SD to HD - 'first steps' INFORMATION please !

[Shawn Levin]

Hello All,

I have been editing SD on PC (with Matrox Rt.x10 realtime capture card) for 4 years now..... along with Adobe Premiere Pro
I Purchased my XH-A1 a few months ago and would like to make a few steps forward to using/editing HD.

As all new things it sounds rather daunting !
There is so much talk of workflow options, intermediary codecs... expensive capture cards etc.

I would say that I AM technically proficient, but just not sure where to start spending the $.

I purchased a 22" LG LCD TV for 'looking' at my HD footage.

Could anybody help by offering any 'beginners' info.


What I would like to do is capture some HDV footage, and do a few simple cuts/dissolves - then I guess output it to my LCD TV for viewing (before I even consider any blue-ray drive).

So.......

1) is there anything at all I can do with PPro and a firewire input on my Matrox card (P4 2,8 MHz single core ! - even if it IS slowly)?
2) In considering moving over to Mac - can I start out without additional harware capture card?
3) What PC (and related) gear to buy in what order ?
4) Any other info for beginning ideas moving over to HD ?

Very Much appreciated !

Shawn

[Bo Sundvall]

Hi

I'm not sure what you can do with the Matrox card. I hava a PC myself with a simple FireWire input, a P4 3.4GHz, 1GB of RAM, one 160GB system drive and one 250GB capture/edit drive. I also use Premiere Pro 2.0 for edit and HDVSplit for capturing.

I've never have had any problems at all with this system. I can capture and edit 50i/25f (PAL country). Output is either done back to camcorder (XH-A1) or as DVD (SD). I also do some colour corrections from time to time.

As I do filming for a hobby I don't I'm not so concerned that rendering can take some time, especially when colour correction. For me, time is not money, as filming is not my proffession.

There are two things though, regarding PP2:

- Even small projects takes long time to load in PP2, up to 3 minutes (!) for a project containing about 100 clips.
- Rendering (transcoding) and output to tape will take about 3 times the movie length.

There is some kind of rumour that HDV is hard for the system to handle and also eats hard disk space. But for simple cuts/transitions my system works perfect. Hard disk space for HDV is the same as for DV, that is about 13GB/hour.


Good luck and hope you enjoy your new camcorder!!


Regards,

/Bo

[Bo Sundvall]

Hi

I'm not sure what you can do with the Matrox card. I hava a PC myself with a simple FireWire input, a P4 3.4GHz, 1GB of RAM, one 160GB system drive and one 250GB capture/edit drive. I also use Premiere Pro 2.0 for edit and HDVSplit for capturing.

I've never have had any problems at all with this system. I can capture and edit 50i/25f (PAL country). Output is either done back to camcorder (XH-A1) or as DVD (SD). I also do some colour corrections from time to time.

As I do filming for a hobby I don't I'm not so concerned that rendering can take some time, especially when colour correction. For me, time is not money, as filming is not my proffession.

There are two things though, regarding PP2:

- Even small projects takes long time to load in PP2, up to 3 minutes (!) for a project containing about 100 clips.
- Rendering (transcoding) and output to tape will take about 3 times the movie length.

There is some kind of rumour that HDV is hard for the system to handle and also eats hard disk space. But for simple cuts/transitions my system works perfect. Hard disk space for HDV is the same as for DV, that is about 13GB/hour.

The best you can do is to hook up your camcorder to the computer and try, you will not destroy anything!

Good luck and hope you enjoy your new camcorder!!


Regards,

/Bo

[Shawn Levin]

Hi Bo,

Thanks for your reply.

I guess my version of PPro is v7.0 (one of the first versions - not PP2)
does PP2 require any additional plugin for HDV?

My PC specs are similar to yours and my matrox has firewire (among other analog inputs and realtime editing features)

I'm also in PAL-land.

How does HDVsplit work?

At this point (before I upgrade my PC or go for MAc)
time isn't an issue either - well not for HDV as it wont form part of my paying customers work.

Any other 'beginners' info appreciated.
Shawn

[Don Palomaki]

Consider upgrading your version of PPro to one that supports HD. (PPro 7.0 was probably the first release following Premiere 6.5, and HD support is likely problematic at best, Adobe may not even have maintenance patches for it on their web site.) That may well be the least cost way to get into HD editing, and minimize your learning curve. The Firewire input should be OK for capture of HD from the camcorder. However, I don't know whether or not the MATROX card will be of any use to you for HD work. You may be able to find some info on that question at some of the Matrox user forums.

The HD image has a lot more data, so any rendering will take a lot longer than SD.

[Chris Hurd]

Moved from Canon XH to HD Editing.