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JVC GS-TD1 3D-Capable Camcorder

151K views 2K replies 69 participants last post by  kingkong90210 
#1 ·
#1,727 ·
That's very unfortunate. I'm going to take the sample clips I shot today to a Best Buy and see if they play in a Panasonic Viera 3DTV. Based on what I've seen so far, they probably won't.



The file structure of the new JVC mts clips looks very similar to what I'm used to with my older Canon HD cameras. It is what it is, obviously, but I'd still like to know why things work (or don't work) as they do. It won't make me like it anymore, but it will satisfy my curiosity.
 
#1,728 ·
I wonder if you can extract the firmware from the cam itself? Then let others install it on theirs? That would be good if someone had the Pro version, install the firmware off it and make normal ones Pros perhaps?

Doe's the Pro JVC version shooting at 24p go right into Vegas and work? Or do you still need to convert the files?
 
#1,729 ·
Also here is something interesting you guys may like that I thought of.

Connecting the JVC to any 3DTV with the HDMI lets you shoot and view what your shooting on the TV itself. Using the new SiliconMicro ST1080, you can actually connect the unit to the JVC and view all your shooting in real time through the HMD! It can run on a USB battery so it would work. I'll get mine in a few weeks and plan to use it just for that. Imagine, wearing the HMD and filming seeing all your shooting in perfect 3D and it has a 10% transparency so you can see what's going on around you also.
 
#1,730 ·
I took the SD card from my TD1 to a local Best Buy and its AVCHD 3D files played just fine on a Panasonic Viera 3DTV (via its built-in SD card reader). I started the first one and it played all of them seamlessly through to the end. Apparently, the AVCHD 3D standard is being adhered to now by the JVC camcorder. Which begs the question - what's different about it that its 3D files aren't recognized by Vegas or PowerDirector 10?


I doubt we'll have to wait too long for PowerDirector to be able to read the files, since Cyberlink's own PowerDVD 12 program plays them as easily as it plays the JVC mp4 files. Hopefully, Vegas will add support, too. It's bad for 3D if users have to deal with these incompatibilities. I hope they get it hammered out soon.
 
#1,731 ·
Bravia,


The Pro version of the JVC won't accept the TD1 firmware, or the other way around. I don't have the pro version, but I'm sure its mp4 files are just as alien to Vegas as the TD1's, either 60i or 24p. I always thought it was just the mp4 wrapper that was causing the problem before, but now we see that an AVDHD 3D mts file won't work, either. I'd still like to know exactly why.
 
#1,733 ·
Joe, are you now using the MVC to AVI converter to convert your JVC files to Vegas? If so, what have you found to be the best settings to get good quality and none of that horrible judder. I been shototing some fast scenes and often when cars drive by they look strange, studder and move weird. I would like it to look more smooth and natural.


I just installed Windows 7 Ultimate on my SSD drive and holy cow doe's it fly so fast. Just opening takes a second and rendering an hour video file takes less than 20 minutes!
 
#1,734 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by bravia3D /forum/post/22092478


Joe, are you now using the MVC to AVI converter to convert your JVC files to Vegas? If so, what have you found to be the best settings to get good quality and none of that horrible judder. I been shototing some fast scenes and often when cars drive by they look strange, studder and move weird. I would like it to look more smooth and natural.


I just installed Windows 7 Ultimate on my SSD drive and holy cow doe's it fly so fast. Just opening takes a second and rendering an hour video file takes less than 20 minutes!

MVCtoAVI creates files (using the Cineform or other codecs) that judder like crazy in Media Player and Premiere. It's as though the fields are reversed once the interlaced streams are extracted. A rep from Cineform (David Newman) told me that it was a result of information in the file not being read properly by Media Center, and that the files themselves are OK. I've found that once in Vegas, the motion appears normal. Not so in Premiere, where the judder remains through to the final output.


I'm hoping Edius 3D stays on schedule and is released in July. It's still by far my favorite way of editing the JVC TD1 clips. Fortunately, I can wait, since I don't have a deadline for my projects. That's the great thing about being your own boss and not having to answer to a client.



Right now, I'm having issues with Vegas 11 crashing - if I just watch the timeline.
I'm going to have to do a complete re-install of the program.
 
#1,735 ·
I mentioned this before, but a great program for people producing their own videos is by a company called Smartsound. It allows you to create custom length soundtracks, and the music is royalty free. They also have an extensive sound effects library with hundreds of different sounds. I just bought the complete set of 6 albums today for $100. I'll be making extensive use of them in future projects.
 
#1,737 ·
I am dying for Edius.. I miss it.. Was such a good program to edit the JVC files. Really hoping it's out in July and don't cost me an arm and a leg.
 
#1,739 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dennis Sladek  /t/1304996/jvc-gs-td1-3d-capable-camcorder/1710#post_22093962


I agree! Smartsound is a great product , I've been using it for many years on hundreds of projects.

