Article Focus: One of the features that snuck into the new edition of Final Cut Studio is that you can now capture HDV directly to ProRes over FireWire! There are a couple of issues you'll want to consider, but Chris Poisson, a Cow member since 2001, takes you step by step through a process that can make a big difference to the way you edit HDV in Final Cut Pro from now on.
This was a pleasant surprise coming with the latest update to Final Cut Studio. I've played around with it a bit and have invented my own workflow for it that's fast, easy and efficient. So I thought I’d share.
NOTE: This process gets you out of the MPEG 2 GOP world, and unlike capturing with dedicated hardware, leaves your footage at 1440x1080 instead of bringing it to full raster.But, it still works great.
I am capturing from a Canon XH-A1, with which I nearly always shoot 30p. That way, even if the material is going into an SD timeline, fields don’t come into play.
This workflow assumes you want to capture a bunch of things off a tape. If you only need to grab one or two things, just cue up your tape and capture it.
This workflow also makes up for the lack of a full capture window when capturing multiple clips.
Capture set-up
Make sure your camera or deck is properly set up for FireWire capture. In the case of my Canon, it must be set to HDV playback standard and plugged in and turned on before going to log and capture.
(You'll need an LCD monitor if you’re using a camera or a monitor hooked up if you’re using a deck, since capturing is going to lag way behind the camera or deck.)
You need not use a ProRes project setting to capture this way. What’s important is that you open up the audio/video settings and select HDV FireWire for control and HDV-Apple ProRes for your capture setting.
Cue up your tape to the place where you want to start capture. Go to File>log and capture and a little window will come up.
Type in a general name for the material. In this case, I spent about 20 minutes shooting footage of a Mission South of Tucson, so I just called it that, and let it rip.
Shortly after capture starts, you will see an alert at the bottom of the window,
It will be around 30% or so behind the camera, but this is normal.
Organizing the results
Let it go until your material is done, at which point you can manually turn off the camera, and the capture window will continue doing its thing for a few minutes.
You will then see several clips in your browser, numbered consecutively.
FCP makes a new clip at every camera start/stop. Toss all the master clips from the browser.
Now open the capture scratch folder, and go through each clip in the finder and re-name or toss them. This only takes a couple of minutes. When done, drag your clips to the browser, and you’re done.
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You now have beautiful ProRes 1080 clips with audio and timecode!
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Feel free to add your comments here.
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Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
I just did a short test capture of hdv to ProRes std (8 bit yuv) using my dual 2.3 PowerMac G5 and FCP 6.0.3.
How nice that the screen told me to watch my vtr"s lcd for correct progress. It also displayed what % lag time. On this short 48 sec.clip the lag was approx. 18%.
I pushed stop on the cam vtr at the end of what I wanted to caputure. Worked great.
The numbers on the 48 sec sample clip comparing an hdv capture vs ProRes Std capture: hdv 3.2 MB/sec. vs. ProRes 795 MB/sec. File size: hdv 155.2 MB vs ProRes 795 MB when I view "item properties" for each clip.
However, when I look at file sizes of the QT files in the capture folder, the hdv clip is 258.6 MB, and the ProRes clip is 795.8 MB I don't know why the hdv file was smaller in the TL than in the capture folder - the clip was not trimmed.
Anyway, I'm more concerned with the large file size of the ProRes. At that size it seems I could not capture and work in ProRes for this project.
So far, I can't really see any difference in quality between the ProRes cap and the hdv captured clip.
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
Julian,
There's no difference in quality between native HDV and ProRes captured via FireWire that I can see. ProRes is just a better format to edit with and for compositing etc. than native HDV. Regarding ProRes HQ, I don't think that would buy you anything quality-wise on ingest, and I don't know if FCP can do it anyway. Never tried it.
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
...And is there a difference between ProRes and ProRes(HQ) capture? When I try to capture in ProRes (HQ) the preview screen freezes halfway through the tape and FCP seems to crash / freeze. Any ideas why???
