Importing MPEG4 clips slower than HDV tape.

I am using a fairly antiquated laptop to edit HD clips on FCE 4. Is it possible to edit with out rendering all footage into QT files or do I just need a faster computer?
As it stands it takes longer to get MPEG4 clips into Final Cut than it did with tapes as it takes me about 11mins to process a 23 second clip!
Thanks for your help and advice on this.

I recently bought the Sanyo Xacti HD1000 - this is my third Xacti camera and while the standard resolution Xacti's were very nice, the HD1000 is great. I shoot everything at 720P/30 (and now shoot all my stills on the XACTI at 16x9 so they integrate nicely into the videos), and have found a great workflow for getting it into my Intel Macbook. I have finally gotten around to creating a little movie showing how to use MPEG Streamclip to both edit and capture your clips for use in Final Cut and iMovie HD. That is posted here: http://homepage.mac.com/bobhudsoncom/XACTI/iMovieTheater45.html
On the my 2.16 GHz Macbook with 1GB of RAM the clips are imported in realtime or slightly faster than real time. On an older 1.67 GHz Powerbook with 512MB of RAM it took three times realtime, or 30 seconds for a 10 second clip.
However, keep in mind that using the method I show on the video I am only importing trimmed clips so I don't have to wait for stuff that will end up in the trash anyway nor do I need to waste storage space on that.
I also have some original HD1000 camera clips available at that link as well as clip that has been converted to AIC.
Since making HD DVD's is not a reality for most of us, I edit in HD and then make standard definition DVD's and for some movies keep the HD files for future use when HD DVD's become practical (with the very cheap large hard drives these days, it's easy to archive those HD clips).
Message was edited by: Bob Hudson

Similar Messages

Help - HDV tape import problem - Sony HC-3 broken - Questions/Warning

My Sony HC-3 HD camcorder has just failed. I've had it just over 3 years.
I really don't enjoy video editing much, and despite maybe shooting 20-30 tapes of HD footage of my young children, I'd only got round to importing a handful over Firewire, but was lulled into a false sense of security perhaps by treating the tapes as my film negatives (new tape each time).
The camcorder behaved a bit erratically a few weeks ago when inserting a tape, then the other day it gave an error, I ejected the tape and had a constant C32:11 error flashing. Lots of user reports on the web, no idea what the real issue is, but any suggested fixes didn't work.
Essentially I cannot close the tape transport compartment with or without a tape - it won't accept a tape and return to record/play position.
Almost feels as though something isn't clicking/catching when you push the tape in.
Anyhow, I thought if worst comes to worst I'll just buy Sony's latest model - then the realisation they'd discontinued consumer HDV tape camcorders. Not a happy bunny.
I've sent camcorder to local Sony repair center and am awaiting outcome.
Now my questions are:
1 - Is there any way of simply reading the tape data using an SD camcorder if I ever needed to ? - There are programs that use them to archive data so I guess in theory it must be possible just to read the data, unless it's stored in an SD compliant file format rather than just data.
2 - is 1080i HDV (1440x1080 res) as captured by the Sony HC3 a cross-vendor format or Sony specific - (if 1 is impossible) could I if needed say pick up a Canon HDV camcorder and use that to import my video?
3 - are we to assume now that DV/HDV is dead as a consumer format despite it's better image quality compared to hard drive/memory card video codecs.
Hopefully Sony will repair my camcorder for a fixed rate charge - if they can't or won't what are my options for importing the video I've got on tape?
There are bound to be companies who'll do this for a fee if worst comes to worst, but I feel a bit annoyed with Sony for dropping support for the format after buying an expensive camcorder only a few years ago.
Even if it can be repaired, I'm not sure I'll want to continue using it if there's a risk of future failure and inability to import old tapes. Frankly I'm glad I've used the video function on my Canon 5D II a lot in the last year or so for quick video clips even if many are transiently OOF.
Yes, my fault for not importing the tapes immediately after shooting, but I'd assumed that I would be able to import the data well into the future evene if it meant a new device.
AC

