I wrote about the new JVC HD camcorder the other day, and was concerned about the inability to import MPEG2 streams into the Mac. Well, today I discovered a new project from Apple that does just that.
Apple’s latest update of the FireWire Software Developer Kit includes new functions to transport MPEG over FireWire, and comes with a couple of apps that do just that. One of them allows the computer to become a virtual D-VHS deck, recording HD directly from a FireWire-enabled DTV receiver.
Of course, once the file is on your Mac, you’re stuck – there doesn’t seem to be any utility yet that transcodes the MPEG2 transport stream to a format you can view and edit. I’ve used a utility in Windows (via VirtualPC) to transcode it to an MPEG program stream, but it doesn’t seem to work with the audio. Quicktime can then open and play the MPEG, as well as transcode it to any other QT format.
Once I edit my HD video, I have no way to mux it back to a transport stream so that I can export it via FireWire to HD tape.
I hope that the advent of this new FireWire framework means that these capabilities might be coming in the “Panther” release of OS X…
Click here to see a frame of HD video from “Judging Amy” captured via FireWire from a JVC D-VHS recorder.
Heuris (http://www.heuris.com) today offers a plugin for FinalCutPro that compresses your HD project to MPEG2-TS, so you can send it to D-VHS.
It’s inevitable that Apple will support the new “HDV” format (which is based on MPEG2TS) so you are probably correct about Panther OS-X.
See this press release …
http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/press/2003/hdv.html
Panther didn’t provide this feature because it’s not an OS issue.
FCP needs to be enhanced to support MPEG-2 TS input/output over FireWire, MPEG-2 TS decode, and HD MPEG-2 TS and HD MPEG-2 PS encoding.
This means FCP V5 at the earliest.
Until then take a look at my HDVcinema and HDVcinema Pro packages by going to http://www.mindspring.com/~d-v-c.
Thank you.