Who's cutting HDV & how is it going? Issues?

[Nick Brenner]

Just wondering if many people are cutting HDV on FCP or other and what if any issues are. Also what projects seem to use it. With the launch of new cameras from JVC and Panasonic imminent and therefore more HDV to come was wondering how it's going in Aust.
kind regards
Nick

[JWRL]

Nick, it's a bit of an underwhelming response, isn't it? The general impression that I get from the various forums that I browse is that internationally there is not much happening either. There seems to be an awful lot of "wait and see" going on.

In any case is the new Panasonic product HDV or is it DVCpro 100?

[Nick Brenner]

Great I was wondering if I was going to get any replies. The Panasonic shoots HD at 100mb sec onto their P2 cards (about 1/3 size of business card). P2 Cards house 4 high speed Secure Digital (yes, the same cards that digital still cameras use) laid out in a raid array. I saw some footage at SMPTE and it looks great. Unfortunately the cards are only 4gig right now but they expect them to go to 32gig eventually. You then grab the card throw it into a little card reader (like for stills cameras) and then transfer the data across to your disks. Import into edit suite. It's much faster than real time via USB2. When you import it into your edit suite it uses the DVCPRO-HD codec. The codec is different to HDV - it's a motion JPEG as opposed to Sony HDV which is recorded as GOP (Mpeg2). You can also play out of the cameras via firewire I think. Pretty impressive format for a camera under $10G.

The Sony is 25mb sec (same data rate as DV) yet the codec allows greater compression for less quality drop compared to the loss DV format. Anyway was just wondering cause I have a job coming in from the Territory that's being shot on HDV and i'll be cutting on FCP5. It seemed to do it pretty well at SMPTE.
cheers Nick

[rachelw]

Hey Nick it would be fantastic to hear how you go with that, as more and more editors are being asked to work on projects with these newly available technologies, and everybody's wondering what will happen.

I might add it would be especially nice to have a little feedback in such a format that perhaps it could be included in the next newsletter :)

Hope that it all goes splendidly

R

[tim w]

Hi Nick,
As a self confessed technophobe I have been dragged to the bleeding edge and am about to embark on an HD doco project. They are shooting on Sony HVR Z1 at 1080i and I'm yet to confirm the post path (avid or FCP) though, as an avid user of 12 years, I'm tempted to try out FCP. I've found talking with the techos about the issues as clear as mud but I'm getting there. What I have learnt is that HD is a whole new can of worms and that if you're going to go down that path do some research. I haven't started cutting yet, though they have started shooting.... Watch this space. Anybody with any experience out there all input welcome
Tim Woodhouse

[JWRL]

They've started shooting without nailing their post path yet???? Courageous!

If I were doing it under these circumstances I'd play it as safe as possible. If you haven't had time to familiarise yourself with the new technology before you jump in at the deep end do a traditional offline/online cut and finish on a Symphony or similar.

You really can't afford to have something unexpected pop up in post that blows your budget while you try to fix the problem.

[Jude]

There is an interseting BLOG just started by Shane Ross who is about to starting cutting HD TV for the History channel on his FCP system. I don't think he's doing HDV, but it's probably pertinent to all of us who need (or will need) to step up to HD soon. although .. I think they were shooting on a varicam, so ..?

Anyway - tis here
<http://homepage.mac.com/comeback/iblog/Work/B787268209/index.html>

[JieMing]

My understanding of HDV is that it uses Mpeg compression to fit the signal onto those little tapes. This means it is using interframe compression - which means you can't edit on any frame you like. I would be interested to know how Sony gets around this, and what the edits look like that aren't on a GOB-frame or I-frame. I've also read that if there is a dropout on tape it will last half a second!

Ben.

[JWRL]

JieMing, DVcam and DVC pro use MPEG compression too, and yet there is no problem editing those formats. Pinnacle Liquid Edition can currently cut HDV natively, and just rebuilds the material it needs to. Adobe also seem to be able to cut HDV format material on Premiere Pro 1.5.1. And of course FCP also has a workaround.