Me, too, although it's not quite "hundreds" for me.
I've used it primarily to create custom length music tracks, but it also allows you to customize just about everything about the music, from which instruments are included, to tempo, to where beats fall. Unlike most canned music, which you're forced to edit your video to, Smartsound allows you to customize the music to fit the video. It's very flexible.
 
#1,740 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by bravia3D  /t/1304996/jvc-gs-td1-3d-capable-camcorder/1710#post_22104752


I am dying for Edius.. I miss it.. Was such a good program to edit the JVC files. Really hoping it's out in July and don't cost me an arm and a leg.

I think there's a good chance it will be out on time (and possibly a bit early, but that's just a rumor). During the preview period, I got used to the interface, although I still have a lot to learn. I like it better than Vegas' UI and in some ways even better than Premiere's. Even in preview, it was pretty stable, and the 3D tools were fast and easy to use. One of the best parts was the export options, which were extensive. Edius is an extremely powerful editor. The one thing I hope they include is the ability to burn Blu-ray 3D from the timeline, so I don't have to export the 3D video to Vegas for that final step. With my new system, it will be fast, but it's another annoying step.
 
#1,741 ·
 Here's a link to some Edius tutorials. The first set of 5 demos is really good, with plenty of practical examples of how to use Edius' tools to correct exposure, color balance, contrast, etc. The closer it gets to July, the more excited I become about Edius 3D.
 
#1,742 ·
 Here's a rough draft of the stereo base extender video I put together in Vegas the last couple of days. It still needs a lot of tweaking (and I want to shorten all the titles and reposition them), but you'll get the idea. I had to do more correction than I had hoped, because my framing was looser than I intended. Next time, I'll take a grease pencil.



This is a side by side AVCHD render. Each shot plays in 2D, then 3D, then the same framing is used for the stereo base extender shot. I'm working on this for Cyclopital3D, the company that makes the SBE. I'll be getting one for my Panasonic Z10000. I loaned the camera to Cyclopital3D to create a series of adapters for it. They'll have a SBE, closeup and filter adapters, wide angle adapter and custom hoods.


I like to sprinkle in SBE shots whenever I can, because the sense of depth is so much more powerful than the JVC alone. Whenever I can get about 12-15 feet between the closest subject and the camera, I try to use it.


Constructive criticism is always welcome.


BTW, I got Vegas working (still crashes too often, but it's usable). I found that if I import only a few clips at a time, it remains fairly stable. It still crashes randomly, so I have to save after every few actions, and I save the project under a new file name every 5 minutes or so. If the main file becomes corrupt, it's my experience that there's no resurrecting it. Finding a good auto save file can be hit or miss.
 
#1,743 ·
Here's a correction to my last post. I referenced "auto save" and Vegas, but Don has pointed out that Vegas doesn't have an auto save feature. Oops. I used it in Premiere, and PowerDirector has it, and I think Edius. Generally speaking,I don't trust it fully, so I save manually. But Vegas doesn't have the feature at all. It's no great loss, as long as you're careful to save.
 
#1,745 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Joseph Clark  /t/1304996/jvc-gs-td1-3d-capable-camcorder/1740#post_22138811


Here's a correction to my last post. I referenced "auto save" and Vegas, but Don has pointed out that Vegas doesn't have an auto save feature. Oops. I used it in Premiere, and PowerDirector has it, and I think Edius. Generally speaking,I don't trust it fully, so I save manually. But Vegas doesn't have the feature at all. It's no great loss, as long as you're careful to save.

Joe- Vegas has an auto save feature. It is always on and automatic. What I could not find is a way to adjust the frequency of the auto save function.


In Vegas, when you shut down you generate a *.bak file which is a veg file you can use by changing the BAK to VEG should your veg file become corrupted.


In addition, Vegas periodically saves a crash file that when you reload Vegas after it crashes it will ask if you want to start using a pre-saved veg version that seems to be only a few edit changes old. This file is saved in a different folder than the bak file. What I was looking for is a way to set an auto save after every edit so if Vegas crashes, you can restart with where you left off. I haven't found a way to control the auto save feature.
 
#1,747 ·
I'm done with Cineform. Here's my new workflow:


1. Select the JVC clips I'll use for a project and drop them into PowerDirector 10 in the order I intend to use them in Vegas.

2. Export the unedited video from PD10 as a 3D m2ts file (MVC) at 25mbps. The re-encoding is very, very fast.

3. Drop that file into Vegas 11 and split it up where the shots butt up against one another.

4. Edit normally in Vegas.


This workflow is tremendously faster, uses far less drive space and allows for near real time playback. At 25mbps, the clips still look really good, but they're a fraction of the Cineform size. It seems comparable to shooting with the JVC at 25mbps in the new AVCHD 2.0 mode - not a horrible loss of quality. These MVC files play in real time from the Vegas timeline on my system, at least until I add too many corrections. Vegas still crashed once while I was doing a simple project, but so far this workflow seems to be OK.


When Edius 3D is released, I won't have to jump through so many hoops, but unless I get more ugly surprises, this is the way I'm going to edit for the next few weeks. I should have done it in the first place, but I wanted to try to maintain maximum image quality. It wasn't worth the aggravation I experienced with the Cineform workflow.
 
