You opinion on how to deal with HDV in FCP???? discussion
by Wes Greene
on
Feb 20, 2006 at 9:51:09 pm
Interested in what people's various workflows are in dealing with HDV on a Mac/ Final Cut Pro platform.
It seems that although HDV can be edited natively some choose another format.
Currently I capture HDV over firewire, edit, grade and add titles and motion projcets all in HDV, before exporting to web formats, DVD etc (rarely back to tape). I don't have any capture cards but hoping to invest in a HD blackmagic card later this year along with a whole new intel powermac system. Currently running a dual G4 powermac with 23" CD.
What's working best for you with your hardware an what do you perceive as the advantages and disadvantages?
Re: You opinion on how to deal with HDV in FCP???? discussion by Daniel Weber on Feb 20, 2006 at 10:01:27 pm
I have been editing on a Dual G5 2.3, with a Decklink HD card. I have FW800, SATA RAID and a Facilis FC RAID unit. The Decklink HD card worked great until I put the ATTO FC card in. But I mainly use the Decklink HD card to do downconverts via SDI to DVCPro 25 tape.
I am still trying to get a handle on the best way to make MPEG2 files from HDV content. I have not been real happy with everything that I've done so far.
I attended a seminar by Gary Adock (sp?) here in Maryland a few weeks ago. He talked about editing HDV and swears by the AJA cards via component HD input. He inputs the stuff as DVCPro HD. Small size files but 4:2:2 color space. They said that the AJA cards use hardware to do the downconverts not software like the Decklink cards do. I would see that this is an advantage. If I were purchasing another card I would get the AJA Kona LH card (around $2000).
I have been using Magic Bullet on my HDV stuff and it looks great but takes forever to render. I need to try the Nattress filters, I have heard that they are faster. My feeling is that editing in the DVCPro HD codec is probably the best way to go. Quicker render times and no need to conform the footage to get it back to tape.
Re: You opinion on how to deal with HDV in FCP???? discussion by Borjis on Feb 20, 2006 at 11:55:46 pm
To be fair the decklink multibridge which is more of an external bob with
the "card inside" can do hardware upconvert/downconvert/cross-convert just fine for the same price.
Though it just shipped recently.
I'm capturing via component to uncompressed, but its because our clients expect uncompressed quality from start to finish.
Re: You opinion on how to deal with HDV in FCP???? discussion by uncompressed on Feb 21, 2006 at 6:42:59 am
well if your decklink upconverts, that would be unique, i never heard of that one.
i do a lot of HDV as it is appearing and use the kona to capture and hardware transcode the HDV stream into DVCPRO HD for most jobs and uncompressed when the occaison calls for it.
not sure how BMD would handle it, but the Kona LH or LHE (same thing, different bus) pops right in, all three outputs are hot and can downconvert or just throw a signal out live on ingest. jvc goes to 720, canon and sony to 1080. just match framerates and you are all set.
one HUGE advantage AJA always has is that they have hardware scaling for the compressed HD codecs--both HDV and DVCPRO HD. i cant say enough about it. i can get 16 streams of DVCPRO to play back at one time without looking too bad...i saw gary do it at a show and tried it at home--it works! just have really, really good storage.
Re: You opinion on how to deal with HDV in FCP???? discussion by cody Baker on Feb 22, 2006 at 1:58:34 pm
I'm about to buy a sony z1, and have a newbie question concerning capturing from it...
Dan, do you use your decklink card to capture from the z1? Is my understanding acurate?
z1 has:
1. firewire i/o
2. s-video out
3. composit out
So why use a decklink or AJA card to capture? Or are you simply using firewire to capture?
(This is assuming you don't have a HDV deck----just the camera to capture from)
Thanks,
Re: You opinion on how to deal with HDV in FCP???? discussion by Graeme Nattress on Feb 22, 2006 at 2:02:00 pm
You just need firewire to capture. A Decklink or Kona is useful for playback to your HD monitor though! And to master to a decent HD format at the end of editing.
Graeme
- www.nattress.com - Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
Re: You opinion on how to deal with HDV in FCP???? discussion by Daniel Weber on Feb 22, 2006 at 2:54:51 pm
Cody,
No I don't use the Decklink to capture. I do it through firewire from the Sony HDV deck.