Jeremy Hansen wrote:
HDV is not dead!!! Heavens, the pros laugh at AVCHD and hard drive based cameras. When you shoot on HDV tape, you have a backup.
Sony do still manufacture HDV pro camcorders of course - it's the early adopter consumer they've left in the lurch.
One of my original reasons for using tape was this automatic backup - silly of me not to routinely import tapes to Mac of course.
To answer your questions:
1. No, you can't read it with an SD camera. you are correct that it is just 12GB of data, but no software really knows how to go back and forth, so to speak. In case you care, there was an app years ago (I forget which) that could use a Dv camera as a 12GB backup drive. But practically, no.
Shame really seeing as it's just data - I'd used the Firewire SDK kit DVHSCap app to pull off 12-13GB m2ts files in the past which I felt would be ok for computer archival, unedited direct playback on PS3 and fairly quick to convert to AIC as needed for future editing purposes using a utility.
I did wonder if DVHSCap might be able to pull the data from an SD camcorder, but maybe the tape just would not play.
2. HDV is HDV. If you had problems, pros would advise you to import with the same camera, or at least same brand. But, usually there are no problems. There shouldn't be, but occasionally there are.
I was hoping this was the case, great.
3. Image quality is NOT better with hard drive based camcorders. In fact, most use a higher rate of compression than HDV. What is the advantage? A tape-based camera takes an hour to import and hour. Hard drive cams go faster. Some look great, but there is no advantage over HDV.
Yes, the only advantage of HD/card based camcorders is simpler import faster than real time, and I'd always been concerned with HD camcorders you'd have too many eggs in one basket if the HD failed in between imports to computer.
I own an HC-3, and you have to realize it was an early camera in the high-def market. I don't use it often (except as a secondary) because of its optics.
I've always found it produced pretty acceptable results - constantly amazed that 3-4 year old products get regarded as obsolete by manufacturers who just want you to buy the latest gadget.
Here is my advice:
Get a Canon HDV camera. Use it to import your tapes, and enjoy its superior optics and color quality. Opinion? Yes, but I believe it.
I may consider that if repair fails - any model recommendations that would trounce the Sony?
Cheers
AC

Can I selectively import clips from a DV tape?

i have a couple hours of footage on DV and only need a fraction of the clips. is there any way to import only specific clips... or, is my only option to import the entire tape and then get rid of excess footage once it's in iMovie? if my only option is to import all the footage, is there any way to expedite the importation process? also, is there any way to compress the imported footage so that it doesn't take up so much HD space? lots of Q's here... thanks for any guidance!

Hi TexanMac - yes you can control the import, but only manually, by alternately turning on and off the import button in iMovie. That is a very sensible way to reduce the import size. Carefully preview your tape first, so you know when keepable segments are coming up. In iMovie Preferences you can also control whether or not new clips are created at each scene break. Note that if an imported clip is not used at all, it can be trashed and it disappears from the project entirely. However if even a small portion of a clip is edited into your iMovie, the entire source clip will be retained in the project's media folder, and cannot be removed.
The only way to compress footage is to share the movie, for example to QT, either:
1. reducing its size and quality (for the web, for example), or
2. as a full quality QT file (this can be imported back into an iMovie project, though of course any transitions, effects etc will be embedded, rather than still being editable). But it will have got rid of the source files that take up so much space.
Hope this helps.

Importing clips longer than 4min - crashes computer - genral error34 in FCP

importing clips longer than 4min - crashes computer - genral error34 in FCP
Posted: Dec 21, 2008 10:48 AM
Reply Email
FCP HD 4.5 not taking clips longer than 4min and in FCP Im getting ( general error 34) in my
audio/video settings. Computer crashes and external hard drives go off line.
In past FCP rescue fixed it.

You need to check to make sure that the version of the OS, FCP and quicktime are compatible. Also, is your scratch disk formatted macosextended? If not, it should be.

Importing DV/HDV Tapes

Hi,
I would like to know if there is any software to import DV/HDV tapes to my Macbook pro (doing the same job that we can do using the "Log and Capture" window) ?
I don't want to use the FCP to do it because I want to use it at the same time in another tasks.
Thanks

You cannot capture video AND use FCP at the same time doing something else. Meaning you cannot capture video AND edit video at the same time on the same machine. Just not possible. Nor can you capture and compress video at the same time.
To be able to capture video while you are working on something else in FCP....you'd need another machine.
Shane

Generally speaking import is slower than export. Right ?

DB version : 11.2, 10.2
Because of the extra validations like Foreign key, ...etc, , Isn't import usually slower than export ?
If yes, By what percentage will it be slower for a regular dump which has 'regular' tables without LOB, CLOB.. etc ?

