HDV into FCP

[jonnyh1968]

Hi all.

Capturing: What is the deal with capturing Sony HDV into FCP? Is the capture straight forward? Can I use my GL1 like I do for capturing regular ole DV?

Working: I heard that in general FCP and HDV are a nasty combination - in terms of long rendering times because of the HDV codec utilizing multiple frames in advance to compose one single frame. Is it a mess to work with?

Basically the deal is this: I got a guy that wants me to edit 6 hours of HDV footage down to 7-8 minutes. I shoot in and edit with Panasonic SD and HD all the time in FCP and, as you know, it works just fine. But this time the client is handing me 6 MiniDV tapes with 6 hours of HDV footage to edit. Any advice is appreciated. thanks.

 

[VaricamLife]

If you have to stay in HDV, then you might want to consider using the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) as your codec. It has a better reputation for HDV materials. But then you lose the ability to batch capture or have deck control (its basically a capture now type deal).

If you have FCP 6 though I would think you could digitize using the new ProRes codecs. I haven't actually had to use an HDV tape with 6 yet so haven't had any chance or reason to test such. That would be a lot friendlier to work in FCP though.

Finally, if your client is going to finish on SD and isn't too concerned with having a HD master, then you could always use an in VTR down-covert and bring the footage in as SD DV. We use the Sony HVR-M10U for that on a few shows.

cheers.