Mixing HDV and DV clips

[Heath McKnight]

Kevin,

I'm forever cautious of what something promises vs. real world applications. My friend and I used a free trial of Aspect HD, and it delivered on many counts. Though I'll stick with Apple, if I went to the PC realm, Aspect HD would be in my toolkit.

heath

[David Newman]

Thanks Heath.

Kevin,
I'm not saying their hardware isn't without uses, it is just not as many differing features that you might think. Remember software in always more flexible than hardware (somewhat Canopus's own message.) Mixing a range of video formats is simply a software issue (yes we do that -- i.e. you can add DV to an HDV project.) I'm even sure Canopus is doing that in software (i.e. don't need the hardware.) Real-time up/down conversion is a good hardware function, yet we can do that in software. I understand the belief that you must getting lots of cool stuff for $4000, but times have changed. Now adding the MPEG encoder option would be cool. But without that there appears to be little (if any) acceleration offer by the hardware, that is why the system spec is for a dual Xeon.

Note: The Canopus technical spec page for this product has listed the 1080 HDV mode with the wrong horizontal resolution.

[Kevin Shaw]

David: I'll leave it up to other people to decide whether Canopus is offering something useful for $4000, but I know at least one person who thinks the live HDTV output alone is a significant plus. Is there a way to get full-resolution HDTV output while editing in Cineform, and if so what video card or other hardware do you recommend for that? Also, can you do real-time output back to HDV tape from a Cineform timeline?

[David Newman]

To answer the last part first, no you must first export to MPEG2TS, but then Canopus needs to do that as well (in software). Of course the encoder option may allow real-time (or accelerated) encoding to M2T, that would be cool, but it doesn't impact editing time much (export times are such a small fraction of editing times.)

Some ATI or NVidia cards now have HDTV output, yes CineForm supports that with Aspect HD. NVidia was using Apsect HD to show off their new HDTV video cards in recent tradeshows. I think the reason to purchase to Canopus product is that you prefer EDIUS over Premiere Pro, and that is perfectly fine and reasonable approach.

[Kevin Shaw]

David: if I'm reading the Canopus web site correctly (see link), they're promising real-time output to any standard video format, including HDV. To me that could be a significant advantage in terms of both time savings and convenience in some situations, just as real-time DV output is handy for DV projects if you need to record back to tape. In my case I don't care so much about that these days since I just output to DVD and VHS, but again there are people who want more advanced features.

I'd say you'd do best to refrain from any direct comparisons to the Canopus hardware solution until it starts shipping in November and we see exactly what it can do. I think some people will consider it a bargain for the price, while many of us will conclude as you suggest that Cineform is a better value.

http://www.canopus.us/US/products/EDIUS_HDV_SP/pa_EDIUSPro_HDVSP_02.asp

[Heath McKnight]

Uh, everyone, it's Heath, not Health...Oh well, better than Keith.

Good posts, everyone!

heath

[David Newman]

Ooopps! Sorry about that typ-o.