Let Me Get This Straight

Woodson

Woodson

Well-known member
I'm shooting a wedding video for my mom's friend daugther wedding. I want to try the HDV option instead of the DV with the FX-1 camera. Now do I get this right... I use regular miniDV tapes, I can then use the FX-1 camera to capture via firewire to my sony vaio computer 1.0 Anthlon. I have Sony Vegas 6 which should allow me to capture that?

When capturing footage from the HDV camera is there more space needed on the comp then capturing DV footage?

Also when rendering my computer might not handle it right?

Also I won't be able to capture this footage from the tape if I shoot HDV with a regular camera, so I have to use FX-1 asap before it needs to be returned.

Umm.. not sure if this will work, but I have a feeling I will need to do the DV option.

Any suggestions, any advice appriciated.
 
If you've got an FX1 and Vegas 6, you're pretty much set. FX1 footage takes up exactly the same amount of space as DV footage does. Vegas 6 should be able to capture it natively, but yes, you will need to capture from the FX1. No DV camera can read HDV tapes, you will *have* to use the HDV camera.

As far as rendering speed, that depends on your computer; HDV is much, much, much slower to work with than DV footage is. I don't have Vegas 6, but I believe it includes the Cineform intermediate codec? If so, you probably would want to use that, as it makes HDV editing a lot faster.
 
I was under the impression Vegas used DV proxies for editing. I think you have to buy ConnectHD to get Cineform functionality.
 
No, even Vegas 4 can edit raw HDV files. The only reason you needed ConnectHD was because Vegas 4 & 5 couldn't capture from or output to an HDV device. But with Vegas 6 they've fixed that, so Vegas 6 (AFAIK) is a one-stop HDV editing system.

You can get better/more responsive performance by using Cineform intermediates, but Vegas most definitely can do full native .m2t editing.
 
Barry_Green said:
You can get better/more responsive performance by using Cineform intermediates, but Vegas most definitely can do full native .m2t editing.
Click to expand...
The Cineform HDV codec is included in PPro 1.5.1. Adobe Licensed most of the ConnectHD codec.

I'm not sure what Cineform functionality is included in the PPRo bundle, but I have heard that once the HDV video is ingested using the Cineform Codec its just like editing DV. I have not tried it myself yet.

Barry, I'm thinking about purchasing an FX1 just for personal use, have you had any hands on experience with this camera and if so any suggestions? The FX1 also shoots DV, I would imagine that would be native 16x9 DV wouldn't it? So wouldn't the DV resolution be cpmparable to the XL2?
 
Vegas most definitely can do full native .m2t editing.
Click to expand...

I'm not too familiar with Vegas, how 6 resolves the problems, or what exactly Gearshift does... but editing native *.m2t's has been deamed unfavourable even by DSE... who seems to be a Vegas champ.

I'm not sure what Cineform functionality is included in the PPRo bundle, but I have heard that once the HDV video is ingested using the Cineform Codec its just like editing DV.
Click to expand...

I have tried and used it quite a bit. It's really quite good for editing, but the importer and encoding support through Premiere is a little buggy. Cineform has updated their capture utilities significantly since the patch, and it seems (pure conjecture) that Adobe is waiting for a new version (i.e., PPro 2.0) to fix all the problems.

Barry, I'm thinking about purchasing an FX1 just for personal use, have you had any hands on experience with this camera and if so any suggestions?
Click to expand...

I'm not exactly Barry, but what kind of suggestions specifically are you interested in? Shooting strategies? Workflow? Software?

The FX1 also shoots DV, I would imagine that would be native 16x9 DV wouldn't it?
Click to expand...

It can shoot both 16:9 and 4:3 DV. On export from 16:9 HDV, you can downconvert to 16:9 DV or letterboxed 4:3 DV. The FX1 does not have the "center cut" option to get full-frame 4:3 DV from HDV footage (that's a Z1 feature). Also, the CF30 mode essentially produces 30p source in DV mode.

That said - you are much better off shooting HDV in practically ANY situation. SD is best generated from software down converstion to uncompressed 4:4:4. Most artifacts will disappear in the down-convert operation - and those that remain are a small price compared to 4:1:1 colour decimation and the additional 5:1 compression of DV. My illustration of this is here:

http://s94963366.onlinehome.us/HDRFX1/softvincam.bmp (2 MB).

Incidentally, here are some down-converted flower pictures. (Note: I'm not sure if the JPEG compression on these took the resolution down to 4:2:2 or not. And yes, I know they're pansies).

http://s94963366.onlinehome.us/HDRFX1/flowers.zip

Finally - if you do end up editing in a digital intermediate format, or using proxies note:
- HDV takes up the same space as DV - having a copy of each for proxy work takes up twice as much
- Cineform files are about 3 to 4 times larger than HDV files per unit time

-Spiff
 
Thanks for the detailed answers Spiff.

What software do you use to do the downconverts from HDV to SD? I have heard similar complaints about the integration with Cineform and that the problems will be fixed in the next release of PPro. I'm getting tired of having to upgrade to get bug fixes. It almost makes me want to switch to a Mac!

- Cineform files are about 3 to 4 times larger than HDV files per unit time
How well does PPro handle this amount of data? I'd be happy with two realtime streams...
 
For SD downconverts I used to use After Effects and a convoluted painful process. However, in the latest edition of AspectHD (3.2a), Cineform fixed up the SD exporting capability of Premiere Pro - direct rendering to uncompressed SD now works like a charm as a one-step export from Premiere. (I should clarify: what I mean by this is that it now handles interlaced fields and progressive images properly. Interlace was an issue before).

How well does PPro handle this amount of data? I'd be happy with two realtime streams...
Click to expand...

PPro is fine with it. This is primarily a hard drive access speed, RAM and CPU issue. I run a 2.8 GHz P4 with 1 GB DDR400 and a S-ATA RAID 0, and I can get 3 streams of 1080i or so - the details on the Cineform site are actually accurate to the performance I've seen. The colour filters really are real-time for display too.

-Spiff
 
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