If I were to set up my system again, I would consider using the AJA card to capture the component video so that you had the option of editing in either an uncompressed HD codec or the DVCPro HD codec (720p, 1080i, etc.) which is compressed but uses the 4:2:2 colorspace.
I would also look at either the Miranda HDV-HDSDI box or the HD Connect-LE box which does the same thing.
The thing about HDV is that there isn't just one way to do the editing. It gets very confusing and what works for one person may not work for another.
Re: You opinion on how to deal with HDV in FCP???? discussion by David Woodward on Mar 20, 2006 at 9:56:20 pm
Dan:
Have you employed any of the Direct to Disk acquisition strategies such as the FS-4Pro from Focus Enhancements. I think they are coming up with several for HDV. Wouldn't the component stragety negate using this?
Re: You opinion on how to deal with HDV in FCP???? discussion by Daniel Weber on Mar 20, 2006 at 10:13:41 pm
David,
No I haven't used any of the direct to disk options. The point of my post was to get out of the HDV codec in FCP and into an easier codec to edit with.
I just took a Motion class and we were color correcting and keying DVCPro HD footage in realtime. I tried the same thing with HDV footage and it had to render to preview it. HDV makes your machine work a lot harder. The DVCPro HD codec is also 4:2:2 color space which is nice when doing any kind of FX or heavy layering.
HDV is good for simple cuts and dissolves, and the graphics look nice and clean, but take forever to render.
Re: You opinion on how to deal with HDV in FCP???? discussion by David Woodward on Mar 20, 2006 at 10:41:48 pm
Daniel:
I'm with you there. I added a total of 30 of Boris Calligraphy to a FCP sequence and it took about 40 minutes to render. Also, a 5 minute HDV to MPG 2 (Fast encode) took over 2 hours.
My point is that I've been logging and capturing for a long time. I do a lot of long two camera projects and I'm looking forward to direct to disk shoots where the ins and outs are set on site and I simply drag the files across to the the SATA Raid I have.
I'm concerned that HDV would compromise that. I'll have to try to your trick of switching the codec to uncompressed for rendering.
Re: You opinion on how to deal with HDV in FCP???? discussion by Graeme Nattress on Feb 21, 2006 at 3:19:48 pm
HDV edits great native. I do think you need a Decklink or Kona card to monitor your video properly though. http://www.nattress.com/Movies/movies.htm Stereo Images is a movie I made in HDV 720p30, monitored on the Decklink, then made into a web movie. I did the final HD render to full uncompressed, and made the web movie from that.
Graeme
- www.nattress.com - Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
Re: You opinion on how to deal with HDV in FCP???? discussion by Wes Greene on Feb 22, 2006 at 12:26:22 pm
Thanks for everyone's thoughts.
Thanks for putting your thoughts forward Graeme. From your post do I read it right that after editing HDV natiely you then take the final cut to uncompressed HD for final clour correcting etc and the from there output your master?
Also when you say moniroed on the decklink do you mean you monitor on a HD cinema display running off the decklink box?
There seems to be plenty of people avoiding editing HDV natively in FCP for stated quality and ease of workflow benefits.
So many different workflows from source HDV to final product.
Has anyone run accurate tests to determin the best workflow?
Re: You opinion on how to deal with HDV in FCP???? discussion by Graeme Nattress on Feb 22, 2006 at 1:45:04 pm
I only bump to uncompressed for final render. All cc work is done while it's compressed. All I want to avoid is that final render back to HDV which is awful.
I monitored both on the HDlink to the 23" display and to a JVC HD 17" CRT monitor I had on loan at the time.
Graeme
- www.nattress.com - Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
Re: You opinion on how to deal with HDV in FCP???? discussion by Borjis on Feb 22, 2006 at 5:20:06 pm
Graeme its my understanding that you know things inside out on this kind of thing (writing plugins for fcp and all) and your saying that you can color correct and edit in HDV then render it uncompressed and that it would be no different (quality wise) then uncompressed from start to finish?
I own the JVC camera and a Quad G5 with 1.6TB storage. I was planning on doing only uncompressed all of the time.
Re: You opinion on how to deal with HDV in FCP???? discussion by Tom Parke on Feb 28, 2006 at 4:45:29 pm
Great question; I'd like to know this as well.
Just to be perfectly clear since I have done only a few HDV edits in FCP 5 from my Z1 as I have been mostly downconverting and editing SD: what exactly are the steps to ''bump to uncompressed for final render?'' Thanks!