I can not think of any situation where export will be faster. Export just reads the dictionary and grabs information. Import needs to create all of the objects. For indexes, it needs to build the indexes, which can take lots of time.
As for how much more time... it is pretty much impossible to say. If you have indexes, it could take a long time to build indexes, it really depends on what objects are in the dump file. If you have statistics of subpartitioned tables, recreating all of those statistics could take a long time. How busy is your system/db. If not too busy, you could try the parallel option of Data Pump to use multiple processes to get the job done a little faster.
Dean

Problems importing HDV tapes

Hello everyone,
First time I need to importe HDV tapes, frames recorded on HDV1080i 50i. I use a Sony HDV camera recoder, plug in with an firewire 800.
I set everything as it must be, then when I open the listed and capture the preview is black and when I start to capture it's says something like "missing of datas from the device, check the connections".
Do I need a special firewire cable for HDV images? Cause It works if I want to import some DVcam frames...
Please Help!! Just rent the camera for few days for import tapes...

Also, I have found that the WAY HDV is logged has a big effect as to how easily it can be captured - I used to constantly get the same warning you do. I started to mark my in and out points "on the fly" meaning the tape was rolling (NOT paused) while setting in and out points. Since doing it this way, I have yet to get that warning again. I imagine that it must have something to do with the GOP nature of HDV, but I'm not sure... I can use the same camera and cables to log and capture DV (paused) without an issue. As soon as I switch to HDV, the warning reared it's ugly head unless logged on the fly.

HDV Tapes better than MiniDV?

Can anyone attest to the more expensive HDV Tapes delivering better quality and/or reliability than regular miniDV tapes. They both record in HDV so is it just a marketing scheme?

I mostly agree with your comment, David. But just a reminder to HDV videographers that a "dropout" in HDV may well be more than a frame or two, but rather as much as 1/2 second depending on where in the GOP it occurs. When I used to use Premium, the couple of dropouts I did see were recovered upon repeated "recapturing" of a few seconds around the area. I always eventually got it. But that was enough to convince me when I went to HDV (actually a bit before that), to spend the extra $$$ on Excellence where I've had zero dropouts (knock on wood).
But then, I'm not a professional and don't go through as much tape stock as someone who is: I do about three plays a year (in addition to the usual birthday/christmas/vacation family stuff) with three cams, so about 9 to 18 tapes per event (two hour plays with inconvenient tape change spots, so three tapes per camera per performance; I always wind up shoot two performances), so that's only about 200 tapes in the last 6 years worth of plays.
I never reuse tapes, either, and other than for stuff you can readily re-film would recommend against reuse.
Eddie O

Where can I get the codec to import iMovie clips into Premiere CS6?

I am running a PC with Win7 & PPro CS6
I have a bunch of clips that were copied over from iMovie imports (no original files exist anymore)
They are all a special form of .mov
I can play them in VLC Media Player (but not Quicktime, or WMP) so I know that a pc can handle them...
When I import into CS6 I get an errorsaying Codec missing or unavailable...
Whered can I get the proper Codec?
Thanks all!
Aza

Considering the last post was made in March last year, I've attached the feature request I made today, just so you know you're not alone on this issue, for anyone with the same problem.
MAC to PC Support:
There needs to be a comprehensive and readily supplied library of codecs to provide simple transitions between MAC and PC.
I'm currently working on my first feature film. I raised a little bit of money through Kickstarter, enough to buy a decent HD camera and a microphone. Basically, I'm not a professional and I'm learning as I go. The camera I bought is a Canon XHA1- it records to mini-DV. I do not have the money to buy an HDV tape deck, leaving me with the only other option of using the firewire port to capture footage off of the camera itself. I had a firewire-to-USB cable, which I used to capture footage to my PC, but after getting a new computer with Windows 8, the camera is now out of date and the OS has no drivers for it. I then decided to capture my footage on an old i-Mac my friend gave me, through i-Movie. After moving the files to my PC, I found that Premiere Pro CC was unable to import them.
Needless to say, the song and dance I have to go through every time I try to capture footage is frustrating, and considering the mission of Adobe Creative Cloud, to provide affordable opportunities and resources to independent artists, not to mention the fact that Adobe is for both Mac and PC (and especially not mentioning the fact that it is a service I am paying for monthly,) I feel like these kinds of problems shouldn't exist.
Of course saying "I pay for this, this problem shouldn't exist" is the rallying cry for every idiot who expects the impossible. But capturing on i-Movie... and importing to Premiere Pro? Really? Why is this an issue? Maybe i-Movie is out of date... but I'm not going to waste another weekend capturing; it probably still won't work.
I'm not asking for file conversion software. That's what I'm going to have to do on my own, for GBs upon GBs of footage just so I can get to the editing table. The problem is that I have to convert it in the first place. If there is any progress on this issue, please let me know.

