playing DV movie out firewire port.

[meatygoodness]

I wonder if anyone has an answer for me? I am trying to run a quicktime movie out of PT through a DV cam and onto a 2nd monitor but the option "play DV movie out firewire port" is disabled on my LE system. Does anyone know if it is a preferences or set up thing. i can't find anything relating to movie set ups.
mac G4 dual 533
OS 10.3
DIGI 001 and PT6.3

[froyo]

Hello. Is the QuickTime movie a .dv or a .mov or .mpeg? In order for the QuickTime to be played out of the Firerwire port, it has to be authored as a DV stream. So it would have to have the .dv extension after the name. If this is not the case, then you need to make that QuickTime a DV stream.

Two main ways to do that. Ask whoever gave it to you to give you a DV stream Quicktime. Or buy QuickTime Pro from Apple ($30 I think) and do this yourself. Open the movie, go to the Export command, and in the format drop down list choose DV Stream. It will then create a .dv movie which you will then be able to play to your camera.

Good luck.

[Slim Shady]

That's not true Froyo. I run .mov quicktime movies out through my canopus firewire interface all the time, but it does work best if the file is uncompressed dv video. I think you might be right about .mpeg though, I don't think that will work using firewire out. I've never used anything with the .dv extension (never heard of it actually), so it certainly isn't a requirement. using other video compression besides DV seems to slow the system down though, so I usually create movies that are super tiny in aspect ration, but use uncompressed DV for the format.

A more important question for the original poster - does iMovie or Final Cut see your camera? This would be a good indicator to see if your camera is compatible with your Mac. If not, then it's probably not a compatibly camera, or it's not connected properly. Make sure your camera is turned on and in the right mode before you boot protools and see where that gets you.

[froyo]

Hello. Slim where do you get these QuickTime movies. Do you create them yourself? I know for a fact that every time you create a DV QuickTime from within iMovie, it gives it a .mov extension. Even though it is actually a .dv movie. I know this for a fact. So while the QuickTime may actuall say .mov, it is in fact a DV stream.

It's a bug from iMovie.

Where do you get your QuickTime's from? Also, Pro Tools only activates that part of the menu, "Play DV out Firewire Port", until you import a DV stream. If it's not there, the item is greyed out, as our friend above mentioned.


By the way Slim

so I usually create movies that are super tiny in aspect ratio, but use uncompressed DV for the format.

That's your answer right there. Uncompressed DV as the format. That's why you can play DV out of the Firewire port, because it is in fact a DV stream. Your authoring application, most likely iMovie, probably has the .mov extension bug. Trust me on this one Slim.

[MoreMeintheMonitors]

Froyo is right on the mark with this one. Only DV movies can play out the FW port. The .mov file can actually be in tons of different formats (compression codecs) like sorenson, quicktime or dv. The extension doesn't necessarily dictate the format that the movie is in. I think in quicktime you can get properties on the movie to see which codec is actually being used - it has to say DV to be playable thru FW.

[Mr T]

In my experience, in order to enable the "DV-Firewire" option the movie must be uncompressed DV/PAL (NTSC for those working with 29,97 fps) and 720X576.
Any compressed files (such as those compressed using Mpeg1) will not play through "DV-Firewire", and the 720x576 size also seems to be mandatory. Which is a good thing since, as Slim said, this is also the best setting there is regarding CPU usage and PT. A small Mpeg1 file will be harder to read in PT (slowing down and possible errors) than a Full DV uncompressed file.
And I'm also talking ".mov" here... I've never seen or work with a ".dv" file in fact... To me DV PAL/NTSC is a codec not a file format.

[meatygoodness]

thanks lads, you've helped me find my way. The simplest way is to import the QT into iMovie, save and use that to import into PT. Works a treat. Now time to eat a frosty fruit!

[Mr T]

IMHO, the simplest and fastest way to do this is using QT Pro (which is not that expensive and will help you a lot in many different situations).