Multiclip multicam question

Shot an event with 2 dvcams and 1 hdv cam. Want to synch and edit using multicam.

Can multicam (in fcp 6) handle different formats? Or will I need to convert my hdv to ntsc first?

If I need to convert, I presume I just stick my hdv cam stuff into an ntsc timeline, size to fill the frame (and clip the left/right sides of the original 16x9 frame) and then render out quicktime ntsc. Is that right?

Many thanks.

Multicam still requires the same frame size, it might let you mix diff flavors of codecs tho, not sure about that.

What you need to do is re-capture your footage from the camera as downconverted NTSC, Cropped or Squeezed depending on your preference. It is much much much better than converting your HDV to NTSC in FCP, it will take forever to render...

Additionally you can always recapture at HDV later if you want...

Thanks. The problem I'm having is that when I capture the HDV downconverting from camera, it captures it as letterboxed or as 16x9, at 720 wide but with black bars top and bottom. So I can't capture (from my Canon A1) where it crops the sides and keeps the full 480, so I think I'm stuck capturing hdv and then rendering it to ntsc using FCP, unfortunately. That is going to add a huge amount of time just in that step, but don't see a way around it.

Quote

when I capture the HDV downconverting from camera, it captures it as letterboxed or as 16x9, at 720 wide but with black bars top and bottom.

what HDV cam is this?
there would most likely be a menu setting in there to control this


nick

Yes if it is something like a Sony Z1U you should simply use the onboard downconversion built into the camera. It's simple. It works and it's fast.

This is the Canon A1 camera, and it seems in another forum on the A1 where I asked this, that it doesn't have this option. It has downconversion but since I shot in 16x9, the only way it downconverts is the full frame, either adding letterboxing, or else giving it to me 16x9 w/out letterboxing, but where the width of the frame is 720 so it's not high enough.

In hindsight I should have shot in SD at 4:3 ratio. Live and learn... Got 15 hours of rendering from HDV to to the right format, I guess.

or one hour capture,
and the less than one hour export with conversion to anamorphic.

consider this an offline, then re-cap the HDV.
or as you've already got it on line, simply re-connect.


nick