Best "Capture" workflow for projects mixing HDV tape and XDCAM footage

I'm trying to determine the best workflow for projects that combine XDCAM and HDV footage.
I'd obviously do the editing in a project designed for XDCAM, as that's the higher quality footage,
and render the HDV clips in the XDCAM timeline...ending up with an XDCAM end product.
I'd use SONY'S XDCAM TRANSFER to get the clips into FCP.
My question concerns capturing the HDV footage in this scenario. I've never been able to get
the Log and Capture feature for HDV footage to work, unless I've created an HDV project and am capturing into that HDV project.
So, generally, I create an HDV project, open the log and capture utility which is now set to capture HDV, and then capture the footage. I then close that project and create a new project, designed for XDCAM footage. I use XDCAM Transfer to get the XDCAM footage into the project, and I import
the previously captured HDV footage into that browser and start editing, rendering the HDV in the XDCAM timeline.
My question...do I really have to open, what is essentially a "fake" HDV project just to capture that HDV footage? You don't seem to have the option of capturing HDV footage (out of a camera or HDV tape deck) directly into an XDCAM project. If I try to change the capture or audio video settings of the XDCAM project to HDV, you get messages saying you can't do it.
Is there something I'm missing or a more streamlined way of doing this?
Thanks in advance for any input.

No need to jump through these hoops. Just set yourself up with a universal Easy Setup that will handle both. Choose your regular XDCAM HD Easy Setup then open the Audio / Video Settings window and change the Capture Preset to "HDV" and the Device Control Preset to "HDV Firewire" ... then click the "Create Easy Setup" button and save it for recall whenever needed.
Regarding the overall workflow, I'd seriously question the idea of creating XDCAM HD masters. No real benefit to that unless you need to export to XDCAM HD. Much better would be export your final master as Apple ProRes 422.
Best
Andy

HDV tape as a unique file

is there a way to import an HDV tape as a unique file, instead of having all those hundreds of files, one for each time there was a recording ?

In the Log and Capture window, click the "Clip Settings" tab. There is a setting for "Create new clip on Start/Stop". Uncheck this box.
I'm guessing this might do the trick but I haven't been able to try it since I discovered it was there when importing HDV.

DV or HDV tapes?

Hi there,
I´m doing a video all in HDV shoot in HDV tapes and I got material from somebody else in a normal DV tape, this material was originally shot in DigiBeta. Does this print to tape from DigiBeta to normal DV takes away my high resolution? would it be better to print it in a HDV tape? (I don´t have a Deck and only can capture with my HDV camera)
Thanks
Javier

Well, if you're incorporating it into an HDV sequence, it would save an upconversion to HDV of the DigitBeta/DV material you have. Otherwise, you can just drop it into your HDV sequence with the other HDV clips and it'll render to HDV.
Neither format is inherently better-- HDV has more sheer resolution, but that is not necessarily a determination of quality. "Image quality" is more about the glass than anything else.

Premiere Pro CS4 does not import EX1 files longer than 1 hour

I had to record a long speech and used a Sony XDCAM HD EX1 camera with a 32 Gb and a 16 Gb SXS cards. The speaker paused after 1h 26 min. I stopped the recording and waited until the green light that allows recording the segment came on. Later I recored smaller segments.
I copied all the recorded files to the PC hard disk ( Intel Quad Core 2.4 Ghz with 3.25 GB RAM with XP Proofessional SP3).
I used Sony Clip browser to watch the clips and all of them were perfect. Then I opened premiere Pro CS4 4.21 and I wanted to import this 27 GB file. In the media browser appeared only one mp4 file. All the short ones where imported normally but the big one freezed premiere and the only way to close premiere was with the windows task manager.
I checked again in the Sony XDCAM clip browser version 2.6 and you can see it perfectly. There was a detail, though: in the lower part of the preview window I saw 6 marks. When I checked the file in the disk, I found that the 27 Gb file was separated in 7 parts. Each of them was 3.51 Gb and the last one 2.5 Gb. That means that the file was cut in pieces that were less than 4Gb supposed max file lenght.
I tried many ways to import and no result. The I used the "export " of the sony clip browser. There is one choice that is "MXF for XDCAM HD". When I chose this item another panel appeared and showed a 1440 X 180 59.94i 25Mbps choice. I took it and after some time it created the 27 Gb file that I could import it normally with 4 audio tracks. But there is a drawback a "media concept" logo appeared to remeber to "buy" the program.
Anyhow, the question is: How can I import to Premiere CS4 a MP4 file created by a Sony EX1 HD camera whose lenght is more that 1 hour long ?
Thanks
Wolfgang

