FCPX won't import video from analog -> digital conversion source

Do you mean you are in Alice Springs? I consider Alice Springs approximately the geographic center of Australia. I have been there three times, to fly detectors to nearly the top of the atmosphere. I have a lot of memories there and and I am hoping that may be one of my Hi8 tapes has some footage from those days.

I checked it and FCPX imported the short Hi8 video I recorded. However, it would not archive it. This means there will be a lot of large imports.

I also just checked and FCPX is not giving me the option, import - leaving files in place. I usually do that with Aperture but it seems FCPX is not letting me do this. It saved another copy of the video file after the import inside FPCX Events Folder. If I cannot figure out how to do this I can spend huge amount of disk space as you pointed out. May be I leave the QT X videos in a QT X archive folder on a separate disk and import them into FCPX only when I need to make a project. Are there any other way to do this, please?

I have one more way of doing this that I just thought of, which is to archive the GV-D800 iLink/FireWire Output onto DVDs using Sony VRD-MC10 DVD recorder or the other BlueRay BD recorder. Then import or Archive those DVDs into FCPX. This does not sound a good solution. Do you have any experience with these DVD recorders and would you recommend this solution, please?

Thank you for pointing out the quality options. I checked and QT X 10.3 has only two quality options High and Maximum. I digitized again using the maximum quality selection. The image may be slightly better for the maximum quality setting (hard to tell) but the file size difference is huge, 114 MB file became 1.03 GB. The format for the high quality is H264 which is also changed to Apple ProRes 4444 in Max resolution. Do you know if maximum quality will be helpful, please? Will it help the image quality displayed on large size TVs? Will it worth the extra storage space?

Are there other adjustments, please? If there are, can you tell me where they are located in QT X, please?

Another question is that GV-D800 has two audio modes, 12 bit and 16 bit. Which one would you recommend me to use, please?

Thank you very much,

Tumay

You've got excellent advice on this thread.

Just one brief comment: I would not not be too quick to dismiss the QT 7 capture solution out of concerns about color accuracy before testing that and judging for yourself. Many users have used 7 over the years with satisfactory results.

Russ

I agree. I plan to test QT 7 recording of the same short video and try to compare the results with QT X 10.3. Do you know if QT 7 is still compatible with the latest MacOS systems Mavericks and Yosemite, please?

Thank you,

Tumay

Replying to Tom Wolsky.

You have excellent information which made me decide to use QTX.

You say “THere is no change in importing tape in the updated version. Archiving in FCP will only be available in playback from DV tape or a specific conversion box." I am not clear if I am understanding you right. Can you please explain? For example, what kind of change in updated version of what, please? Also what kind and model conversion box, please? I think these sentences are important and if you could expand on them it will be very helpful for us trying to find the best way to get our Hi8 tapes digitized before they decay away.

Thank you,

Tumay

Tumay wrote:

. Do you know if QT 7 is still compatible with the latest MacOS systems Mavericks and Yosemite, please?

Thank you,

Tumay

Yes. Have run QT 7 on both OS without issues.

Russ

You said you were using 10.0.9 and asked if the recent version would improve your situation. I simply meant that there has been no change to the importing from tape function. Sorry for any confusion.

I believe the Canopus/Grass Valley ADVC110 (something like that) is the only box that works properly with FCP convert from tape to DV. What's more commonly done is to dub the analog tape to DV tape and to capture from that.

Yes, Alice Springs.

Regards Hi-8, in it's day it was considered pretty good quality BUT compared to todays HD cameras it is fairly tired.

ProRes 4444 will just eat drive space for no discernable difference. Not suggested by me.

DV will require around 25 gig per hour drive space.

Whether you copyto DV tape or use a Canopus box the drive space used eill be the same.

Copying to DVD is a quality loss method. Not recommended.

I've used QT X and QT 7 pro and both are fine.

I'd go the DV copy method simply because it's simple and you can preserve those aging Hi-8 tapes.

Al

Sorry for being so late to report my progress. I got side tracked due to tax deadline and other issues. However, I did a lot of work and I would like to report to you my results. The story is very long but I will shorten it as much as I can so that I do not take too much of your time.

To do the digitization of my Hi8 tapes I set up a MacBook Pro with Yosemite 10.10.3 with a 2TB external drive and I installed FCPX, Premiere CS6, New iMovie, iMovie HD 6, Debut, QT 7 and QT X. Except FCPX and New iMovie all the other software can capture Hi8 Tapes with no time code run on a GV-D800 through the iLink/Firewire output. They all produce .mov files except iMovie HD which produces .dv file and it needs to be converted to .mov to import into FCPX. (Note: I also tried to test Toast 12 but could not get it capture Hi8 video. May be there is a way but I doubt it will be as effective as the other software because it does not seem to be setup to do conversion.)

