Sony M10U won't playback HDV Video from timeline

I'm running FCP 6.0.5 on a 2 GHZ G5 tower with 3.5 GB of ram. The video card is and ATI Radeon 9600.

For the past couple years I've been working in HDV projects without a proper playback monitor. I've just been using the Digital Cinema Desktop Preview function. But I recently purchased an HD LG television and am trying to hook it up as my HD preview monitor.

For some reason I can't get a HD signal from my sequences through my M10U deck. FCP recognizes the deck and I can see the HD playback options in the "Video Playback" sub menu under "View" but they are grayed out and not selectable. It will however playback the sequence if I select 720x480. (although it looks awful due to some extreme interlacing issue) The M10U is set to HDV 1080i 60i for playback and capture.

I keep thinking its just some dumb check box or setting that I just haven't got right but everything looks good to me.

Sequence setting is HDV
Deck Control is Sony HDV Firewire
Video Playback is HDV

Basically I just used the HDV 1080i preset from the Easy Setup to configure everything. And of course I've already tried restarting, trashing prefs, unplugging, replugging, powering down, disconnecting all power for 15mins, then restarting. Still no luck. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks,

Ryan

You can't stream HDV out via FW like you can DV. On fast enough computers FCP 6 will down convert an HDV signal into DV on the fly and that can be streamed out via FW, but then you are monitoring an SD image not an HD on. You'll need an I/O device from Matrox, Blackmagic, AJA, etc., if you want to monitor your HDV on an external display.


-A

You know I kind of guessed that might be the problem but then I thought it couldn't be since HDV has the same bit rate as DV, 25mbps. It seems stupid to get an AJA box to only send out 25mbps signal. I guess I can just get a dvi cable and hook up the TV as another monitor out from the computer. Thanks for the info.

Ryan

It's not a bit rate problem it's a codec problem. The GOP compression of HDV prevents the streaming of an edited timeline because the "cadence" of the I-frames is not correct and can't be done in real-time using todays computers. If you've ever recorded back to HDV and suffered thru the long "reconform" progress bar that's FCP putting all the I-frames in all the right places so that the deck can understand the HDV signal coming into it over FW.


-A

Just to expand on that...but Andrew did answer properly.

#25 HDV external Monitor Viewing

Shane's Stock Answer #25 - HDV external Monitor Viewing

To view HDV on an external monitor you are going to need to purchase a capture card, like the ones Decklink (www.decklink.com) or AJA (www.aja.com) offer. They will both play out HDV in real time. The catch is that you cannot view this on a regular TV or NTSC monitor. Since this is HD, an HD monitor will be needed. HOWEVER, both cards are capable of down converting the signal so that it can be displayed on an SD monitor. This won't be color accurate

HDV cannot be played out of FCP via Firewire because it's Long GOP structure is too taxing on your processors to spare the system resources needed to drive an external monitor.

The best option you have is the Matrox MXO...$1000. This coupled with an Apple 23" display gets you color correction quality...but, it isn't compatible with COLOR yet. www.matrox.com

And there are the Decklink Intensity and Intensity PRO cards as well.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]