HDV7 compressor is ..... ?

[ermetekos]

Dear all,
i have recently shot a commercial using the Sony HVR-Z7E.
I got the footage in my hands and i couldnt natively import it either in Premiere or After Effects, nor could I view the quictime files.
so i transcoded with Canopus Procoder to respective HDV (m2t) target files 1440x1080.
When in Canopus, i read in the description HDV7 compressor.

The quality of the transcoded files is not very good.
What should i do in order to view and edit the original files?


I am using Premiere Cs4 on a Vista Premium 64bit Intel i7, 2.67GHz with 6Gbs of RAM


Many thanx in advance

Mario

[minidv2dvd]

the footage should be HDV on the tape. and once captured to the computer it should still be HDV. did you capture the tape from the cam yourself? what type of connection and what program did you use?

[edDV]

HDV video as captured should have an M2T extension. It appears your file has passed through a Mac and is in a quicktime wrapper.

Try to get the original file or use Quicktime Pro to output in a wrapper format CS4 can import. Don't use Procorder. It will recode the video. All you need to do is change the wrapper. M2T or just plain MPG should work.

[ermetekos]

you guys are both right. i got the footage from a guy who captured the files from a mac.

edDV i opened a file using Quicktime Pro, exported to AVI with no compression but the output is white.

any ideas?

[edDV]

No.

Can you transfer from the camcorder?

Or get the Mac guy to output M2T or MPG?

[ermetekos]

i guess i can always ask if he can.


geez this mac thing, is like putting the knive to my throat.
BUY A DAMN MAC!

Like what could i do right here, right now.

Thank you very much for your time though

[poisondeathray]

You should be able to re-wrap into .m2t with ffmpeg

ffmpeg -i input.mov -vcodec copy -acodec copy output.m2t

You may have difficulties with the audio, if it is sowt

You can use avisynth to import into CS4 as well, using the avisynth import plugin. Or you can use the script to encode to a lossless format, or just the audio (because sowt audio is supported)

FFMpegSource2("input.mov",atrack=-1)

[minidv2dvd]

if you have any HDV cam/deck and firewire available on your computer, transfer it yourself?

[edDV]

Mac is notorious for making output in native or PC formats non-intuitive. They wrap everything in Quicktime. You should be able to find an output that works from Quicktime Pro for Windows. Look again for MPeg outputs to save a decode. I don't have the program here to look at.

Your best bet is to get the Mac guy to output to MPG or M2T.

This thread says HDV export is lacking in Quicktime Pro for Windows.
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/162/864244
http://forums.atomicmpc.com.au/index.php?showtopic=5483

[ermetekos]

@ poisondeathray, i am afraid i tried looking to see how ffmpeg works and couldnt figure it out!
also i installed the avisyth plugin.
do i just import from Premiere then?
because i did and it didnt work.

@edDV: tried any uncompressed setting and it still white.

Lord have mercy!

[poisondeathray]

The options I listed work for fourcc HDV3 wrapped Quicktime .mov , I haven't tested on HDV7, so I don't know if it would work

The ffmpeg option is a command line application, you would type the commands in the console box

The avisynth option requires a script, so you would type the text I listed above in notepad, save rename to .avs, then import the .avs. You also need the ffms plugin in the avisynt plugins directory, and avisynth installed. This works with audio that is twos (audio and video imported together) , where as the ffmpeg option has issues with twos audio, and you would have to encode to PCM wav for premiere to understand (import audio as separate track)

You can't use QT pro to encode, because it can't DEcode HDV wrapped in mov on the PC. This is why you see "white screen"

[edDV]

This guy has similar issues.
http://forums.atomicmpc.com.au/index.php?showtopic=5483

[minidv2dvd]

i tried ffmpeg and vlc on an HDV .mov - both were only able to unwrap and save the video. BUT if you have sony vegas pro 9, it will accept the HDV .mov but only find and be able to use the audio. so if you use ffmpeg to get a .m2t video, vegas will take that and the audio from itself you should be able to edit away.....

[minidv2dvd]

i just read today's changelog for pp cs4 here - it looks like there may be improved support for fcp stuff. but i can't find the update on adobe's site and my pp cs 4.1.0 says there are no updates when i have it check for updates?

Welcome to Adobe® Premiere Pro® CS4, version 4.2.0.

New in this release
• Panasonic P2 AVC-Intra material is now supported; new sequence presets are also included for editing this format.

Notable fixes
• Final Cut Pro Project Converter is now compatible with Final Cut Pro version 7
• Final Cut Pro Project Converter now maintains timecodes from the originally captured sources
from Final Cut Pro

[poisondeathray]

@mini - Yes, I noticed videohelp listed 4.2.0 was available, but I couldnt update either. But I thought the update was still a week away....

@ermeketos - That last link edDV gave, uses Avanti for method#2, which is a GUI for ffmpeg. You may find that easier to use than the command line