HV10 Capture and editing software

[Jeff Simon]

I am trying to figure out what software to use to capture and edit HDV from my HV10.

I have used the Pinnicle 10 software that came with the camera for capture and editing. The capture separates the video and sound which causes problems when I want to preview the raw video outside of Pinnicle 10. I ended up converting it to MPEG2 (which is an extra step and more storage) . Under windows media player the sound and video aren't smooth. When I play the same file with Mplayer it seems fine. The editing capabilies are somewhat limited.

I have demoed Sony Vegas Platnium and Vegas 7.0d. While I could capture the video. After printing to avi and mpeg the playback video and audio were choppy.

I then demoed Premiere Pro and Premiere Elements 3.0. I have yet to be able to capture with Premiere pro. It seems that the startup settings aren't correct and it does not recognize the HV10. Does anyone have the correct settings? Premiere elements allows the capture, but I have not rendered anything yet.

I am on a windows PC. I have not tried FCP. I'm open to any recommendations for which software will work the best with the HV10. For now all my video will be stored and played on a harddrive. Eventually it will be burned to HD DVD.

Thanks for your input.

[Rune Austefjord]

I use HV10 and Premiere Pro 2.0.
I just load up the adobe HDV 1080i project setting and capture inside PPro2.0.
Never had a problem with it, using a cheap firewire card (under $50).

[Jeff Simon]

Originally Posted by Rune Austefjord

I use HV10 and Premiere Pro 2.0.
I just load up the adobe HDV 1080i project setting and capture inside PPro2.0.
Never had a problem with it, using a cheap firewire card (under $50).

I don't see an adobe HDV 1080i project setting. My choices are:

Adobe HD-SDI
Adobe SD-SDI
Canon HDV
DV - 24P
DV - NTSC
DV - PAL

Do you use the Adobe HD-SDI 1080i 30?

If not, how did you get the Adobe HDV settings?

[Lloyd Coleman]

Use the Adobe HVD folder and the HDV 1080i 30 (Sony 60i) setting.

[Colin Gould]

I use Ulead MSPro8, which is supposed to do a good job on long-GOP MPEG editing, although it doesn't do native M2T like Vegas (so it converts to plain MPG2 HD on capture.)
It has background proxy-file generation if you prefer to ease editing speed on lower-end systems.

So far it seems to work OK, except that due to the MPG conversion during capture, I lose all the DV-like shot metadata (eg timestamp, and thus ability to do auto split-by-scene in the timeline or media bin to easily split up all the shots.) I can still split via content analysis, but that's slow.
This is my major workflow complaint, and I'm not sure it will be resolved.
Their lower-end VideoStudio product seems to handle HDV the same way, despite having slightly newer technology.

However, the HDVsplit author recently released a Canon patch, so I might be able to split-by-scene during capture instead... I have to test that out.

In any case, Ulead has free trial downloads for both of those, so you can try it as well. (VideoStudio has a specific HV10 patch so the trial might not work 100% without it, try mspro eg to capture.)
VideoStudio has a vista compatibility patch also, but none yet for MSPro, so FYI.


I've tried the Vegas trial download so far as it has split-by-scene and native M2T editing, which is great, but the different UI approach & workflow has me a bit stumped, not to mention the large price tag to swap NLEs :)

[Jeff Simon]

Originally Posted by Lloyd Coleman

Use the Adobe HVD folder and the HDV 1080i 30 (Sony 60i) setting.

I don't have an Adobe HVD folder as a selection option -- just the Adobe HD-SDI. There is an HDV update for v1.5.1, but I don't see one other than for JVC and Canon progressive scan. Did you upgrade your PPro 2.0 from V1.5.1? Is there somewhere else that I can download the preset folder you are referring to?

[Rune Austefjord]

In PPro2.0 I have an Adobe HDV group, and I select HDV1080i 25 (Sony 50i).
I used to use Premiere 6.5, but uninstalled that and installed clean PPro 2.0.
I have collected my Adobe HDV presets in a RAR file for you, can be downloaded from http://xrun.mine.nu/video/Adobe_HDV.rar
Just extract the Adobe HDV folder and files from there, and place the folder at Adobe Premiere Pro\Settings\en_US\Adobe HDV.
Not entirely sure the presets from PPro2.0 can be used in 1.5.1, but its worth a try.
Hope this helps.

