Recording to Mac Pro

1. Stefan Wilson
   Member

   

    My church is in the process of starting to record and edit sermon video to post to our website via vimeo. We are recording in 1080p with a camera owned by one of our members. Moving video from the camera to the Mac via tapes takes FOREVER due to there being just under an hr of raw 1080p footage. We would like to record straight to the hard disk, but are not too sure how to go about this. We will be using Final Cut X soon to edit and upload the film to Vimeo. Really, what I am trying to find out is:

   What is the best way to get the film from the camera to the hard drive while maintaining quality? Do we just need to suck up the transfer time that comes along with capturing from the tape?

   Posted 3 months ago #

2. Kenkyusha
   Member

   

   Thankfully, there are alternatives- if you are willing to shoot to an intermediate form, something like the Atomos Ninja/Samurai (depending on whether it is HDMI or HD-SDI out of the camera) or a Blackmagic Hyperdeck might do the trick.  Other than that, your options are to get a card (like the Blackmagic Intensity) that will allow HD ingest... that or plan to get caught-up on some reading, while you wait.

   Posted 3 months ago #

3. Rob Grauert
   Post Production Host

   

   I wouldn't recommend FCP X. If you're using FCP7, stick with that.

   Ideally you want to use an I/O card, such as an AJA Kona card or BlackMagic card. The model you purchase is dependent on your camera's output options. If you recorded 1080p, then it's like your camera has an HDMI output. In that case, I'd go with the BlackMagic Intensity Pro. But without more information, it's hard to guide you to which product will be best.

   Ideally it would be a good idea to record to a RAID. It will be able to handled the steady stream of data better than a single hard drive, especially for such a long period of time.

   Once you have your camera connected to the I/O card and your RAID connected to your computer, use Log and Capture to capture in FCP to capture live video directly to the RAID. Once the shoot concludes, take the resulting clip into Compressor to encode for Vimeo.

   Rob Grauert, Jr
   http://www.robgrauert.com
   http://command-r.tumblr.com

   Posted 3 months ago #

4. Rob Grauert
   Post Production Host

   

   If you don't want to purchase an I/O card, firewire will work if your camera has a firewire connection.

   Posted 3 months ago #

5. Stefan Wilson
   Member

   

   Good to know in regards to hardware. What about Adobe Premier with OnLocation? What is everyone's thoughts on using that instead? The church doesn't have anything right now. FCX was the most cost-effective option, but with non-profit pricing, Adobe isn't much more.

   Posted 3 months ago #

6. Don
   Member

   

   if your mac is recent and the camera has firewire you can film and capture simultaneously by tethering the camera... I do this often with my Hdr Hc1 and MBP.

   Imovie, and Quicktime will both capture flawlessly to the internal or an external firewire drive. Try it.

    

   keep the tape as a back-up.

   Posted 3 months ago #

7. Stefan Wilson
   Member

   

   Here is the dilema...

   My church uses a Mac Pro to run Powerpoint, Pro-Presenter, and Cakewalk all at the same time. This leaves the tech running that mac with a lot of things to juggle at once. Since we are wanting to record sermons straight to disk as well, this would add yet another task to the tech's plate and due to everything else he has to do, would likely result in a few mistakes along the way since we are all human and can get overwhelmed. Also, when we do a live feed in Pro-presenter, we cannot simultaneously capture into Final Cut, which makes it pretty much pointless to try. We have a 2nd camera, but I'm not sure if we can just run that one into the 2nd firewire port and dedicate each camera to it's respective program.

   So... what would you guys do to avoid issues with doing all of this on one computer? Would you purchase a 2nd computer? Tell the tech to suck it up and get over it (lol)? Just record to tape and transfer it to disk afterward to avoid any issues?

   Posted 3 months ago #

8. efiebke
   Member

   

   What make/model of video camera are you using?  If they have a Firewire port out, there might be an alternate solution to recording directly to a computer.  Consider using an external video recording device like an FS-H200 Pro made by Focus Enhancements. If the video camera is capable of recording to an external device such as this, all one would have to do is connect the two via the appropriate Firewire cable, configure the two to "communicate" with each other and record as one would normally do.  To get the recorded video onto the computer, one simply connects the device like the FS-H200 Pro to the computer and treat it like an external hard disk drive. . . which it is, basically.

   Here's a link to the FS-H200 Pro.  There are others like it.  I've been using products from Focus Enhancements for a number of years, now.  It, and other external video recording devices like it, is a fine choice to capture video.

   http://www.focusinfo.com/fsh200pro.asp

   Hope that this is helpful. :)

   Posted 3 months ago #

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