Z1 HDV to SD workflow
 

Ok, so I've finally got a computer capable of handling HDV, how the hell do i do it? Prem Pro doesn't provide scene detect when capturing HDV, so I've been using a trial version of Cineform AspectHD.
What i really want to do is capture as HDV (With scene detect), edit in an SD timeline so that I can zoom into and reframe the footage from the HD without losing quality, then output in SD.
Whatever i do seems to look really dodgy and nowhere near as good as if i just downconvert from camera to SD and edit and output in SD. What am i doing wrong?

If i convert to cineform intermediate do i at some stage have to convert back to original HDV before converting to SD?
Could someone who films in HDV and outputs to DVD successfully tell me how they do it!

First of all, with respect to scene detect, if you want to capture in "native" m2t footage, get HDVSplit. Latest version is 0.75, I think, and its free. Just do a search on web.

Second, when I am going to DVD, the best way I've been able to do it is bring the captured hdv material into a Standard DV project and rescale and crop if necessary there. Remember, your Project monitor will not necessarily. give you the full effect, depending on your settings.

What I do from there is actually render everything to a final standard definition DV file, but others try to take it staight to a DVD throuigh Premiere.
I have had better results using the resulting DV file and conforming it to a DVD project in DVD Architect, and Vegas add on I got with Vegas Movie Studio Platinum for about $100.00.

You just have test different approaches until you find one that satisfies you.

Actually capturing the HDV material by down conversion from your camera isn't bad either.

Follow up:

One of the things I had a problem with was accepting the fact that my nice HDV material, when going to standard DVD, was standard definition. The only way to really compare it to see if you need to alter your work flow is to shoot a standard definition scene with the Z1 and see if there is the difference you think is there.

but its the fact that the picture looks much softer than when i just downconvert in-camera to SD.

I've tried HDVSplit but it just doesn't work. It records about 2 frames then says "no further info coming from camera"

After editing cineform-captured HDV footage in an SD timeline, how should i go about exporting? When i select "Cineform HD" as the export codec it gives the wrong aspect ratio and looks really soft and horible

HDVSplit problem may be due to your system limitations. What are you running ?

If you are editing in an SD time line, why would you export back out to a Cineform HD Codec ??. You should be exporting to SD DV or mpg, for your DVD project.

I have to admit I haven't used Cineform with my system set up for that purpose, as I am editing "native" HDV files. I can use PPro 1.51 with that codec to edit in, but I prefer to use HDV capture in PPro 2.0.

The pros frown upon using "native" HDV edit, but I have had decent results using it wth PPro 2.0.

I'm running a Pentium D 940 3.2G dual core system with 2 GB RAM, XP Pro, and a ton of hard disk. I would hope that it would be able to cope with a little program like HDVSplit!

I haven't tried native editing, because i really need to use the scene detect function.

I've tried exporting as DV-AVI but it still looks rubbish