And in any case you would have to ask yourself why any manufacturer in this day and age would deliberately design a standard that you could not edit!

[Greg]

JWRL writes...

JieMing, DVcam and DVC pro use MPEG compression too, and yet there is no problem editing those formats.



DVCpro, DVCAM, DV are most definitely not MPEG.

DVCPro, DVcam etc do not use inter-frame encoding, only intraframe. Each frame is a complete entity, no dependance on the surrounding frames as in MPEG2, no GOPs etc

Adobe Premire and other systems have for a considerable time supported editing inter-frame mpeg. So it follows that FCP would need to support the SONY HDR-FX1 codec.

refer to

http://www.broadcastpapers.com/hdtv/dvcpro02.htm

[JWRL]

Thanks Greg. You are of course correct about DV format tapes. But my point that there are edit packages out there capable of dealing with the issues that MPEG poses is also correct, which was what I understood JieMing's concern to be.

[E_Tedeschi]

Creative COW have a really good weekly podcast happening now. Episode 2 deals with HDV and some of the issues involved - as a complete HDV newbie, I found it quite useful:

http://www.creativecowcast.net/

Enzo.

[JWRL]

Avid also released their HDV solution for Xpress Pro this week. It looks interesting in that it is able to freely mix a range of HD formats in real time.

As a result there's a fair bit of discussion going on over at the user forums (or should that be fora?) Not all of it is knowledgeable, but since members of the beta test team are there as well there's some really interesting stuff coming out.

[tingusa]

I am cutting a documentary partially shot on JVC's 720p HDV and the quickest way is to convert the footage into a Quicktime movie, ready for any editing software, without any loss in resolution. I do so with an excellent piece of Mac software called MPEG Streamclip (free download on the web). You can even JKL your footage.

You can watch a trailer that I have cut using this method...
http://www.littlebrotherfilms.com/videos.htm

All the footage except the interview is originally HDV at 30 fps converted to 25 fps using MPEG streamclip and Avid DV.

[E_Tedeschi]

I've got a short film coming in next week shot on Sony HDV. I'm relishing and fearing it all at once.

Will a standard internal SATA drive cope with the data rate in FCP? HDV is meant to be a firewire solution... anyone out there doing the native HDV thing in FCP?

tingusa, aside from saving CPU work when doing transitions etc (due to the MPEG structure), what do you mean by "the quickest way to do it"? Quicker than what? I would imagine using megstreamclip (a very cool little progie, by the way) to convert EVERYTHING would also be time consuming?

Would love to hear some comments from people having worked in a "real-world" HDV project in FCP, rather than just tech-theory...

A very wise person once said: "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."

:)

e.

[Sycophant]

Stuff I know about this...

HDV is low bitrate (19Mbit (720p) or 25Mbit(1080i)).
HDV has very long GOP (6-frame for 720p, 15-frame for 1080i).
Sony and JVC HDV do not play together.
There is no 'professional' Sony HDV deck (ie. no HD-SDI, RS422 etc) it's firewire only.
Avid MC Adrenaline still lacks HDV support.
Most HDV editing solutions need to decode HDV to an intraframe compression first. Mastering back to HDV will therefore require a recompression - never a good idea.
One HDV problem I've heard of is drop-outs - given the long GOP, if there is a significant drop-out you lose 6 or15 frames of video.

About P2 - I think it is an incredibly silly format. The cards hold very little video, they are incredibly expensive and for that reason can't be archived. All your footage will exist only on whatever you copy it to (your edit suite, or another HD format tape). Panasonic make good HD pictures with their DVCProHD, but I feel P2 is a really bad step - we still like to hold on to our camera tapes, and with P2 you can't do it.

I'm generally dubious about the idea of getting an HD stream in 25MBit, so HDV seems a little suspect to me. Although I know of shows that have been shot on it, and look good - so it can work.

