hdv v dvcpro hd

Alex Leith said:
Do any of the popular editing application actually support real-time JPEG2000, yet? I believe it a more processor intensive codec than HDV.
Click to expand...

It's in the QT engine right now, but I haven't really tested it. I doubt I will get realtime performance from it, but it might not be a bad format to render a timeline to and store away on a hard drive.

Emanuel, my eventual workflow on higher-end projects will likely be to render to uncompressed 10 bit HD, and then encode to whatever format is needed from there.
Maybe I will use JPEG2000 if it's relatively lossless and saves space.

There are hints that Cineform may be coming to FCP, once the Mac is fully on Intel...but I'm not holding my breath.
 
So, Elton, what you saz is that any compression is aviable to un-compressing??
i mean... you can record with any compression and affter POST you can fix it and
take it back to a the full resolution?? so, it does n't mater what kind of compression
do you use, but the POST uncompress process??

Any diferent opinion?

or something?


Elton said:
Boy, it sure depends. The Canon can give you phenomenal quality to DVCPRO HD if you use the SDI spigot, and believe it or not, even if you convert from HDV to DVCPROHD. It's HDV is actually 25mbps, but as many will note, actually has the highest pixel resolution of all the "affordable" hd's. There's a lot of anti-HDV sentiment out there, particularly in this forum, so don't expect a balanced response.

I use the Canon XL-H1 and it has a different kind of image quality than the HVX, as do the others. I believe it's noise is more finite,and even overall. In truth, it's very clean for the imager size and resolution.

DVCPRO HD sounds great in theory, particularly because it's simply an Intra-frame HD format, but that doesn't necessarily mean squat. It's how the images are rendered into the format that matters. Take a look at the HVX and H1 footage floating around. Also consider that 720p DVCPROHD @24fps is really only 40mbps for all the frames, so it's actually a fairly heavy pass of compression for the frame size. HDV may be a smaller bit rate, but it handles image data differently, discarding redundant (to some degree) picture information. This can be really good, and possibly sometimes really bad, but I will tell you that the Canon and JVC do a remarkable job with the bits their given, even in fast action scenes.

I'm uploading a clip right now from the XL-H1 that was shot up in Park City, UT during the Sundance film festival. It was shot 24F to HDV tape, and converted to DVCPROHD 1080 24p in post, and then compressed to h.264. It's called "CarlosDiegoh.264.mov"

Link: www.homepage.mac.com/mrbarlowelton

That should give you a good idea of how the H1 renders 1080p, even in DV100.




Yes, uncompressed is best, but again, we're just talking theory. I can tell you the H1 is exceptionally good with it's handling of an audio signal. Very clean. Has more to do with good pre-amps and converters than a bit rate. In all likelihood, you will post your audio in an uncompressed format for mixing. There's also dual-system if uncompressed is an absolute priority, and it's possible to have the audio recorder feed the timecode to the H1, thus ensuring no sync problems whatsoever. People will be doing this when tapping the SDI for indie films.

Hope that helped.

Elton
Click to expand...
 
Elton said:
Emanuel, my eventual workflow on higher-end projects will likely be to render to uncompressed 10 bit HD, and then encode to whatever format is needed from there.
Click to expand...
You're right. My only concern is how much this workflow will it cost? I'm thinking to build a new NLE. What's your advice? And cost prediction? To a reasonable workflow HD uncompressed basis workable station? With acceptable rendering time(s)? FCP or PC it's not the same because I'd prefer to go with PC but if it will be even necessary... As affordable as possible if you know prices regarding your personal experience and needs.

Thanks in advance.
 
Have you tried recording uncompressed Elton? For $1200 you can have a nice 8port SATA II controller and 2.5 TByte than can keep a rate of 300mb/sec these days. Any HD format is possible with that.
 
Fernando Kurezyn Jr. said:
So, Elton, what you saz is that any compression is aviable to un-compressing??
i mean... you can record with any compression and affter POST you can fix it and
take it back to a the full resolution?? so, it does n't mater what kind of compression
do you use, but the POST uncompress process??

Any diferent opinion?

or something?
Click to expand...

Hi Fernando,

My thinking is that HDV from the Canon is pretty clean, but it's not the greatest format for post-production purposes.

The entire idea is to do things with an intermediate codec, like DV100, AIC or even PhotoJPEG. Those are all easy to edit, but you don't have to finish with them.
You can go back to original HDV and then change the timeline settings to an uncompressed codec and render out a finalized QT, which from there you can encode a distribution version like HD DVD or output via SDI to a compatible HD deck. So, yes, in a sense you go back to full resolution, but the idea is that you allow your color corrections, graphics, filters and FX to be as clean as possible, because in an uncompressed codec you aren't introducing recompression when you change the look of your footage.

