Final Cut Express HD capture lag

[TeeJayHoward]

I'm capturing video from my Canon HV10 into my MacBook Pro (2.16Ghz CD, 2GB, 256MB x1600) via FireWire into Final Cut Express HD 3.5 and the capture is lagging behind the camera display by 82%. Is this normal for high-def content? Never experienced it before with regular MiniDV tapes - Even on an old G4 iMac. What's more, the preview window is frozen at a frame very early on in the clip. This is the second time I've tried to import it, and the first time, it stopped the tape and complained about frames being dropped.

...So, uh... What's going on? Can the MBP not handle capturing of HD content? Is FireWire400 too slow? What's the bottleneck, and how do I fix it?

 

[GJSNeptune]

That's crazy. Your specs look more than adequate. I would say it's software-related, if anything. Very confusing. Good luck.

 

[w1retap]

If anything, I'd reinstall Final Cut and recheck the capture settings. You're firewire isn't the bottleneck, its 400mb/sec, and I'm betting the max bitrate of your footage is less than 25mb/sec. In the capture settings, make sure you have everything set to ignore capture errors, timecode breaks, or anything of that nature. In playback options, also make it ignore dropped frames or errors in playback. The 'lag' in capture is normal. What you see on your camera display should be a little ahead of what you are seeing on the computer screen.

If you are still having problems, I would bet on the tape being the problem. I've had many bad miniDV tapes before. Try buying a new tape or two. Panasonic and Fuji are really good brands of miniDV tapes. If you want a really really good quality tape to be sure, here are about the best ones all the professionals use for their ENG video shoots with miniDV. They are Panasonic AY-DVM63MQ (made by Fuji).
http://shopping.yahoo.com/p:Panasonic AY-DVM63MQ Blank Media:1991656253

Beyond that, video capturing on Macs has always been nothing but problems for me. The mac doesn't really leave a trail you can trace back to the problems they have. We used to have them as non-linear editors in the TV studio I work at, but since then I've built all PC based non-linear editors running Canopus Edius and haven't run into a single problem in over 8 months.

 

[piako]

I'm betting the max bitrate of your footage is less than 25mb/sec.

Is that correct? 25 megabits per second? Edit: The only reason I question that is that I've watched some HD studio mastering where they required a x-serve raid for speed and also remember reading on barefeats.com that HD requires 237 MB/s. I believe those are uncompressed speeds though.

 

[w1retap]

Is that correct? 25 megabits per second? Edit: The only reason I question that is that I've watched some HD studio mastering where they required a x-serve raid for speed and also remember reading on barefeats.com that HD requires 237 MB/s. I believe those are uncompressed speeds though.

Yea.. that would be full frame uncompressed HD. I believe the max of miniDV 25mb/sec.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DV

Also, the standard for HDV footage is 25mb/sec.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDV

 

[piako]

Hmmm... I guess the reason why the uncompressed HD is so mucher larger than HV10-style is because they use 10 bit color and 4:4:4 chroma subsampling? This article explained a lot. I see that 1080p will require 375 MB/s uncompressed and 1080i 190-ish MB/s.

I wonder what makes HDV a smaller data rate? Ooooh now IC, the HDV uses Mpeg-2 for in-camera compression while uncompressed 1080 is much higher data quantity. Edit: that's amazing they got a full frame real time mpeg-2 compressor in a camera. wow

 

[MScrip]

Since we're talking about HDV... I want to know something... what do you do with HDV after you've edited it?

Assuming you've got a fast enough computer to edit HDV... how do you get it out?

 

[TeeJayHoward]

Since we're talking about HDV... I want to know something... what do you do with HDV after you've edited it?

Assuming you've got a fast enough computer to edit HDV... how do you get it out?

Put it back on a miniDV tape
Encode for computer (.mov is nice)
Burn to DVD (if the movie is short enough)

There's a lot you can do with it.

 

[MScrip]

Put it back on a miniDV tape
Encode for computer (.mov is nice)
Burn to DVD (if the movie is short enough)

There's a lot you can do with it.

So, if you burn HDV to a DVD, will it play in High Definition? I'm confused. DVDs are 720x480.

Is there any other way to distribute HDV, or do we have to wait for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray?

I record and sell DVDs of dance concerts and shows. I guess I'll stick with standard definition until most of my market has HDTVs and the appropriate players.

It's cool to have HDV for yourself... but I don't see it as a distribution medium yet.

 

[w1retap]

HDV won't play in a DVD player. You have to output your footage in the re-encoded standard for a DVD player. You can however burn it to a DVD in its full resolution so you can back up your stuff to play it back later on your PC. For HD DVD and Bluray, if you have the burner you can make it playable in full resolution on a standalone player. Formalized distrobution of HD content for in home viewing isn't really that far off. I'd say another year and there will be a plenty big enough audiance. But, for the people who want to buy HD content, you can't go wrong with HDV. If the people want their daughter's ice skating performance in HD you can either re-encode it to WMV-HD for playback on their computer.. or burn it to Bluray or HD DVD if they want that option. Then, you can still also burn it to regular definition DVD as well. It just gives you more options to open up different prices to charge people, and it gives the customer more choices of what they want.