Working with a dual core intel - 5g RAM -external drives etc... I don't see my system being the problem for this freeze -it should be able to handle it?
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
Does anyone know what the quality difference is capturing from HDV ProRes as opposed to a full quality HDV capture (I'm using JVC HDV 720 24p format)?
And if there is a quality difference, how significant is it?
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
This is really cool. I tried it out and worked great. I do have the same concerns about not batching in case a media drive dies but I see timecode is listed for each clip. I want to do a test and delate the material the see if I can batch capture the lost footage. Has anyone tried this yet?
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
Hey Lee Berger,
Thanks so much for posting your update. It was my first time capturing HDV and not my camera, I would have never figured that out by myself. Thanks again!
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
Nick, thanks.
Shane, no bad blood, you only made it better.
This clip name thing is something that DV Monitor does automatically, change the clip name in the capture window and it changes it on the scratch media.
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
Yup..right under the MODIFY menu. And Choose FILE to match CLIP. The FILE is the QT file on the scratch disk, and the CLIP is the clip name in the Browser.
Sorry Chris, I didn't mean to knock this tutorial. I think it is really cool that I can capture HDV as ProRes via firewire. And I was having fun doing it. I just get a bit scared when it comes to the ability to recapture media if it is lost.
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
Shane, you wrote:
"FCP has a new feature that when you rename a clip in the Browser, you can have the master clip name on the Scratch Disk change to match that name."
I tried this but it doesn't seem to work. How do you do it?
it doesn't happen as a matter of course,
you have to ask for it.
go to Modify Menu > Rename
or right click on the clips in the browser.
(cant be done from the timeline)
Just had a rather disturbing experience with the proRes422 codec. I firstly captured my tape as a standard HDV and then as ProRes422 as described in this article. I wanted to do a quality comparison so I grabed two clips with the same timecode and found the time code was out by 5 seconds on the proRes422 clip! So my claperboad claped at 01:02:10:18 on my HDV capture (and on the original tape) and the proRes had it at 01:02:06:05
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
OK...more on this, as I am using the tip now to capture.
FIRST OFF...you needn't delete the clips from the Browser, rename in the finder, then re-import into FCP. FCP has a new feature that when you rename a clip in the Browser, you can have the master clip name on the Scratch Disk change to match that name. I forgot about that handy feature.
Now, onto my big issues with this tip. I blogged about my experiences on my main blog and cow blog (which is a copy of my main blog), and I have this to say:
"When you do this capture, you do it pretty much as a CAPTURE NOW. Roll the tape and let it go. There is no LOG AND CAPTURE, no place to add REEL numbers. So let's say that you lose a drive, and your footage is lost. How will you get it back? With logging and capturing, simply BATCH CAPTURE your footage and it will reconnect in the Browser and timeline. But with this method, CAN you batch capture? Because of the camera starts and stops will the recapture start on the exact same first frame and last frame? If you have to recapture the footage and try to reconnect it that way, how can you assure that you get the same TC start and end times...and the same clip names?"
"I think if I have the time, I will also capture the footage (only 8 tapes) via HD SDI as DVCPRO HD 1080i 29.97 and see how things look. At least with this format, I can log and capture, label my clips, assign reel numbers as I capture, have the ability to capture the b-roll as one long clip. And piece of mind that I can re-capture via "batch capture" in case footage is lost."
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
Thanks Tim.
Kevin,
No lag, huh? Must be my G5. By tossing the clips I mean the clips in the browser after you capture, but only if you want to re-name them. Turning off the make new clip feature is not an option I can see.