I'm sure it sounds like a lot of work to do all that transcoding, but it's the best way to minimize the damage of working with highly compressed HD formats.
 
limo991 said:
Have you tried recording uncompressed Elton? For $1200 you can have a nice 8port SATA II controller and 2.5 TByte than can keep a rate of 300mb/sec these days. Any HD format is possible with that.
Click to expand...

Yup, SATA RAID is the way I plan to go. I've actually recorded uncompressed, but only to a single hard drive, and of course it choked on it, but it did capture frames sporadically. That's where you can see the full resolution the camera is really capable of. It's a full 1920x1080 raster via SDI...but you would be surprised how close the HDV looks to an uncompressed frame.
 
Last edited:
Emanuel said:
You're right. My only concern is how much this workflow will it cost? I'm thinking to build a new NLE. What's your advice? And cost prediction? To a reasonable workflow HD uncompressed basis workable station? With acceptable rendering time(s)? FCP or PC it's not the same because I'd prefer to go with PC but if it will be even necessary... As affordable as possible if you know prices regarding your personal experience and needs.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Emanuel,

I think you're looking at a minimum of $5-6K, U.S., on either platform to do any uncompressed editing. But guess what, you don't really have to have a full RAID setup to render to an uncompressed format, just a large hard drive like a 400 GB Firewire drive. Of course, if you want to watch it in full motion, you will need a RAID setup, but at least you can save a version that's rendered in pristine quality, and take it to a service bureau or post house for output to a high-end HD deck.
 
Elton said:
Emanuel,

I think you're looking at a minimum of $5-6K, U.S., on either platform to do any uncompressed editing. But guess what, you don't really have to have a full RAID setup to render to an uncompressed format, just a large hard drive like a 400 GB Firewire drive. Of course, if you want to watch it in full motion, you will need a RAID setup, but at least you can save a version that's rendered in pristine quality, and take it to a service bureau or post house for output to a high-end HD deck.
Click to expand...


what's the breakdown on that? the edius broadcast is what? 1600 bucks? a workstation can be built for around 1k with a p4? why so much dosh?
 
Barlow, thanks again. My idea is to be really independent, also from a high-end HD deck. I thought that it will be possible to have a back-up as data. But at what price? On the other hand, the point is also CC/grading -- I'd like have the control myself as available as possible. More thoughts, my friend?
 
I would forget about the deck. It's money down the drain. I have built two rackmount solutions for HD capture so far and they were a little more than $10k. Cineform have a solution that costs a lot more and has only a non upgradable rackmount box that does a compressed format. $10k included a 3unit rackmount case, rugged 17inch 1280x1024 monitor/keyboard that slids into an 1 unit drawer, 3hours 4:2:2 1920x1080 on raid certified disks, HD-SDI card, raid bays with access from the front, backup/archival drive bays with access from the front, etc. The same systems also serve as an editing workstation since a dual core 4gb machine can do that. But I don't think multiple streams of HD are possible on a normal pc today.

Archiving uncompressed to removable HD (which cleans the raid drive from files) is 1/4 realtime for 4:2:2 1080p and costs $240/hour of footage. It's neither fast or cheap. HDCAM SR MPEG4 tape is much cheaper at about $120/hour but different quality.
 
Last edited:
brianluce said:
what's the breakdown on that? the edius broadcast is what? 1600 bucks? a workstation can be built for around 1k with a p4? why so much dosh?
Click to expand...

You need raid controller, a more capable motherboard with a workstation/server chipset, a lot better CPU(s), lots of raid drives, HD-SDI card, better PSUs, raid compatible case etc. Do a search and you will see even one of these thing can be 1k to 2k.
 
brian,

For uncompressed, I think you're looking at this for a pc system:

Dual core AMD or Intel machine...min. $2K
AJA Xena LH card...$1,500
5 SATA HD RAID, min. $1K w/card and RAID box
Software and extra RAM...$1K to $1.5K

So, realistically, somewhere around $6K for a decent starter setup. Similar cost for the Mac too. Altogether, not too bad.
 