I found out the following results after I imported the digitized .mov files of a promotional video of a proposal I wrote in 1997 into FCPX and tested the resultant clips. This Hi8 tape is about 2.1 minutes long and has moving computerized images with straight sides and scrolling writings up the screen. I found this tape was much easier to see the differences between the digitizations then a normal video of scenery and people.

Premiere CS6: Produced 487MB file. It played well when it was in Premiere but after I imported it into FCPX the edges got jagged and the scrolling text was jumpy. I think Premiere is good if its digitized video is used in Premiere. I do not know why it does not play good when imported into FCPX.

iMovie HD needs a trick to run in Yosemite. If interested I can explain. iMovie HD‘s .dv file after conversion into .mov was already not good and I did not import it into FCPX. iMovie HD .dv output may work well if imported into the new iMovie but I did not check this yet.

Debut would give you nearly any format you want. It produced a 51MB .mov file. Therefore, it was doing conversion from its own format to .mov. Although played not too bad in Debut, it also showed worse results than the Premiere after imported into FCPX. I think its conversion into a different format is costing quality, but its so many types of vide conversion capability is interesting.

QT 7 has two formats, Best Quality and Device Native. Best quality produced a 19.7 MB file and the Device Native (I think it is the raw file) 509MB file. Native was clearly better then the best quality when played in QT7 which is deemed for online sharing. Native was very good when played in QT7. After importing them into FCPX both produced jagged edges and jumping or stretching out in the scrolling text. Native was still better than the above files. I am not sure why QT 7 Native output is not working well when converted into FCPX. If it did it would have been my choice as the output file is half the size to the QT X Max below. If any ideas whether I can improve the import into FCPX please inform me. Unfortunately I checked but could not find much control over how FCPX imports files. In contrast, Premiere have different import choices one can select.

QTX or QT10.4 has only two formats High Quality and Max Quality. High quality produced a 69MB file and the Max (deemed to be Apple Pro Resolution 4444) produced a 978MB file. They played well in QT X but I could see the High Quality was slightly lower resolution than the Max. But the difference was barely noticeable. When I imported them into FCPX, Max played nearly as good if not equal to when played in QT X. The high quality version also played smoothly but the resolution looked more noticeably lower when imported and played in FCPX. Looks like QT 10.4 gave me the best results so far. I purchased a G-Tech 2TB drive and planning to start digitizing about 30 Hi8 family tapes soon.

NOTE: I do not know how big the files are after importing them into FCPX because I cannot find where the individual files are in the latest version of FCPX. It shows one folder about 12 GB size.

I cannot do this conversion again and, therefore, I need to set up everything optimum before I start digitization. I would appreciate your input please if I did the tests right. Please correct me.

Shall I use 12 bit or 16 bit Audio conversion settable on the GV-D800, please. Any other advice will be most welcome.

I would also appreciate your opinion and ideas if I should upscale or up convert the resultant files to play on HD TVs, please.

Thank you very much for all your help,

Tumay

SSounds like you're video is interlaced. Can't comment without details of the media and seeing a screen shot.

FCP will import .dv.

USe 16-bit never 12-bit.

DO not upconvert the video.

Excellent and very useful information. Thank you.

You are right. I think I read somewhere that most, if not all Hi8 recordings are interlaced. I saw that there are some software available that can deinterlace such video. Do you think this is a good idea to do, please? If yes, which software would you recommend me to use.

I read that some people say it helped their digitization quality if they cleaned the head/drum of their VCR player using the Sony Dry Cleaning Tape. I have a good working but used GV-D800. What is your experience, please? Shall I clean the head/drum using a Sony cleaning tape? If you recommend this, how often should I do this, please?

During my recording, I noticed that the Hi8 tape cassette got quite warm to touch. I know heat is not good for tape recordings. Is it a good idea to use a fan and blow air onto the GV-D800 to attempt to cool it down while it is playing and digitizing a tape, please? I would appreciate your advice.

Thank you all very much for your kind help,

Tumay

Cleaning tape path and heads should only be performed on a "need to" basis.

If it plays OK its to best to leave it alone, tape cleaning with the dry tapes is like using fine sand paper.

Much better to use a professional service every 20 or 30 hours use.

Regards the heat:

You should not need a fan if all is well, expect some warmth.

You do seem to be describing something outside of normal Operating temperature.

Another good reason to get your deck cleaned by a pro and accessed.

Al

I have had the same frustrating experience trying to digitize some old family Hi-8 videos via a Sony HDV deck. The only workaround I could find was to use FCP7 for the capture and then import the .mov files into FCPX. I could have simply completed the edits in FCP7, but I now find FCPX to be so much faster and easier to use, not to mention the speed of rendering and final output. This is a huge oversight by Apple IMHO and something they should address in a future version.

Use Quicktime X to capture.

Al