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
I captured using your advice Chriss on my new Intel Mac Pro with two Xeon 2.6Ghz processors 9GB RAM and got no lag at all. Though I did loose some frames (around 12) between each take from a PAL 1080i50 HDV tape on my Sony V1
1. Is there anyway to turn off the "New Clip on each camera stop" feature with ProRes422?
2. Chris, what do you mean by "Toss all the master clips from the browser"?
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
Chris, you need to add that when you capture this way, no REEL information is placed on the clip...so you have no way to tell what tape the clips came from. After you re-import you need to add the reel name to the clip (click yes when it says you are changing the time code information on the master clip). Otherwise if you lose a clip, you have no clue what tape it came from.
And BTW, I am capturing tonight from a Sony HVR-1500 via firewire to ProRes on my Dual 2.0 Ghz G5. No problem whatsoever.
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
Hey all, been away for the Holiday, will try to address all of these here.
Lee B.
There must be a menu setting in the V1U that needs to be tweaked. Sorry, I don't know that camera.
Michael E.
I have not had a multi-tape capture session using this workflow, but I will report back if I have the same or a different problem when I do. Hope you got this sorted out.
Nick,
I captured a 45 minute tape the other day, and it was always around 30% behind the camera. When the tape is done, it will take a few minutes for the capture to finish, I suppose it could be as long as 20 minutes for a 1 hour tape.
Arti,
I believe FCP will detect your frame rate etc., it does from my A1. Note in my article I said an easy setup is not required, device control and capture settings are all you need to worry about.
Steven,
This tutorial was done on a 2 year old G5 2 Gig with 4.5 gigs of RAM.
Sam,
In my experience, FireWire capture of HDV demands more pre and post roll on shots in general. A painful lesson I learned when I started using my Canon A1 last Spring. Does this ProRes thing exacerbate the situation? I don't know, but you should add time to the front and end of shots just in case.
Andy,
I didn't know renaming clips in the browser would change the name of the QuickTime clips in the capture scratch folder, is that what you mean? The method I describe does not take any (or much) more time, and anal me goes to bed knowing my manual media management is correct. And I sleep great.
Thank you all for your comments, this is a brand new procedure, all of your concerns and suggestions will only help perfect it. Thanks!
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
It doesn't seem to work on my G5 2.0 and Sony V1U. The capture window comes up, the tape plays, but no video ever appears. At the bottom is says Cueing Tape (press 'esc' to stop). It played all the way to the end of the recorded tape about eight minutes without capturing anything.
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
I'm running a dual core 3ghz intel machine with a kona LHe card (not that it matters much capturing via firewire) and found that after each tape that I needed to re-boot the computer otherwise I got a "you have reached the end of the tape" error message when I tried to capture a second tape. This is coming from a canon camera with material shot at "24" frames a second.
I have one problematic tape that I am trying to capture for the third time that when it gets close to the end of the tape final cut just quits and when I look at the capture scratch folder it didn't get anything from that tape. I'm baby sitting and watching the tape through the whole capture now to see if there is a time code break.
Has anyone else had this sort of problem? What happens with this sort of capture strategy when the computer encounters a time code break?
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
When I tried this feature a week ago (or whenever it was that 6.0.2 came out) I was very excited, but I quickly noticed that at the points where the camera was stopped and started again (i.e. the beginning of a new clip) capturing in this manner missed some footage. If you captured just as straight HDV you will not miss a frame of video footage, but using this HDV->ProRes feature I was missing quite a few frames. I just chalked this up to a problem because I have a 2.3 Dual Core G5 and not an Intel machine. Does anyone else have this issue? Does this problem exists on Intel machines?
Really? Capture HDV to ProRes in FCP? Over FireWire?! Yes!
Chris, Good of you to take the trouble to write this up. I think the "toss the master clips, open the capture scratch folder, view and rename the files, then reimport them to the project" routine all sounds a bit unnecessary tho. It would seem more sensible to rename the clips, as captured, directly in the browser, then (if really needed) you can use FCP 6's ability to rename the master clips according to the clip names. (And you can delete any unwanted clips directly from the browser window by using the Make Offline command. Just a thought. Andy
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