Recapturing Project as HDV

[Smiling Sadly]

Hello everyone,

here’s a query for you all!

I shot a music video on HDV on a Sony HDR FX1

I bought myself a lovely copy of Final Cut Express HD 3.0 (gonna upgrade soon)

I captured all the footage as DV for a reason that’s either unknown, stupid, or seemed like a good idea at the time.

I cut the video. It’s lovely.

Now I want to recapture the used clips as HDV for the grade. Bearing in mind that EXpress doesn’t let you export an EDL, any suggestions on how to do this? Can I capture project from the camera in HDV? Or will I have to manually recapture all the clips?

Any advice gratefully seized upon with an iron grip!

[Sean]

Not a 100% on this now , but it might be workable .

If you Offline the media ( move the captured clips to another folder) then FC should look to chase down the clips and I think you can then recapture them ( error comes "up media offline, would you like to recapture or browse " Kinda thing ) . As long as you logged the tapes correctly originally it might be fine , You stick the tape in and click OK and it goes to the relevant time code)
You will still need a completely different Sequence though with the correct import settings for the HDV. As a matter of interest did you use Final cut to make the footage DV or did you use a setting on the camera to export the DV ?

It can cause awful difficulties with transitions and cuts though , because of the different frame structures between DV and HDV .

If it isn’t a ridiculous amount of footage you might be better of going from scratch

[Smiling Sadly]

Hey Sean,

thanks for that.

I’m getting an external drive over the next 2 days (waiting on delivery) and then I’ll try it – laptop too full to try now!

I’ll post and let you know how I get on – lots of people seem to have issues batch capturing HDV so I’m not holding my breath!

[Sean]

Really all you need to do is accept the Digital workflow and buy as much capacity on a firewire drive as you can . I’ve not had a problem wit batch capture of a whole full tape with no gaps . Plug it in and start it and go away for an hour . Then you have all your media on your computer and you can manage it all there and do what you like with it. Drive space is getting so much cheaper now it’s the way things are going.
Having said that I can understand the hassles post houses and such might have with HDV , it doesn’t want to play the way they want to play , so they fear change and say " it’s crap and it don’t work "

HDV takes up no more drive space than DV , as a matter of fact if you shoot HDV and convert it to DV on capture it takes up more ( slightly) than if you leave it in HDV. Remember they both fit on the same Tape !

I was thinking again earlier about your predicament and I think that you’re probably going to have difficulties because you will need a new blank sequence set for HDV to import the footage into. But you can copy and paste all the effects and transitions from one timeline into another so you might want to maybe try and get FC to capture the HDV footage you want first , drop those clips into a new timeline ( So they’re cut the same ) then copy all effects transitions etc from your original cut to the new timeline. I would however leave the colour grade till last and do a new colour grade for the HDV .

( I sound like an expert here , But Dan is the man really , I glean a lot from him on this stuff )

[Dan]

okay i’ve never had to try this but this is the proper way to do it without cheating at final cut,
not sure if express has the same function either but here it goes

open your sequence and then go to the file–> menu and click on export, then on xml,

xml is a markup language it exports all the timeline, clip start and stop point in yopur project, transitions applied and even effects and colour grades, it only exports the calculations and not the actual footage. you can specify to only save the data for the footage in the sequence or the media in your library (bin)

save this xml file some where safe.

make a backup of your SD project just in case

Now,

close all projects in final cut

make sure your camera or deck is hooked up and turned on

go to file, import, xml and a dialogue box will come up asking where to save the new sequence, what codec to use, (ie hd, sd, anamorphic etc etc) what to call the sequence and wether or not to try to reconnect the media, turn off this option –>(reconnect media) as this searches your computer to find the clips from the old project

Make sure this option is also turned off in the sequence settings –>(use xml default) other wise the xml data will overwrite your decision to make this a HD project instead of an SD one.

Final cut will go ahead and create a new project, sequence and folder for your project, when you open the sequence you will see your complete time line with all effects, transition, colour grades, sound effect etc. but there will be no footage! Instead a red bar saying media offline on it.

This is when you do a batch capture on your original tape, make sure to specify that the media is hd footage.

this will save all the previos sequences as they were originally named and store them in a new folder.

Now you do a reconnect to media, and specify to search for all the footage from one folder, not outside this folder (otherwise it will find original footage and use this instead)

your sequece should fill in with the original footage (i think)

but there may still be some files missing, (eg, a sound effect you found on your harrd drive and stuck in, a still photo you got from you pictures folder, a livetype file, motion project, etc, etc.)

do a new reconnect and this time turn off the search in one folder option and it should find the remaining of the media used in the project, k if that dont work ….

i dunno

[Dan]

an alternative just came to me…

got to file media manager,

a dialogue will open up,

that says
media:
a drop down box is underneath

select the "make offline" option
another drop down box specifies new codec to be used

set sequence to:
selct hdv 1080i 50

and finalcut will then make a duplicate of your sequence but disconnect all media, save this file as something different and then simplly do a batch capture.

ta da!

your original file will be safe

[Sean]

I think that copy thing is only available in FCStudio2 Dan. Earlier versions you cant change the sequence settings unless the timeline is blank. I think. But the XML Export should work I’d say .

[Smiling Sadly]

"Sean":b5240 wrote:

I think that copy thing is only available in FCStudio2 Dan. Earlier versions you cant change the sequence settings unless the timeline is blank. I think. But the XML Export should work I’d say .[/quote:b5240]

Sorry guys, lost my password for a week or two!

Haven’t done this yet, I still have drive problems (i.e. still hasn’t flippin arrived!)

I don’t think I’ve got an export xml option but I’ll check it out – thanks for sharing the knowledge

[Author]

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