecting cadence on static shots. JES Deinterlacer is much better at that. If you are going to use JES, make sure the gamma is set to 2.0. By default its 2.2 and tends to crush shadow detail in the produced images.

[Dmitriy]

I retract my statement about changing gamma from the default of 2.2 to 2.0 when performing reverse telecine with JES. I ran some tests and scopes showed that the footage rendered at 2.0 has clipped highlights. The reason I made the conclusion to change from 2.2 to 2.0 is because my Quicktime displayed the video rendered with default 2.2 gamma a little bit darker than the source. As I realized later, that was because I had the option titled "Enable Final Cut Studio color compatibility" set to off in the Quicktime Preferences. Underneath that option, it reads:

"When enabled, video is not displayed using ColorSync. Source colors are read with 2.2 gamma and are displayed in a color space with 1.8 gamma".

After enabling that, the footage rendered with 2.2 now looks identical to source, both through visual examination and through scopes. I am sorry if I mislead anyone.