Can you just edit straight HDV
 

I assume you can. Everyone is always talking about how hard it is to edit long gop HDV. And I see everyone wants to to convert to something else like DVCPRO-HD.

But can you edit a whole project in HDV? Capture, edit, effects....I've got a MAC PRO so I figure I have the horsepower. And I worry about my footage degrading if I convert. Shooting with an A1 btw. Just looking for comments.

Thanks

Isn't that the hallmark of Final Cut Pro HD? That it edits HDV natively?

I can only do edit from Final Cut Express/iMovie HD which first converts it into the Apple Intermediate Codec.

Yes, that's the big difference between Final Cut Pro and the rest (Final cut express and iMovie HD). The Pro version can do everything in HDV, while the others always use the Apple intermediate codec (AIC).

Dino

I have a Dual 2.0 ghz G5 and I'm able to capture the HDV stream from my Canon HV20 in either Final Cut Express or iMovieHD in "real time" or near real time.[Or so it tells me.]

That is, I don't have to wait for it to render/transcode.

Once there, I can go ahead and work with HDV pretty much just like DV.

Of course, the big kick in the pants, is that once I'm done with the project, I now have to convert into whatever format I want. Which take time.

This of course takes some rendering time. I tried 20 minutes of it a edited project and then made a HD DVD with the footage and it looks pretty good--so I'm trying to figure what kind of tangible loss we get from the extra conversion steps using the AIC.

During capture, it should be (more or less) real time regardless of whether its being stored as MPEG2 (native) or AIC.
I don't think you get a lesser quality by using AIC instead of native HDV (MPEG2). There was a review somewhere on the net (I forget where - need to dig it up again) that showed single, identical frames grabbed with either AIC or native, and you couldn't tell the difference. The differences are really just amount of hard drive space needed (12 GB/h for MPEG2 (1080i60) and 49 GB/h for AIC (@1080i60) and time needed to process filters, effects etc and transcoding.

How long did that take for you? I tried the "Print to Video" function yesterday in final cut express; I had some 5 minutes footage (1080F30) grabbed using AIC and it took my G5 (dual 2.3) roughly an hour to transcode back to MPEG2.... that was kind of a brutal awakening for me...

Dino

[QUOTE=John C. Chu;659068]Isn't that the hallmark of Final Cut Pro HD? That it edits HDV natively?

Not really. One traditional "hallmark" of Final Cut Pro is that it allows you to edit in ANY resolution. You can edit DV, HDV, Uncompressed - the software doesn't care really. It's just a matter of the throughput of your system up to a point. All FCP wants to see is one consistent codec per timeline - whatever you determine that should be. (Other software approaches are better for mixiing codecs in a single timeline, something the current FCP doesn't allow - we'll see if this is addressed next week)

As data streams get larger, I expect FCP to grow into them pretty seamlessly. There's expectation that the 4K advocates (RED?) might be able to cut on an 8-core FCP system pretty soon. But I'm guessing here.

Again, we'll see what they announce next week at NAB.

Exporting to m2v and ac3 for making a HD DVD, 21 minutes of footage took about 3.5 hours[If I remember correctly]? I think I set the setttings to 22mps max 28mps, 2-pass VBR?

"Scotty, we need more power!"

Also, if you want to use the 24p mode, then you will have to convert or capture to an intraframe compression like AIC(can be done on the fly) or DVCPro HD (will need additional hardware for this). At least if you are going to use Cinema Tools to do your pulldown - Cinema Tools won't do pulldown on interframe compression codecs like HDV.

Kurt,

I'm not sure that you are entirely correct about the 24p(f) capture in FCP.

I have captured 24f from a Canon XLH1 into FCP latest version with no problem and no need to mess around transcoding.

Best

Harry.