HD or No HD
 

I have a quick question
Say you are shooting in HDV... what will happen if you capture it in HDV to your computer, edit it, but then export it using compressor as a regular SD-DVD file and burn it on a regular DVD instead of using an HDDVD burner to get the full quality? I'm pretty sure that there will be a quality decrease...but is this any better quality than shooting SD or downscaling HD to SD-> capturing SD -> exporting as SD-DVD? Hopefully this makes sense. thanks

Colton, I think capturing in HDV is definately the way to go. That way you can later sell the client an HD version when it's more of a standard. And you won't have to re-capture the tapes.

However, if you are capturing HDV, editing HDV, then exporting through compressor to SD you will have to fine tune your compressor skills. I've done a few videos this way and just using the stock compressor settings (2 pass, 16:9) the resulting video was a little rough (motion artifacts, jittery playback, etc)

You will have to use the custom settings and increase the motion quality, resizing, and frame blending settings.

Colton,

I think I would down res out of the camera, like the Z1, right to DV and edit that way. Less expensive software, easier and more straight forward, and you will have all of your editing points, timeline cuts, for the HD edit, if you actually do one. Besides, by that time you may want to re-edit somewhat. I like the old saying, "Keep it simple!"

Mike

Thanks for the opinions. Also, if I wanted to export my HDV edit to an HDDVD burner where could I find one of these? Do they have HDDVD burners available?

Got a spare $2,500.00?!?!?!

They are just starting to come out, but of course most will not be able to afford them for a number of years yet. Then your customers will probably have no way to view them either.

Mike

Mike has a good point, but if you have the final cut software and a fast computer already, I don't see why not do everything in HDV. The filesizes are practically the same and another bonus I've found is when editing HD on the SD timeline, you have so much more to work with (you can zoom in and basically get two 'angles' out of each shot).

The only small downside is the final render time...

Can one of you comment on the final SD quality when shot in HD, rgeardless of whether you down convert on the final export or when you import the footage. Does it look noticeably better over footage shot by a vx2100 or PD170 as an example?

Lowell,

I had posted a question before about using HD on the SD timeline and never got a response. Any tricks in FCP to do what your mentioning about resizing it and what not or do you just capture it and then drop it in the timeline with the rest of the footage? You also mentioned storing the video in HD for a later sale. While I don't think there would be much of a market for that as I can imagine many people wanting to put more money into their wedding five years down the road (maybe your clients are different...), how are you storing the files so they can be used later. Are you just gettig a new hard dirve for each wedding or do you export the final project as an HD file and just keep that?

Thanks for the tips.

You can notice a difference, if you fine tune the compressor settings. It's nothing huge (that I've seen yet) but it does look cleaner, and besides you get to pan around the 1920x1080 footage.

But I'm basing this all off my experience with only the XL-H1, XL1, XL2, and GL2

When I edit HD & SD together I usually cut all my clips on an HD timeline, then create a new sequence under the SD 16:9 anamorphic settings, and just copy and paste my HD sequence cuts to the SD sequence. FCP automatically sets all the clips to 50% to fit the screen. You can then adjust the clips between 50-100%. You will definately need a fast computer to make the workflow smooth. I'm running a dual 2.7 g5 and it's been pretty good for this kind of editing.

I've only had a few clients say they are interested in an HD version later, so I've got plenty of room for those few. (I'm running about 1.5 tb)

Thanks for the info.

I just have a couple questions to clarify.

How does cutting the HD and SD on an HD timeline work, isn't the SD footage much too small?

When you later go to SD 16:9, how does the footage from all the non-HD cams you shoot with work as only the XL2 has native 16:9?

As for storage, are you saving the final project or clips as individual files or do you keep the whole thing around? I'm using more storage than you and running a quad and I can't see myself being able to keep more than two weddings in full without running out of room for the weddings coming in.

Thanks

patrick

Two questions

1st question: Why do you bring your HDV clips to the SD timeline?

2nd question: What's better or higher quality?
1. Capture by downscaling your video from HDV -> to SD, edit SD, output SD.
2. or capture HDV, edit HDV, and output SD?
Is this basically gonna bring the same results?

Colton, for most clients, they may not be able to see any difference in the downconverted clips, compared to the hdv to sd compressed clips.

Bringing HDV clips into a SD timeline, allows you to basically pan & scale your shots. (i.e. maybe you have a midshot of the bride and groom together, on the SD timeline you can cut from a mid shot to a close up with just one clip)

You can view an example here: http://www.ehansenproductions.com/weddingshow.htm


Patrick,

Sorry if I was unclear...I don't cut my SD on an HD timeline, but sometimes we do mix the XL H1 with the GL2 on an SD timeline.

The GL2 footage is very hard to mix, we shoot with it in 16x9 mode and with a wide angle lens...I wouldn't recommend it..but until we buy another HD camera it's how we do our 2 camera SD weddings. Our clients can't see a difference, but I know anyone here could tell.

Visit http://www.ehansenproductions.com/ and click on the Salt Lake clip. You'll see an example of the XL H1 and GL2 mixed...take into consideration that the .flv compression is crap...and we are currently working to fine-tune our streaming videos.

For the weddings we do..(usually mormon temple weddings), we can fit the entire wedding into just a tape and a half or less...so there's plenty of room for that.

Is your 16:9 anamorphic SD sequence DV?

hah, I just re-read that post....I did not write that correctly, I meant I use the DV NTSC Anamorphic sequence in FCP.

Would it give a higher quality image to go to something like a DVCPRO50 sequence, instead of DV? I use FCP too.

I have the newest version of BitVice (1.7?) which is supposed to be able to encode an HD quicktime movie (HDV, AIC, DVCPROHD, any format QT can decompress and feed to the BitVice compression engine) and create an SD MPEG-2 file. I haven't gotten to test it yet, but I think there might be a demo you can download and test if you don't have it. http://www.innobits.se