Vixia HV40 Footage to DVD Via CS5
 

Hey, Everybody...

I recently bought a couple of Vixia HV40s, and I have a question about how I should go about shooting an upcoming event that I will be using Premiere CS5 to edit:

The footage is of a dance recital, shot on a large stage. It's a little under 4 hours long, and I want to put the final product out on two DVDs. Do I need to shoot this in standard definition or is there a way to shoot high def and still get a decent output from CS5 that will fit onto the DVD?

I'm concerned because, as this is a dance recital, there is a lot of movement, and I'm not sure if HDV compressed to fit on DVD would look lousy.

Thanks very much in advance for any tips, advice or suggestions.

Re: Vixia HV40 Footage to DVD Via CS5
 

HDV is going to be downconverted to SD for DVD anyway. Makes no difference. Dancers don't move fast enough to stress the codec.

That being said, I'd always shoot in HD and down-convert later, so you have HD originals.

Edit the whole thing as an HDV project of your PC can handle it. Use Dynamic Link to Send to Encore when you're done. You may need to do it as two separate timelines, one for each disc.

CS5 does a fine job of transcoding HDV to mpeg-2 DVD.

Re: Vixia HV40 Footage to DVD Via CS5
 

Cool! Thanks very much for the help, Adam. I was just recently messing around with Dynamic Link for the first time, and I wondered how effective it was.

This is really good news that I don't have to shoot in standard, as it sucks to have a camera with a decent little amount of capabilities, only to not be able to make use of them.

Thanks again!

Re: Vixia HV40 Footage to DVD Via CS5
 

DL messes up the fields. Export from Premiere and import into Encore.

Re: Vixia HV40 Footage to DVD Via CS5
 

I would never disagree with Ann, but that hasn't been my experience. Send to Encore via DL works perfectly... no field issues (Yes, it does say "lower" but I've found that makes no difference) or any others. Once in Encore, one click to make Blu-Rays and one more to make DVDs. Looks Near-HD when done.

At least for me. YMMV.

Anyway, it's easy enough to test and doesn't affect the shooting or editing process. When finished editing, try the easiest method first. If it doesn't look good, gradually move up the complexity scale until you get results you are happy with.

Re: Vixia HV40 Footage to DVD Via CS5
 

When DL has transfered the footage to Encore look at the source in the Edit Quality Presets.
DL has reversed the fields. HDV has become lower field.
When you do this with progressive footage like my GoProHD it becomes lower, when burning this to BluRay it gets reversed to upper.
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/attachme...1&d=1303511945

Re: Vixia HV40 Footage to DVD Via CS5
 

Once again, thanks for the great information, Ann & Adam!

I'm going to bookmark this thread for reference, then in June, when I'm working on the project, I can do like Adam suggested and experiment with the easiest process and work my way up.

The advice you folks give around here is invaluable, because I'm a rookie at dealing with HDV, and I would have probably just wimped out and shot the whole thing in standard and robbed myself of a much better look to the video.