I think is the contrary because the clip browser copies all the foleders needed. I got this opinion from another forum that copies into Final Cut:
"My workflow is to create a hard drive folder for the project, then use Clip Browser to import the clips from the card. I review the clips, labelling them, adding logging notes, setting the status and putting in essence marks as needed (the number of characters available for the essence mark description is fairly limited). I then open FCP, create and save a new project then call up XDCAM Transfer. I select the project folder and it will pull in all the clips. I then filter for OK status, occasionally create subclips then import. The clips come over to the bin, with their names and with the essence marks converted to markers. Obviously there are backups taken - I've not mentioned them."

Importing video clips in AVCHD (Lite) into Aperture vs iMovie

I'm trying to figure out which application I should use for importing and storing video clips shot on my Panasonic DMC-ZS7 camera. This camera can shoot in AVCHD (Lite) or in Motion JPEG. I use the AVCHD (Lite) format to shoot the videos with this camera.
The two application options I currently have for importing video clips from this camera are:
a. Aperture 3.5.1 (I'm not using iPhoto since I have Aperture).
b. iMovie 10.0.1 (I'm not using Final Cut Pro)
When I first got this camera, Aperture 3 did not support the AVCHD Lite codec. Back then, iMovie could import video clips shot in AVCHD Lite, but it had to transcode the AVCHD video clips into AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec). Some time later, one of the Aperture 3 updates made it possible to import AVCHD Lite into Aperture (without having to transode into an intermediate codec), so we started importing our video clips shot in AVCHD Lite (together with our photos shot by the same camera) directly into Aperture.
iMovie 10 released in 2013 supports importing video clips shot in AVCHD Lite without having to transode them to AIC for storing these video clips in iMovie. So, now we have a dilemma that we need help with. Which application should we use going forward for importing video clips from this camera?
When I look at the metadata for the imported videos in Aperture, I see that the format of the imported video clips is listed as H.264. However, I can't seem to be able to find any information about the format in which iMovie stores imported videos. I can "Reveal in Finder" a video that I import into iMovie, and I see the size of the file and the .mov extension assigned to the file. With video files, the extension does not always determine the codec of the file, but in my non-expert opinion, the .mov extension is not H.264; I may be totally wrong here, though. What I have noticed, though, is that a video clip imported into iMovie has the file size that is about 10% larger than the same video clip imported into Aperture.
Therefore, I have three questions:
1. What format is a video clip (shot in AVCHD Lite) stored in Aperture 3.5.1 and in iMovie 10.0.1
2. Which format (the one used by Aperture or the one used in iMovie) is better suited for transoding AVCHD videos into? The balance of the quality and file size is the main consideration for us.
3. Which applications would you personally prefer using for importing video clips to and why?
I do want to use some of these video clips to make home videos in the future, utillizing iMovie. However, it seems I can still store the raw footage in Aperture and access this raw footage from iMovie to be able to create an iMovie project and a final home video. One of the concerns is that if we keep importing our video clips into Aperture, the Aperture library could grow beyond the size that Aperture can support and we may end up losing our photos due to the database corruption. Is this a real risk?
Thank you!

I had the same question recently. Go to the right of this box and a little above, into the Search Discussions window. Type in this: Is MPEG2 the answer
You will find my question, and the great answers I got. Follow those directions and you will be all set!

URLClassLoader slower than system loader

I'm subclassing URLClassLoader to load jar files on the local file system. I noticed that URLClassLoader loads about 30% slower than placing the jar files on the system class path. In my app, class loading performance in very important -even though it is just a one time hit.
I suspect the URLClassLoader (which I believe is implemented mostly in Java on Sun's VM) is not leveraging the many performance optimziations that the system loader enjoys (which is probably implemented in native code).
I also experience the same performance issue if I try to do jar loading myself using Java ZipFile i/o.
Comments?

well there is quite more overhead involved - loading from classpath of course is the most optimized one.

Importing MPEG4 clips slower than HDV tape.

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for