Filmcutr

A project that started in 1993, on Hi-8, has recently taken up again. At the time I made a short 11-minute film aboutCharles Walker Hazzard a fine art sculptor, but in 2005 I shot some 12 hours on DV. An unfunded project, the second time my camera was a Panasonic AG-DVX100, a great standard definition (SD) camera producing wonderful pictures in the right hands.

After a 2-year hiatus filming has started again, but now, of course, we’re in an High-Definition (HD) world. The film is intended for film festivals and to be offered in a completed state to broadcasters, so we’re shooting on the best HD we can get hold of, a Panasonic HVX-200 using P2 to record DVCProHD.

The question is whether the DV (and perhaps even the Hi-8) footage can be blown up satisfactorily and used in the film in any capacity other than as archive?

Using the Kona3 card and an SDI-equipped deck I intend to find out. My hardware up-conversion or up-res will be done by the Kona3 card in real-time. The plan is to re-digitise all the original footage in DVCProHD – not the highest HD standard because it’s 1440×1080 but an excellent choice for a self-funded project.

The Kona3 card is compatible with my G5 Power Mac. One of the last G5s, the 3.0GHz Quad core version, it takes PCI-e cards. From
Salon Rentals Limited
 in West London I rented the Kona3, with breakout box (unused in the end), a Sony HVR1500 deck with SDI output and a Keyspan serial-USB converter. 

SDI means that with one cable I can get the highest quality and audio out of the DV and into the Kona card. The Kona 3 card is going to do the conversion for me. So how do I set it up?

Let’s start with the hardware. I couldn’t get a signal through the breakout box but rather than waste time connected instead the 4-way cable supplied. This has special miniature connections that push-click onto the card at one end and onto SDI connections on the deck.

The Keyspan USA-28x serial-USB converter controls the deck by carrying Timecode from the RS-422 connector on the HVR-1500 into a USB connection on the Mac.A device control preset will need to be set up in FCP; see later.

WARNING: the cables are labelled in a way that I think is counter-intuitive. The label that says SDI IN connects to SDI OUT, whereas I would have expected the label on the cable to tell me to connect that IN-labelled connection to the IN connector. Apparently Kona changed how they do things a few years ago and I’m not the only one who tried it “the wrong way” first. 

Salon told me that the v.2 control panel on the supplied CD would need to be updated via the web. I tried v.6, but suspect it is only compatible with an Intel Mac. It didn’t work for me, so I tried v.5 (same problem). VERSION 4 works http://www.aja.com/html/support_kona3_swd_arc.html.

FCP controls the Kona 3 Control Panel, which can be frustrating as the settings you’ve put in the control panel change when you open the Log and Capture window in FCP (unless you’ve set it up correctly). Once set up properly it should look like this (note: you can connect SDI In 1 or SDI In 2 with equal results):

So how do you get it there?

First, set up your FCP project using AV setup. I wanted to work in 1080p but had to settle for 1080i. I tried various ways to take in 1080p: I suspect the Kona will do it but FCP won’t? Or I had something incorrectly set up… Please comment if you have an answer.

The capture set up looks like this:

The device control set up looks like this:

In your Easy Setups you should see this:

I experimented using test footage with various numbers for the capture and playback offset but couldn’t see any difference. It always seemed 1-frame behind the same footage captured in SD using Firewire. Please comment if you can clarify this.

Results so far look surprisingly good. I’ve noticed more grain, but later in my work-flow I’ll test a plug-in to reduce noise. One annoying and embarassing discovery is that somehow a couple of rolls of tape were shot on LP; I don’t understand how, but it might explain why I had trouble with sound-sync originally. The good thing about my setup is that I can just dupe from the DVX100 camera to the HVR1500 and re-originate that footage. I’ll let you know shortly.