[E_Tedeschi]

Yeah, pretty much what I know from reading up on it.

FCP 5 claims to be able to edit HDV natively, without the need for an intermiediary codec. Pros to editing frame accurate HDV natively are obvious, I guess. Cons are that it is far more taxing on the CPU. If you make a cut somewhere other than an I frame, and then add a dissolve, say, all of a sudden that's a hell of a lot of work that can't be done just by hard drives, therefore slowing down the CPU while it "creates" an I frame.

I'm treating this as a one-off for now, and will be using the camera for ingesting (ugh!), so decks aren'ta huge worry...

There is so much conflicting info out there, too. Anyone actually got their hands dirty yet with this potentially messy format?

e.

[JWRL]

Bit of a late response, I know, but I've been off-line for a bit...

The current release of Avid Xpress Pro HD in the PC world also handles SOME flavours of HDV natively, and also allows free intercutting with formats like DVCPro 100 and SD in real time. I suspect that this or something like it is probably the shape of things to come.

[E_Tedeschi]

Originally posted by Sycophant
There is no 'professional' Sony HDV deck (ie. no HD-SDI, RS422 etc) it's firewire only.


Just on this - there is an interesting article by David Battistella on the Creative Cow. He's done some uncompressed HD vs Native firewire tests from a HDV source (including a deck control solution through a third party capture card). Based on the posted screenshots, firewire only decks might not be the end of the world!

http://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=1&page=http://www.creativecow.net/articles/battistella_david/recapturing_HDV/index.html

e.

[JWRL]

That's a good article, but it wasn't surprising that using an analogue path to transcode showed a quality hit copared to native HDV capture. His comments about bit depth and compression rates are worth noting too.

[E_Tedeschi]

Finally finished the short I was working on - shot HDV.

I decided to "go native", instead of using the intermediate codec offered by FCP5. Seemed to work fine, but *any* transition needed rendering. Even on the G5 (Dual 2Ghz, 2Gb RAM) it was quite time consuming. It seemed to want to re-render even between trasitions - "Conforming HDV Video" was the message I got to know intimately.

I did some testing with the footage on my Powerbook G4 setup and it was agonising. Just loading a clip into the viewer took 4 or 5 seconds, spooling through clips quickly just did not happen. Very obviously relying heavily on CPU cycles (and GPU?) to handle the footage.

I didn't even attempt to grade in HDV, as the rendering time would have sent me grey (it took 10 mins in DV, it would have taken at least an hour I reckon).

In short, HDV was overkill for the project, although it looked awesome. Every detail (and imperfection!) of the actors' faces was clear as crystal - I can see why it's becoming a popular format. I'm still not sold on the pluses of cutting natively, though. It seems to me in the interest of expediency, you'd be better off offlining in an SD codec?? And with a lot of stuff ending up delivered on SD anyway...

My two cents. Feel free to chime in and let me know the error of my ways (or Apple's ;) ).

[Richard Clark]

I have been filming and working with HD since early 2005, been travelling the American West on a project, the gear worked great, the quality is stunning and I look forward to the editing process on FCP HD. I have been on FCP since 1998 and I believe that Apple are completely rewriting the software as I speak, so don't go buying anything until it's out and match it to the new Quad Intel Macs, WOW! I am starting to build a Digital Studio in Masterton NZ. a whole new adventure, I love this shit!

[JWRL]

Oh, Enzo, Enzo, Enzo. If you wanted to cut HDV natively you should have gone Avid! You could have played your effects in real time without rendering!

Actually, seriously though... The feedback I'm seeing across all platforms is that render times using native HDV can blow out to a ridiculous degree. Since I'm exploring a new HD project and weighing up the pro's and con's of HDV vs. Panasonic's P2 solution this is all useful information.

Did you in fact get any sort of a feel for the respective render times of HDV vs. DV? If so, what were they?