FCP5: native HDV?
 

Word out there seems to be native HDV (ie MPEG2) for FCP5 - can anyone at NAB confirm or deny?

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=43105

That should help.

heath

Yup, native HDV, quite remarquable, Let's see if it can be monitored...

I watched the video tour for FCP 5 and DVDSP 4--Native HDV editing (!), looks like timecode in there, too and more! And HD-DVDs! (Probably need Tiger for all of this.) You can make native HDV DVDs, multiple-format DVDs and more! WOW!

heath

Yup, here it is:

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/...pro/specs.html

"Native long GOP MPEG-2 editing for HDV" well I have to say I didn't see that coming.

Heath, when you say "make native HDV DVDs" - does that mean now??

I'm trying to find the info on that topic...can't find it. Does that mean your standard DVD burner on Macs with DVD SP 4 can burn HD-DVD in blu-ray? if that is true I think I'm going to poop my pants.

EDIT:

I just found this quote on the new DVD Studio Pro 4 site -- "HD content on DVDs using existing drives and existing media".

Whoa! This is AWESOME - mix and match formats and uprez to HD NOW!
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/...ro/quicktours/

Apple is redeeming themselves!! It took forever to get HDV editing in FCP, but now they're giving us a great amount of tools. Thank you Apple, thank you Sony...Panny and JVC. All you guys are doing some great things...I think I'm going to cry.

Apple - those crazy fellas!
 

They're adding stuff as we speak!

This is brand new:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/...ative_HDV.html

The above video solves the editing in FCP problem. We can now wake up from this long nightmare!

That HDV video tour is awesome. Wish they had that up right away. :D

I still can't tell if timecode is supported.

HD DVD Support (requires G5)
 

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/...eoverview.html
"Go from native HDV to HD on DVD with no recompression from Final Cut Pro."

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/...pro/specs.html
For Authoring HD DVDs
* Macintosh computer with PowerPC G5 (dual processor recommended)
* 1GB of RAM (2GB recommended)
For Playing Back HD DVDs
* Macintosh computer with PowerPC G5
* Apple DVD Player v4.6
* Mac OS X v10.4 or later

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/...radeguide.html
H.264 HD DVD support
The ultra-efficient, next-generation video compression technology, H.264 provides outstanding HD quality at lower SD bit rates. DVD Studio Pro 4 integrates scalable H.264 encoding, so you can burn feature-length HD titles using existing drives with existing media and play them back using the Apple DVD player.

Anyone know any dvd players that currently support H.264 HD?

HD DVD playback only on mac OSX tiger for now
 

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/04...exec/index.php
"Finally, DVD Studio Pro 4, Final Cut Studio’s DVD authoring program, is the first commercially available DVD authoring software that lets users burn their HD projects to high definition DVDs based on the latest HD DVD specification, according to Apple.

Schoeben said that, for now, HD DVDs could only be play on a Macintosh using the new movie player application included with Mac OS X Tiger.

DVD Studio Pro 4 will be demonstrated at NAB with a prototype consumer HD DVD player from Toshiba set to debut later this year."

I believe, and I may be wrong, you need Tiger to help burn those DVDs.

heath

Got FCP5
 

Brothers,

I had faith on Apple and i order G5 system a week ago before NAB. Its fruitful!! I'm happy. Also i ordered FCP4.5 Apple sent me FCP5.0 with Tiger with no extra cost. Way to go Apple!!! My next step is on Panny or Sony or JVC.

Please recommend. I'm not getting sleep!!

Hari

I suppose this is all good news to some extent, but note that it doesn't make much sense to edit HDV in its native format because that's a slow and lossy solution compared to using an editing codec like AIC. Also note that the ability to burn HD content to standard DVDs has existed on the PC platform for at least several months, and unlike H.264 you can buy and distribute players today which support the Windows Media and DivX formats. So the important news here is that we're all moving rapidly toward effective HD editing, authoring and distribution, which is going to cause a huge shake-up in the videography industry.

Well, that was before FCP 5. I just sat through the demo and watched him edit native HDV with t/c showing. And he was 'scrubbing' the video forward and backward frame by frame. You can go straight from FCP5 to DVDSP4 without ever transcoding your HDV footage and so there is no generation loss from transcoding. Trust me, this is awesome stuff and I don't know the magic behind Apple's curtain, but magic it is!!

-gb-

Even if the performance is there, HDV is an inherently lossy format which will suffer noticeable artifacts if you make multi-generational changes. And since HDV isn't currently a practical distribution solution, there's no reason to maintain that format at any point in the production chain. It's nice to have the straight-through workflow for simple edits and output back to camera, but that's about it.