#1,748 ·
So, this workflow works, but it's not ideal. Splitting the single file into parts in the Vegas timeline means that Vegas is actually only working with a single video file and it stutters and stalls. Here's the (PITA) solution.


PowerDirector does not have batch conversion capability for video files. (And their batch conversion program, MediaEspresso, doesn't do 3D files.) So, you need to convert the mp4 files indiviudally in PowerDirector.


Import all the files at once.

Add each file to the timeline one at a time.

Click "Produce."

Select 3D Tab>H.264/AVC

Under 3D output format: H.264 Multi-View Coding

Profile type: Default

Profile Name/Quality: AVCHD 1920x1080 60i/24mbps

Country/video format of disc: United States (NTSC)

Select an Output folder: and File Name.

Click "Start."


When that file is converted, go back to "Edit" and delete the file from the timeline.

Add the next file and repeat the procedure.


It's tedious, and I wish they allowed batch conversions. However, it goes relatively quickly for my small files. For long files, it's going to be a much more painstaking process. My clips usually last under 15 seconds. A 67MB mp4 becomes a 68MB m2ts. Using Cineform, that same 67MB mp4 would probably become a roughly 700MB Cineform intermediate. At that rate, the hard drive gets filled up really fast. The files appear to be of comparable quality, and don't look much different to me than their Cineform counterparts. Of course, multi-generational editing advantages of the Cineform files are gone, but I don't typically end up doing much of that anyway.


Even with the individual conversions, I still prefer this workflow to Cineform, and it seems far less buggy. Until Edius hits the street, this is my workflow.
 
#1,749 ·
BTW, with my Intel 3930 system, this conversion from mp4 3D files to Vegas-friendly m2ts 3D files is very close to real time. If I were shooting in the JVC's new AVCHD 2.0 recording mode (at 25mbps) I suspect it would be even faster. I shoot everything at 34mbps, so it has to be re-encoded to 25. But I didn't run any tests. I'll get around to doing that one of these days.
 
#1,751 ·
Edius 6.5 is every JVC TD1 owner's dream! I put together two tiny projects tonight since I downloaded the trial: one with JVC TD1 60i clips and one with Panasonic Z10000 24p clips. Here's the report I gave over in the Panny thread:


Oh, my! I just tried Edius 6.5 with the Panasonic clips I shot the other day at 24p. I don't see any significant difference between playing these clips in 3D vs 2D from the timeline. I did the same test (as with JVC clips):


Added several Panny clips, 3D at 24p. Fades, dissolves, titles, stereoscopic corrections, color corrections on each one. Edius seems to hesitate the first time through when I play a title with a clip, then it's smooth from then on out. This is MVC clips playing at about the same level of smoothness as regular 2D AVCHD footage. As a matter of fact, the footage is identical. It's just that the other day Edius 6 was seeing those clips as 2D only (since it was the 2D only version). This is remarkable!!!


Here's the system I'm using:


Intel i7 2600k, stock clocked.

16 GB Ripjaws Z XMP RAM

120 GB system drive (OCZ Vertex Plus)

2x 1TB 7200rpm Video Drives in RAID0

nVidia 460 1 GB video card, stock clocked


This is my secondary system, not the faster i7 3930 rig with all SSDs for video editing.


Everyone doing 3D editing should consider giving Edius 6.5 a try. I'll probably be playing with it all night.
I'll report if I encounter any strangeness.


My JVC results were pretty much the same, except for taking a little longer to render 60i to 24p.


Here's another part of what happened tonight:


__________________


I put Edius 6.5 on my everyday system just for grins: Core i5 750, 8GB RAM, 500 GB system HDD, 2x 1.5 TB video HDDs in RAID0, nVidia GeForce 450 1 GB. This system plays an MVC clip fairly cleanly, even with a stereoscopic filter applied, but it stutters through two such clips and a dissolve. It's still probably better than Vegas 11 trying to play through a similar part of its timeline on my most powerful computer. But a Core i7 is much, much smoother, nearly perfect. I rendered a Canopus HQX Fine 10bit dual stream file, which I then imported into the Core i7 2600k system. Once there, Vegas 11 rendered the Panasonic Z10k 24p project to a Blu-ray 3D iso file in about 1.5x real time. I suspect it would be close to real time on my Core i7 3930 system.


So, given a powerful Core i7 system (and a middle of the road GeForce card), Edius 6.5 looks like a killer 3D editor. I've taken the workflow from raw JVC and Panasonic MVC clips to a Blu-ray 3D disc. The JVC clips, of course, require more rendering, since they start out as 60i. The Panasonic project, which is native 24p, goes faster.


Spectacular!


I was hoping the Grass Valley engineers would speed up playback of MVC clips in the final version, but they've exceeded my expectations by leaps and bounds. Of course, there may be surprises ahead (when does that not happen?), but I'm delighted with Edius right now. Perhaps they'll even add support for Blu-ray 3D burning in the next version. But since I have Vegas, it's not an issue for me.
 
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