How to work efficiently with HDV footage in Final Cut Pro 6
 

Hello everyone! I am fairly new to Final Cut & Mac. I have worked with Final Cut Pro 5 on my Powerbook G4 two years ago. But when I moved to HD, I switched to a PC with Adobe Premiere. Recently, I made the move back to Final Cut as I had problem with the stability of both Premiere 2.0 and CS3. I am really happy with it so far. In Premiere, I used the Cineform codec which performed very well. I also got a license for their MAC codec but unfortunately, I still have to capture under Windows.

Since I have not worked with HDV on the Mac before, I have a few questions which I hope people on these boards can answer.

1) How does Final Cut Pro 6 handle native HDV?

2) Is it beneficial to convert to Pro Res 422 (in terms of quality, but also in terms of editing speed, rendering time, in favor of processing speed etc.)

3) Which Pro Res 422 setting is advised? I will be capturing HDV through firewire and then recompress to Pro Res 422. The Canon XL-H1 squeezes 1080i into 1440x1080. So I figured I need the 1440x1080 setting. There are two options: normal and (HQ). The HQ files are around 4-times bigger then the native HDV file. The normal setting results in files around 2-times bigger. Coming from HDV, do I see the difference between normal and HQ?

4) What systems are recommended so I can work efficiently? i.e. how to setup the scratch disks. I currently have the applications installed on Disk 1, all scratch disks on Disk 2 + 3 (RAID 0) and final results on Disk 4.

5) Final Cut Pro 6 has an open timeline. I was working on a project with both HDV and SD footage and my project was set to DV PAL 48Khz, the HDV footage showed a lot of interlacing problems while the SD footage did not have these problems. Is there a way to get around this? I recompressed the HD footage to DV PAL and that solved it but is there a way to achieve this without recompressing?

I have the following system setup:

- Apple Mac Pro Quad-Core (2.66Ghz)
- 5GB of RAM
- ATI X1900XT 512MB
- Harddisks:
-1- Western Digital 750GB SE
-2- Western Digital 500GB RE2 (member of "VIDEO" - raid 0)
-3- Western Digital 500GB RE2 (member of "VIDEO" - raid 0)
-4- Western Digital 500GB SE
- Two Dell 2407 FWP 24" LCD monitors

Thanks for your help and don't feel obliged to answer all questions, I am already happy if one of them is answered!! I feel like a total newbie again and am eager to get back on track.

This has been covered before, multiple times. You should do a search.

The short story is, if you have a fast enough machine (and you do), you should work in native HDV and set your timeline render settings to render effects to ProRes codec.

This nets you the best of both worlds.

Thanks Nate. I have performed a search but could not find all the answers I was looking for, only some. But thanks for your help. I will try do search some more and see if I can find the information I need.

How do you set the effects to render to prores?

Thanks,
Scott

Sequence Properties/Render Settings (third tab)

Wow, that got me to crack the manual again and read up a little more on how it renders and the available options. Very cool.

Thanks for that!

Cheers,
Scott

Caution, this is an opinion...

The most effective way I have found to work with HDV Footage in Final Cut Pro is....easy setup.

If you have 1080i 60 footage, choose that one, 720P24, same thing, choose that one..etc
I have NO problems using Easy Setup with FCP and my HD110U, other than the typical JVC issues......hellllooooo JVC...anyone home?

Anyway, easy setup was designed to just work, to work with the format you have.
Try it.

Hey Jim,

I agree with you on most things but after reading about this setting in the manual, it is recommended (by apple) to set it as is suggested in this thread.

That setting is actually put there specifically for people editing HDV and XDCAM.

Cheers,
Scott

When you mention native HDV, are we talking about true native HDV or the Apple Intermediate Codec? The obvious differences are the size of the files.

HDV - 13GB - 60 minutes - 4:2:0
AIC - 40GB - 60 minutes - 4:2:0

or

Cineform - 40GB - 60 minutes - 4:2:2

That are the alternatives I am considering at this moment. I can capture Cineform files on my windows computer easily and transfer them.

So what would be the most efficient codec to use?

You answered your own question.

Native HDV is HDV. It's not cineform, it's not AIC. Those are different codecs. They aren't native HDV.

......Just as I said on your other thread.

Cheers,
Scott

Scott, you recommend rendering effects in prores what about exporting the final product? I have edited in 1080/60i and now I want to export the timeline in 720/30p do you recommend prores for the whole export?
So far my best rsults have been h264 in both picture quality and file size

it's depends on where you're going with it. Is it for the web, SD-DVD, HD-DVD.....etc...

Scott

For the Web. Im pleased with h264...but if prores can cut file size and save quality Im for that.

less multi generation loss on intensive editing?
Also faster rendering (at a parity of machine)?
Better responsiveness on timeline (at a parity of machine)?
Faster encoding to h264/SDdvd/other?

New to hdv. Just bought an XH-A1 for a SD job, but wanted to know what should be the good compromise as hd(v) workflow.
Many thanks