Our reseller warned against onlining in DVCPRO HD as it was primarily an aquisition format and did not hold up well with a lot of fx. I'm not sure I believe this, or that it is that big of a deal. Has anyone else noticed this?

I’m cutting my fist HD doc right now on MC 3.0, in full rez DVCPro100 shot with a HDX900 camera. I’m cutting 4 streams of video and 5 streams of audio no Mojo DX, 37 minutes in, lots of FX’s and so far everything is working fine, because of my inexperience in editing HD I could be wrong but I have to say MC3.0 has been working great, best product since I started using Avid software (Xpress DV 3.5) I’m also sort of puzzled as to why an Avid reseller would say something like that, hopefully someone with more experience on this forum will chime in and enlighten both of us.

Thanks for the feed back. That's what I suspected. No mystery why a reseller would say that as they're hoping we'll buy a MOJO DX or, even better, a Nitris DX.

I did a feature-length drama some time back that was originated on the HVX202-EN at 1080/25p.  There was a significant amount of effects work both within Avid and externally using After Effects.  I kept all unmodified footage as DVCpro HD and transcoded all effects footage to DNxHD 185.  The finished cut was imported into Symphony for a final grade and for playout to a variety of HD and SD distribution media.

It was next to impossible to pick the difference between the two media formats when viewing the HD master as output by Symphony.

jwrl - Did you output via firewire to a DVCPro deck? I'm trying to output DVCPro captured w/MC but keep getting a hardware error on output. This only happens when the deck is connected however.

 I haven't yet done an output with my current project but I did do a test output via firewire with some footage after I captured everything and it worked fine. I rented a Panasonic AJ 1400 deck, the internal settings on the deck we set to HD. I also was told by the rental place that while the 1400 deck will play and record DVCPRO 25, 50 and 100 it will not down convert from HD to SD. I haven't had a chance to confirm that yet. If you are using the 1400 deck are your internal settings, (menu settings) in the deck set to HD?

Indeed they are. Did you start from the factory default or was there some other setting you changed? I get an image when the play head is parked but as soon as I get hit play the deck causes a flamethrower error.

 If you are using a 1400 deck did you get the manual with it? In the back of the book there are menu tables, I believe the ones for switching the deck from SD to HD are in the 900's but I'm not sure about that.

 Also check your firewire settings on the deck, I know when I got the deck from the rental company, I had to go through the manual more then once in order to get the proper setup.

Red Ochre:

jwrl - Did you output via firewire to a DVCPro deck?

No.  I would probably have tried a direct playout from MC rather than Symphony if I was going back to the DVCpro HD codec.