editing HDV... Advice for a DVCPRO HD lover

Justyn

Justyn

Veteran
greetings all. Just got through a horrendous first day of having to slog through and edit some HDV footage. Man it just friggin sucks to handle and I'm I'm hoping that someone might have a workflow that's better than just editing the native HDV codec. The stuff is just horrible on the FCP timeline. I can't scrub through the footage at all off the drives and it just seems to wind out my G5 way way more than the DVCPRO stuff. Has anyone had success in converting to the apple intermediate codec or another method.

Not meant to be a flame here.. but man its just so frustrating to edit with comparted to the DVCPRO codec. Took me probably twice as long because of not being able to scrub the clips and that. Makes me really rethink having to deal with this crap. NOt to mention digitize which really sucks..

Any and all helpful advice appreciated. I'm on a Dual G5, FCP 6, internal SATA drives.. and one giant HDV headache.
 
Is your seq set up properly? We cut HDV day in and day out on G5's w/o a problem in terms of timeline responsiveness. HDD speed shouldn't be a problem as HDV as roughly the same data rate as DV.


-A
 
I came from HDV (briefly) to DVCPRO 50 and 100 -

i went through exactly what you went through - the only way is to set up to convert to apple intermediate codec on capture (MUCH larger files and still slow) - i HATE HDV to edit natively - maybe a newer machine can handle the decompressing task better

Smooth workflow is so important for productivity - how annoying is HDV to capture (VERY) getting the smooth action of DVCpro was a welcome relief.

You can get a faster machine or stay away from HDV altogether!
 
Yes. I do believe it might be also that we shot this in the cinema 24p mode but I'm jsut cutting it as the 60i stuff for time and such. I'll have to check later if that's what the problem might be. I'm just spoiled by how easy the DVCPRO stuff is. Even in the same HDV timeline the DVCPRO scrubs and I can use cheap USB drives with that footage no problem but the HDV was finiky and needed to be on my faster drives.

I do know I'll have to spend a bit of time with this. I believe that my sequence was set up through the easy set up option at the standard HDV 60i settings.


Appreciate the advice and with mOre time I'll investigate but atleast the edit is done..a and when I get time I'll throw up some samples.. Looks nice for the price of the camera (HV20), but I get a lot of that rolling shutter wobble. Looks like Jello, but even that I think we can solve when we get our vibration dampeners on the helicopter. As for now, just having fun flying an RC helciopter camera ship
 
Thanks Reflex. I do feel that's part of it. My buddy has a Mac Pro so I'm going to see how things work on his. I mean.. my computer fan is on the whole time and churning away... just something aweful over here and I've cut varicam footage on this and component and never had it so slaggy..


I'll do some more investigating and YES. I'm spoiled..
 
Conclusion confirmed. I need a faster box to edit an inferior codec. Isn't that a kick in the pants? I see what you save on the intial camera, you pay back in time lost and frustration in post.
 
Justyn,
Why don't you just convert all the HDV material to DVCPRO HD. I have done that in the past with some Canon HDV stuff that I purchased for a documentary from a freelancer. It looks great and is easy to edit once converted.

Go into your media manager and make the change. It takes a little time to render the conversion but it's worth it.

Jim
 
Justyn,

It still sounds like something is wrong w/your setup. I've been using an old dual 2.0ghz PowerMac for the last 18 months cutting HDV almost daily (sometimes HDV mixed w/DVCPro HD and/or DV in the same timeline) and I've never had a problem scrubbing thru the timeline or anything like that. My render and export times are longer w/HDV than DVCPro HD (and sometimes my HDV exports go out of sync), but I've never had a problem w/just playback and/or timeline navigation.


-A
 
What about exporting each clip out as a Quicktime file, then edit those together ? Not sure, but seems like it should work ? Anyone ?
 
Ditto with converting to DVCPRO HD. That's exactly what I do with HDV material. I go to media manager and recompress to dvcpro HD. However, I'm in PAL, so basicaly I'm not losing much information on the conversion vs NTSC users, but it still is worth it for the speed and ease of editing.
 
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