Re: Editing via Firewire vs. Uncompressed (Decklink HD)

Dan,

At the moment, there should be no doubt that the DVPRO100/Firewire/FCP solution is the most cost effective HD post production workflow. It's almost free for those who already have a FCP suite.

Not only do you not need any additional third party card, but the firewire hard drives are really cheap (about $1/Gb), and many people already have an Apple computer and the FCP software. In addition, the 1200A deck costs about half of any other HD player/recorder and even if you rent it per use this is true as well for the rental price; although I have seen some outrageous prices quoted, but I think as more decks arrive the price will drop to the $350/day net I'm asking.

I suspect that the HD firewire solution will be added to some Avid and other NLE products soon and this will help greatly in breaking down the notion that HD is much more expensive than SD. Eventually the price of the cameras, lenses and tape stock will also come down to where Digibeta is now, when supply and demand factors take control.

The additional savings accrued by not having to downconvert HD material for offline and then the subsequent on-line process further enhance the economics of this workflow. There will be many HD projects, especially for TV broadcast that will not need any further on-line processing, but others, especially those intended for film-out or with complicated effects and/or color correction that will be more appropriately completed in an HD-SDI domain, but these presumably will have sufficient budgets to do so.