Not only is HDV half the bitrate, it's also not full frame, and it uses a completetely different encoding strategy with MUCH simpler math required to decode on the fly. For most people this trifecta is too much to overcome... higher bitrate, larger frame size, far more complicated codec. It's nothing like HDV.

Quite the contrary. Moving to a 10bit codec in post can increase your quality as you manipulate the footage. The difference can me quite large and very easy to see. Especially if you are manipulating colors (white balance, color grading).


It seems I cannot convince you of what you're up against. So I wish you the best.

Interesting, I will need to look at some options regarding my computer...perhaps I need to run those adobe updates I've been delaying...

And Perrone, you have not failed in convincing me. I KNOW I should probably be editing in a 10-bit .avi codec, but I'm just not convinced that I NEED cineform to do that.

I'll work with proxies for now as its doing pretty fine. My question is, however, do I replace the proxy footage with the original 7d h.264 .mov files, or link them to DNxHD files? I'm judging by the information in this post that my various cuts will have less of an impact on the DNxHD files than the h.264 files.

What other 10-bit .AVI codecs are you aware of? I'm not aware of any.

The point of Proxy footage is that you have a low-res but accurate representation of the original or source footage on the timeline to work with. The inherent problem here is that you either need an AVCHD proxy set to work on and replace with the full-res AVCHD files, or you need a proxy DNxHD set which is DNxHD 36, but that will still run like a dog in Premiere. And you'd need to replace it with the full res DNxHD files instead of the original AVCHD sources.

Ideally, you'd want your proxy files to be encoded with the same codec as the source footage so the color space is the same, and so that the changes you make on the proxy will accurately reflect the changes on the full sized images. You just cannot guarantee this if your proxy is encoded differently from the full size files. I've done it that way and it was always more work.

There's lots of ways around this problem. But all will cost you time, convenience, or quality. I "can't" use Cineform, so I choose to sacrifice time, because I refuse to sacrifice quality.

You mention later on that you have not applied Adobe updates, which leads me to believe that you did not do a clean install of Windows 7. In which case, who knows how well your computer is running.

That said, I believe Cineform has a free trial. Check it out and see if does the job for you. Once you realize that it actually increases the quality of your image, not just the speed of editing, you may think it's worth the $100. I think there is no doubt that it is.

WinXP 32, but i do cuts only, and nothing longer than one minute (tv spots bascially).