TBC advice for HDV tapes + HDV tape deck?

[dellsam34]

This is the last time you'll hear this from me, There is no such TBC for HD or any digital source, Period end of story.
You either learn how to get the mac setup working, Get a PC with firewire, Or get a blazing fast computer that can ingest 1.48Gbps from SDI without a hiccup and few TB HDD, Lastly, pay someone who has the knowledge to extract the data from tapes for you.

[Bwaak]

This is the last time you'll hear this from me, There is no such TBC for HD or any digital source, Period end of story.
You either learn how to get the mac setup working, Get a PC with firewire, Or get a blazing fast computer that can ingest 1.48Gbps from SDI without a hiccup and few TB HDD, Lastly, pay someone who has the knowledge to extract the data from tapes for you.

To be fair, this is the advice he got from dgwvideo on FCP board. It is not unheard of that great filmmakers know little about film editing or video formats, as I can see horrendous youtube uploads with combing and wrong aspect ratio. The dgwvideo guy suggests, "All dropouts on DV and 8mm tapes will create problems for both FCPX and Quicktime alike. If you can run your camera thru a device with a good TBC and one which can apply internal sync, then those tapes will generally run as one clip." IDK whether he implicitly suggests to capture DV as analog, or believes that TBC is applicable for digital video.

I would still try to tweak Mac capture tools to disable creating new file on scene change. I would also try again capturing via Premiere, as it seemed to [almost] work.

[dterranova]

FYI this is what I’m getting over at the FCP forum:
“ If you insist on going the laborious Firewire to camera to computer to software route forget FCP and use iMovie instead. It's more forgiving of the problems you're facing.

The smartest & most direct approach is ingest directly into a Ninja V and be done with it. We used to grab videos using Firestore FS5 DTE decks but even that added addition steps and time to the mix. The Ninja gave us a 1:1 play/capture result we could deliver immediately to the client without firing up FCP. (Still have four Firestore decks I'd like to get rid of if anyone's interested...)

Makes littles sense spending more time searching forums for solutions considering your workflow when all it takes going the Ninja style used here is a 1-2 minutes per tape administration penalty. (We could NEVER provide same day turnaround doing it your way.)”

https://fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/37738-capturing-hdv-tapes-from-sony-hvr150...t/reply/123963

All quite confusing and lots of assumptions about whatever “I’m insisting” on.

[Bwaak]

If you insist on going the laborious Firewire to camera to computer to software route forget FCP and use iMovie instead. It's more forgiving of the problems you're facing. ... The smartest & most direct approach is ingest directly into a Ninja V and be done with it.

Does he mean Atomos Ninja V Portable Monitor/Recorder? It only has an HDMI input, which will work for HDV, as many (most?) HDV camcorders have HDMI output, but not for DV. There is nothing smart and direct about plunking $475 for the Ninja V, when you can buy a refurbished Windows PC for $150, install a $15 Firewire card and do it the direct - yes, the most direct - way it is supposed to be done. DV and Firewire were developed together, they are like hand and glove. HDV then rode the DV train. As it has been said multiple times, Firewire is the native way to grab DV and HDV, there is nothing laborious about it once you have needed hardware and software, it is just copying the bytes from tape into a file exactly as they were on tape.

Instead of the Ninja, you can buy a cheaper box like this: https://www.amazon.com/ClonerAlliance-Recorder-Playback-Converter-Required/dp/B012T1D0IG It has HDMI, component and composite inputs. You can grab DV as composite if you like, it will lose quality, but will still be usable. The box will deinterlace and upscale, and you will be able to continue with your normal life

[dellsam34]

Listening to folks that worry about quick turn around and no care for quality, Those guys have no clue how DV/HDV works, what is interlaced and de-interlaced video, If your tapes are not important to you keep going back there and listen to the crap they say, If you want the proper way of doing it, this is the right place to ask questions. By the way the laptop I linked above for sale is still up, No affiliation just eBay search.