Panasonic AG-HVX200 edited on FCP "low res"?

[Grainy]

hey folks
Is there a way to shoot with the Panasonic AG-HVX200, save the data directly to an externa hard drive, but get it into my not-bad-but-2006 imac at a lower resolution for editing, then to create a cut list and export to the final digibeta (or whatever) at full res again?
The object being to be able to use the HVX200 w/o needing a humongous, high-end editing suite...
thanks for your patience; I'm new to digital.... I recently saw "Quiet City", shot on the Panasonic AG-HVX200, and it's the first time EVER I've seen a video original projected without looking either like a giant TV or like plastic.
thanks
G

 

[BenB]

DVCPRO-HD is not a horsepower hog at all. That iMac should handle it just fine. You should be able to edit the footage just fine. The only requirement, and this is true regardless of codec, is you need an external Firewire drive to put all your project and media files on. You can't edit properly with FCP off the system drive. But you should be able to handle DVCPRO-HD just fine.

 

[Grainy]

good to know, thanks ben!

 

[flexmore]

DVCPRO-HD is not a horsepower hog at all. That iMac should handle it just fine.

Too true Ben, my iMac handles DVC-PRO HD like a charm, I just wish it could handle HDV as smoothly. Is there not an option in Log and Transfer window where you can change the video import settings?

 

[BenB]

DVCPRO-HD is not a horsepower hog at all. That iMac should handle it just fine.

Too true Ben, my iMac handles DVC-PRO HD like a charm, I just wish it could handle HDV as smoothly. Is there not an option in Log and Transfer window where you can change the video import settings?

What I said IS in fact true, as I talked about DVCPRO-HD. You confirmed that statement in your reply. HDV is totally different from DVCPRO-HD, don't confuse the two. HDV is Long GOP format, as DVCPRO-HD is not.

There is no way to import HDV via the Log & Transfer window, that is for tapeless formats only. And you are IMPORTING tapeless data in that workflow, not "capturing". Thus you can't change the format in that way.

There are settings you can change in the L&T window, such as number of audio tracks, etc. But not the codec of the footage.

As for needing an external FW800 drive, this IS in fact the recommended set up by Apple. If your projects get too large, having all your media on the system drive will eventually cause major problems. The limited data pipe bandwidth of the system drive (sata) is not really enough to handle the OS, app, video streams, audio streams, etc, all at the same time. I troubleshoot this problem for my consulting clients and students almost daily. When they add the external drive to their iMac, they find their problems disappear, and overall system performance increases (more RT no less).