Editing with DV (AVI) or MPEG-2 (HD)

[Alan Russell]

Hi all,

I'm new to the forum.

Presently I am shooting with my Sony DCR-VX2100. I send my 60 minute tapes via the firewire to my hard drive that captures the entire reel of footage as an AVI (Raw)

Editing with RAW (AVI) is a breeze since there is no compression applied.

My concern is that the FX-1 Sony HD captures the video compressed as an MPEG-2 if I stand correct. Editing MPEG-2 seems to have its drawbacks compared to AVI (RAW) The Sony FX-1 does take HD to SD making it as an AVI if I stand correct. (Isn't that the same as AVI?)


I am always looking for quality in post production work and it seems to me the quality at the SD for both cameras is probably equal looking at it logically.

Therefore staying with my DCR-VX2100 and not buying the FX-1 HD will yield similiar results in post production when editing in the SD mode of 720x480.

Of course hooking the FX-1 to a LCD or PLASMA screen shows the max of this camcorder as far as HD goes. I'm not broadcasting any events here.

footnote: I trim all of my footage in Adobe Premier (or Virtual Dub) and then produce a DVD for viewing. (well that's the only compression my footage ever sees)

Please correct any of my statements if I am wrong

Thanks you all for any follow up comments.

Alan Russell

[George Ellis]

Some of the newer editors can edit the Mpeg natively without losing data. That is supposed to be an advantage of Avid Liquid. The latest version of Vegas and Premiere are supposed to behave in a similar fashion.

[Scott Vystrcil]

As does Edius Pro 3 by Canopus.

1 note...There is a substantial (IMHO) quality between SD and HDV. If you are editing with the standard .m2t files (native HDV files). You will see a quality difference. Also...if you film in HDV and downconvert to SD in transfer, (which the camera will do on the fly) then even though the HDV is being converted to SD it will still look better than standard SD.