[Jeff Simon]

Originally Posted by Rune Austefjord

In PPro2.0 I have an Adobe HDV group, and I select HDV1080i 25 (Sony 50i).
I used to use Premiere 6.5, but uninstalled that and installed clean PPro 2.0.
I have collected my Adobe HDV presets in a RAR file for you, can be downloaded from http://xrun.mine.nu/video/Adobe_HDV.rar
Just extract the Adobe HDV folder and files from there, and place the folder at Adobe Premiere Pro\Settings\en_US\Adobe HDV.
Not entirely sure the presets from PPro2.0 can be used in 1.5.1, but its worth a try.
Hope this helps.

I added the presets you sent me, but when I try to select them from PPro 2.0 trial it says a serious error occured. Are there any other files I would need?

[Helge Schneider]

What are the differences between:

HDV1080i 25 (Sony 50i)
HDV1080i 30 (Sony 60i)


I've got a PAL version of the hv10 and it's bucking on the PC screen every ~0.5s when I export it throgh pp2 to WMA9 :-( is that maybe related? I've a dual core cpu and 2 gb of ram - should be enough to playback?

best regards,

[Rune Austefjord]

Originally Posted by Jeff Simon

I added the presets you sent me, but when I try to select them from PPro 2.0 trial it says a serious error occured. Are there any other files I would need?

Well if you run PPro2.0 then it should have these presets allready.
I have nothing more than what came with PPro2.0.

[Rune Austefjord]

Originally Posted by Helge Schneider

What are the differences between:

HDV1080i 25 (Sony 50i)
HDV1080i 30 (Sony 60i)


I've got a PAL version of the hv10 and it's bucking on the PC screen every ~0.5s when I export it throgh pp2 to WMA9 :-( is that maybe related? I've a dual core cpu and 2 gb of ram - should be enough to playback?

best regards,

HDV1080i30 uses a 15 frame GOP I think, and HDV1080i25 uses a 12 frame GOP.
Apart from this they're basically the same. Same resolution, just different framerate.
I use a Pentium D 820 (2.8GHz) dualcore CPU, and 2GB ram, and my graphics adapter is an Nvidia 7600GT with 256MB video ram.
If your CPU is better than mine then possibly your graphics adapter may be too slow or have too little ram. I belive 128MB video ram will allow playback of 1440x720, and to get full 1920(1440 anamorphic)x1080 you need 256MB video ram.

I had an Nvidia 6800GX with 128MB video ram before, and it would not play back HDV1080 smoothly, but was ok with 720.

When I encode the final HDV product I usually use the least demanding codec that most people can play without installing something in Windows, so I usually choose WMV at 5mbps. This datarate is sufficient for displaying low and medium intensity action/movement in the video, and for high intensity action/movement I usually encode at 8mbps, which is more than enough.
Remember, HDV MPEG2 is 25mbps, and the WMV is a newer, different, and much more effective codec than MPEG2. If I use MPEG2 for the final edited product, I usually encode at 10mbps, which is enough for high intensity action/movement in the video.

The higher the bitrate the higher demands on your computer. It may be that you can't play the raw HDV MPEG2 video file smoothly, but after rendering out to a smaller file/lower bitrate, such as WMV, you may have better luck.

Long post and a little OT, hope I helped a little bit.

[Helge Schneider]

Originally Posted by Rune Austefjord

I use a Pentium D 820 (2.8GHz) dualcore CPU, and 2GB ram, and my graphics adapter is an Nvidia 7600GT with 256MB video ram.
If your CPU is better than mine then possibly your graphics adapter may be too slow or have too little ram. I belive 128MB video ram will allow playback of 1440x720, and to get full 1920(1440 anamorphic)x1080 you need 256MB video ram.

I'm using a E6600 Dual Core (2x2.4GHz), 2 GB RAM and a an nvidia 7950GX2 graphics card. I can't believe that this is not enough to play it :)

I see this twitching when playing a 10mbit/s WMV9 with 1920x1080 file generated with Adobe Encoder from pp2.

Originally Posted by Rune Austefjord

The higher the bitrate the higher demands on your computer. It may be that you can't play the raw HDV MPEG2 video file smoothly, but after rendering out to a smaller file/lower bitrate, such as WMV, you may have better luck.

I'll encode it again with less than 10mbit/s and hope the best. For me it looks like that at the moment it's twitching after every keyframe? hm.