camera as pass through for HD monitor

[peter]

I'm using a HVR V1 and Final cut pro. I'm wondering if the camera has an option to allow me to go from my timeline, through the camera and preview my work on a HD monitor. I know I can simply go from my DVI port on the mac to the PC in on the monitor and I'll be able to mirror my desktop ( done that ) but that gives me a poor representation of what I've got on my timeline.
When I used to work with a canon mv something I simply connected it via FW to my mac, then via the component out on the camera to a broadcast monitor. But I'm getting stumped with the manual on this camera and wonder if it's just me being confused or can the HVR V1 not allow this kind of pass
through

[Stephan]

"Canon mv something...": I understand this was a DV camcorder (standard def)? I did that too, cheaper-style, with a Sony DV camcorder: standard def DV out on the firewire port, then pass-through to the camcorder's S-Video output on to a regular TV set. Indeed this was absolutely great to get realistic previews. There were 2 key points to consider through:

• The NLE software's ability to output SD DV video on the FW port from the timeline (real-time),
• The camcorder's capacity for pass-through.

Where the plot thickens here, is that HDV is MPEG2 (long-GOP codec) so you're actually also asking FCP to reencode HDV MPEG2 on the fly out. I never tried all that personally with HDV (*), but before you dive into camcorder pass-through considerations, have you checked whether FCP supports HDV timeline previews on the firewire port?


(*) The reason being that, for my purposes, it is convenient enough for me to render temporary HDV previews onto a USB key, tranfer the file to my PS3, and view it from there on a full HD TV.

[peter]

Thanks for that, yes you raise a good question, HDV out via FW. But I import my HDV, transcoded to Apple pro res, so my timeline is HDV resolution and AR but not mpeg2, so theoretically I should be able to cobble something together :-). I don't know how you make your process work for you, would drive me nuts, making little qt exports and waiting for it then waiting for them to copy to USB stick. Can't see that being practical for me. My work usually is 1 1/2 to 2 hrs long so one little sample wouldn't work, several samples might but it's a lot of exporting and copying.
Peter

[Stephan]

I import my HDV, transcoded to Apple pro res, so my timeline is HDV resolution and AR but not mpeg2, so theoretically I should be able to cobble something together :-)

But your camcorder, even IF it supports HDV pass-through, will only understand HDV MPEG2 anyway over Firewire. So you're still asking FCP to fully reencode MPEG2 on the fly, which isn't easy matter.

PS: About my process, I don't have constraints like you may have probably (it's a hobby to me). My computer monitor is profiled with a hardware probe, so it's reasonably okay for me to check exposure / colors and do color correction on it. And I don't need to check focus on the raw materials (like some shots would be in focus, others out of focus), I just grab them and the full HD screen is only for final check. 5-10 minutes of edited footage at a time, the full round-time for exporting / copying is maybe 15-20 min.

[peter]

But your camcorder, even IF it supports HDV pass-through, will only understand HDV MPEG2 anyway over Firewire. So you're still asking FCP to fully reencode MPEG2 on the fly, which isn't easy matter.

Yes, a good point and that probably puts the lid on it.
Peter

[peter]

Just an update on this, don't know why I didn't think of it before, I connected a DVI to HDMI cable from my mac to my HDTV and am previewing FCP from my timeline to my HDTV.
Peter

[Stephan]

Good to hear! I thought you had ruled that out already (your 1st post as you said you connected DVI out to your HD monitor...) Are you saying it's easier with your HDTV compared to your HD monitor - how come?

How does it work on a Mac, how good does it look? On a PC (I have a PC), there are all sorts of complexities that made me back away from that option for the moment (out of laziness), like:
- Choice of full desktop cloning vs. secondary monitor: does the NLE support timeline preview on secondary monitor,
- Full pixels 1920x1080 vs. cropped & scaled up (detailed settings of graphics adapter),
- Ability to sync external display @ 50Hz for us European folks,
- Preservation of color space & gamma,
- ...

(and also, I don't have enough HDMI inputs on my TV)

[peter]

Well it was as simple as plug and play on a mac but a little tweaking with Final Cut Pro and monitor resolutions on the HDTV. I also had to do a little tweaking on the TVs default menu settings which were at max sharpness and resolution and did bad things to my footage. I hooked my HVR V1E up to the TV and filmed my flowers and my wife live to the TV and calibrated the colour, sharpness etc then hooked it back up to the mac and I haven't looked back. It makes sense as my products are destined for dvd or blu ray on HDTVs or web; I'm not broadcasting anything so all this stuff about legal broadcast values being essential is redundant for me.

[Stephan]

Just FYI, there's one truly fantastic opportunity that arises when you connect your HDTV directly to your computer (and that's maybe why I'd do that myself too someday): perfect color profiling through a hardware probe.

Manual color adjustments, as you did on your TV, are only as good as your eyes were in that particular moment, also depending on incoming light that influences how you perceive colors (indoors vs. outdoors, incandescent vs. fluorescent, mid-day vs. evening, and so on). Alternatively, having a mainstream operating system directly driving your TV (instead of a blu-ray player or PS3 or multimedia hard disk) lets you use all color profiling solutions that require either MacOS or Windows - in theory.

I don't know if you've ever used one of those, what they do is analyse how your display behaves against a predefined set of color patterns, and then build a custom color profile (integrated into the OS) that will counteract all residual color inaccuracies in your display. You can even profile several distinct displays (each with their own color imperfections), and they all look the same afterwards: 2 displays on the same computer, or on distinct computers, with exact same color rendition. Neat.

And color profiling also includes fixing that gamma curve that often eludes manual adjustments, helping you see shadow areas as they truly are (instead of black spots with no detail). Or the other way round.

I have an i1Display 2. Very nice, relatively affordable (at this price point I'd call it a no-brainer for videographers). It's a colorimeter, i.e. it mesures colors through 3 distinct primary filters. There's also the newer, more expensive, more sophisticated ColorMunki.

I'm very happy with the i1Display 2, I wouldn't have dared doing color correction without making sure my display colors were accurate beforehand. I've never tested using those things on a secondary display or HDTV, so take this with a grain of salt. But if at any point in time you would like to be sure that your whole color chain lets you preview accurate colors from your timeline, and if you can spare the expense, that would be a fantastic setup to test.

Hope this helps.

[peter]

Yep it's all worth considering, although realistically, colour profiling on a TV to such a technical level is probably unnecessary. It's not like print where there is an exact expectation in the print industry for a printed product. There as many colour profiles for TVs as there are tv models x the user preferences of the millions of people who buy them x the lighting characteristics of individual living rooms ??
peter