You're right on the money Elton. But it all depends on how high-end you want to be. AMD's top of the line CPU's, in this case the Opterons for being dual processor capable, are $1,100 for one of the top ones. The single-processor- only AMD FX-60 is similarly priced but performs very well against non-multi-CPU applications when compared to a dual Opteron computer. Bear in mind that both of these processor types are dual core capable as well. The Opterons will eventually win out in the end for our work in overall performance, but for games the FX-60 is hard to beat. The regular AMD X2 processors aren't bad either, but the FX and Opteron lines are better.

I don't know what Intel is doing but I just don't here too much from the Intel camp to make me want to switch back at the moment. Intel processors are very good for video applications, they're the majority of the market for a reason you know, but the AMD processors have better overall performance in the higher end processors.

So, looking at this, if you go with Opterons, you'll have $2,200 right off the bat. Dual processor motherboards from Tyan are about $500-1,000 themselves, let's just say a really good one for $1,000. RAM is cheap at the moment and you'd only really want 4gb at the most for now until Windows Vista is released. So that's about $600 or so for four 1gb sticks. Add in an 5-drive SATA RAID case for about $500 and five 500gb 16mb cache HDD's for about $350 a piece, $1,800 with tax I suppose for all the HDD's. Then a top videocard, let's say a Quadro card for $650. Then a sound card for $200 and a DVD-R drive for $80. Floppy is a given at $10 and a case, we'll say Coolermaster Stacker for $150. Windows XP Pro for $200 and then AVID Xpress Studio Essentials for $3,500. With the AJA card Elton mentioned, all in all that comes out to:

Dual Opteron 280's... $2,200
Tyan Motherboard... $1,000
4gb worth of RAM... $600
5-drive RAID enclosure... $500
5x 500gb 16mb cache SATA HDD's... $1,800
Quadro Videocard... $650
Soundcard... $200
Floppy... $10
DVD-R Drive... $80
Coolermaster Stacker Case... $150
Windows XP Pro... $200
AVID Xpress Studio Essentials... $3,500
AJA Xena LH Card... $1,500
____________________________________
Total... About $12,400 (give or take on price variable and/or tax)

Now where's the money for the camera and everything else I wonder....? =)
 
You might need dual opteron for a AspectHD/Cineform system, but thinking low-end...it seems like you could get started for around $6K. Sheesh, it might be better just to go Mac and avoid building one of those monsters...I think the added performance is diminishing returns. Unless you have an institutional or business need to be on the Avid, I'd go Adobe Studio too.
 
I have a friend who is almost finished shooting a movie with an FX1 and he's ready to sell it (while it still has some resale value) and is really looking at the HVX200 (until he can afford a Red or Phantom, and Red is actually available) if for no other reason than the 4:2:2 color depth. He's really hating HDV now that he's going thru his footage and working towards a final colorcorrection.

He's had a few big hits from dropouts too, but nothing he didn't have alternate takes and coverage to cut around.
 
The reason I bought my HVX was that, even though the smaller CCD's may not pull as much pure resolution into the camera as say the Canon, what counts for me is where it goes from there. The HDV codec and compressing the footage to 25mbps to put onto tape with mpeg2 compressed audio is just not what I want in the field, where I plan on doing most of my shooting.

The director I've been working with bought the V1U and has been talking mad smack about the HVX, it's small CCDs and the better image that the V1U can produce through HDMI out into his computer. Well, good for him and all, but on our first shoot using HDMI out into dual RAIDs, both of them died 3/4 of the way through the shoot and we had to finish the last shot (the club scene with lots of camera moves and different colored lights) with the HDV-to-tape functionality.

So while his HDMI-to-computer look may have looked better than my HD-to-P2 (and I've been shooting at 720 while he shoots at 1080 so even then we're still not talking apples to apples), it's never been a true comparison and the system broke down on him, costing him all that footage and leaving him with only the tape, and all that smack-talking suddenly ended.

BTW, one thing that surprised me was that all the other cameras shoot either 1080 or 720, but not both. I was surprised to hear this, and is another point in the panasonic's favour. That and the variable frame rates makes it the better camera for me, even if, in the studio, the SOny's HDMI may look better than the HVX's component out.
 
HDV doesnt handle quick camera movements worth a damn. makes the format totally useless to me.
 
After testing around each cams, HDV, P2, I decided to shoot fast stuff with HVX200 and shoot with HV20 along to cover long shots. HDV just won't do good job panning things in front of me. I find that as long you keep things good in HDV, it could be transcoded to DVCPRO HD well, or vise-versa, if you shoot overcranked DVCPRO HD conformed to 24P, that could be transcoded to HDV well, too. So, I decided to combine them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top