Who's Editing HDV and with what software & success?
 

Is anyone successful editing with the file that theese greaat cameras create?

If so, would you be so kind as to tell us what you have used and what your machine's specs are.

Thanks

DBK

Vegas Video. Win2000 Pro PC with AMD 2100+ cpu and 1gig DDR memory. Renders a little slower than DV material, but still acceptable.

M
 

MPEG Edit Studio is a stripped down version of a Japan company called KDDI. The software that comes with the camera is a lite version. The full version sells form $7500.00 but the lite version is full of bugs probably introduced by striping out all the features.
There are work arounds to the bugs but the workaround totally suck. Let me know if you need to know them.

Just started playing with Adobe Premier with Aspect Plug-in. Works fantastic! Very fast, but costly.

Don't know Vegas, but would recommend AP with Aspect Plug-in.

Sasha

Sasha,

I’m very interested in your impressions of the Aspect plug-in. I’ve tried working with MPEG Edit Studio LE and although I’ve not found it terrible full of bugs, it is pretty clunky. I’m very interested in the new release of Premiere Pro and Encore. I’m hoping that with the Aspect Plug-in that this may be the real E-ticket for editing. Please keep us informed.

DBK,

I'm very new to Adobe Premier. Using v6.5 now with Pro on its way. So far the Plug In has work outstanding. I've had some beginner level questions/problems and Aspect support has walked me through the solution just fine.

At this point I have to learn some of AP's more advanced features to truly test Aspect plugin but so far it is working great and I have no reservations about completing the purchase.

Looking at Aspect's support board, I'm surprised more people aren't posting questions. I wonder how many people are trying/using the Aspect Plug-In? Apparently not many...yet.

Sasha

Can both aspect and vegas export the video back into the m2t and mpeg formats?? Any advantages of aspect over the significantly cheaper vegas video?

Instead of working with mpeg files, I convert them to AVIs and voila - super easy, real-time editing and previews in pretty much any NLE.

Mine is Adobe Premiere Pro - recommended (but be ready to shell out extra $300 for Dolby 5.1 export via the bundled Minnetonka plug-in, which stops working after 3 tries.)

1. Import your HD footage using the bundled HD Capture Utility. It creates mpeg-ts files on your hard drive.

2. Convert them to MPEG2 using free, super-fast HDTVtoMPEG2 utility. It accepts batch processing so you won't have to convert each file individually. These MPEG2 files are still in DVD-compatible format, so you cannot import them directly into Adobe, hus next step:

3. Convert MPEG2 files into .avi using free DVD2AVI utility and fast, lossless HUFFYUV codec.

All aforementioned utilities and codecs are easily downloadable from the Web - just do the search.

The end result: you got your universally accepted, HD .avi files, now edit them without a $1200 plug-in.

Downside:

1. these utilities will probably not work on Macs, and
2. resulting AVI file size.

Comparison for every 6 minutes of 1280x720p30 HD footage:

MPEG-T- 1Gb
MPEG2 - about 5% smaller
HUFFYUV compressed AVI - 12Gb (so you need a 120Gb drive for every hour of HD footage.)

So you definitely pay the price in form of storage requirements/drive speed when using AVIs.

I think this is a good solution hands down because it frees you from the restrictions of MPEG2 format and back into the free world of AVI viewing/processing :)

Oh, and the price is right.

Anyone who sees something wrong with this way of getting from MPEG-TS to AVI, please opine - I'd love to learn a shortcut, if any.

Please note that I do not account for demuxing of the sound, as I use double-system in any case (my production sound is NOT recorded by the camera.) I'm not being snooty - this is just a reality of life that no matter what you do, you cannot possibly pull a decent (no hiss/low noise/wide dynamic diapason) sound from *any* camera that is sub-$25,000 at this time. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

BTW, the ultimate SOUND authority is Mr Jay Rose who is a columnist at DV.com, and is very active and helpful in their Sound forum he moderates. He is also a terrific guy: everyone of you who has sound-related questions, just try to lure him into participating in this forum, he'll be THE ONE to actually help you! (I'm not affiliated with Jay in any way.) His web site is http://www.dplay.com (disregard the looks - Jay is sound professional, not web designer...)

Great! Wonderful tips. I tried that HDTVtompeg2 and renamed the files to .ts, but for some reason the program just closes after I try to add them to the batch list. I am only using small 10 second files I downloaded off the internet as my camera is being shipped today. Do the files have to be larger or am I missing something?

<<<-- Originally posted by Lisa Lee : Can both aspect and vegas export the video back into the m2t and mpeg formats?? Any advantages of aspect over the significantly cheaper vegas video? -->>>

Today only CineForm's Aspect HD can directly export back to DVHS and to the JVC camera by producing compliant M2T files as one of the export options. We do expect Sony to Vegas to support M2T exports, yet Vegas will never match the real-time performance of Aspect HD. If you are using the JVC camera for any production work, the real-time editing performance of Aspect HD will pay for itself very quickly. Even the simplist productions benefit from 30fps real-time color correction, dissolves and titles (for complex productions Aspect HD can several simultaneous real-time 30fps video and graphics layers.)

Aspect HD has a 30-day evaluation/money-back guarantee, so you can find out if it meets (or exceeds) your needs at no risk.

<<<-- Originally posted by Lisa Lee : Great! Wonderful tips. I tried that HDTVtompeg2 and renamed the files to .ts, but for some reason the program just closes after I try to add them to the batch list. I am only using small 10 second files I downloaded off the internet as my camera is being shipped today. Do the files have to be larger or am I missing something? -->>>

Lisa be sure you are using version 1.09 I have tried other versions and they don't work with m2t files. Here is a link to the download in the avs forum.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=227837

The thread is huge so search for 1.09 once the page is loaded.

Even with this version it seems to strip out audio tracks and at this point I have been unable to resolve this issue.

Mike

Hi Alex,
Did you dump a temporary file >2GB with huffyuv compressinon? I have problem with large files. I have no problem with importing large files to P6.5, editing, and then compressing to .ts mpeg stream. But sometimes I need to process a partially edited file in the VirtualDub. Frame server is bad for dumping large file. Once I dumped this way and tried to play the file and got a message: "Frameserver not servig." How such a file "knows" it. Had to restart project, start server and .... then I could play this 5 GB file. :-) :-o .

Yep, got it to work thanks for the tip about 1.09 working and the earlier version not.

And, I also can't get audio with this method. At least I can play a little while before I have to decide between vegas and premiere.

Andre, Premiere Pro did not give me any problems regardless the file size (yet).

On the other hand, I never tried frame serving, so can't help you on this, sorry.

What do you use VirtualDub for on these files?

Alex, I use VirtualDub for motion correction. In skydiving freefal my head dosn't work like an ideal tripod. It is OK for showing jumps but for 3D video - using Pulfrich effect - I have to correct for tiny vibrations that distract eyes from 3D perception.
In the GR-HD1, the optical stabilizer destabilizes video when in freefal. I simply glued the floating lens in place and got much better results. My old, Sony's comcorder stabilizer was much better (but not HD). BTW, skydiving community warns agains using JVC camcorders for video in freefal - yea, they have poor stabilizers, but there is no other HDTV camcorder on the market that I could use. So I eat the frog and suffer :-) .
Mainly, one jump is below 2GB limit, but sometimes I join few jumps together so I can use digital stabilizer (very slow - 3 fps) when I am making another jump. It is fast sport, and other skydivers want to see their performance ASAP ... and I still have to pack my parachute :-).
On other note: I have, but don't use PPro. The .ts outputs have 1440x960 resoltion- looks like double DV size. Have not such problems with P6.5 and 1.3b MC mpeg encoder.

Andre, I do agree that HD1's OIS actually resonates and makes image *worse* than without OIS (off pos.)

In HD10, it seems better to me - but I still wouldn't rely on it...

As for the image stabilization in Software, I saw something like that in my AE 5.5 Production, but never used it. Whatever it is, should work pretty well - I have high regards to AE 5.5 in all aspects from experience...