Why Buy a $3k Computer to Edit a 1k Camera?
 

This whole HDV hype will never get off the ground until I can edit my $900 Camera's footage with a off the shelf $1500 computer and burn it with a $200 burner and watch it on a $300 to $500 TV. Right now if I purchased Canon's HV 20 I would have to buy a $3000+ computer to edit the footage and maybe another $1500 compression board to edit faster and more efficiently, and then burn my product on a $1000 burner and then buy a $2000 TV to enjoy the HD footage like it is supposed to be enjoyed. Then my friends also need a $1000 DVD player and a $1,500 to $2000 TV to enjoy the home movie I have given them. Wasn't this the same kind of money that was needed to edit with decks...and switchers and TBCS, and CGS and Toasters and controllers and and and. Are we moving ahead or burning bucks on yet a another new technology that is good for about 5 years and then goes up again in more mirrors and smoke? Your take?

Well, I'm using a $1000 computer and burning full high def on a standard dvd playing on a PS3 and a 7 year old 36 inch sony xbr that does 1080i. Looks fantastic. I burn longer length movies @ standard def (which looks far better than std def video burned at std def). I'm glad to have the footage in 1080i for down the road when I do have a newer TV @ 1080p and a blu-ray burner.

What format plays on the PS3? Is this MPEG2 burnt in data format i.e. PS3 media plays a media file or is an actual HD DVD?

I authored a 1080i HD DVD with Apple DVD Studio Pro 4.1.2 but the PS3 doesn't recognise it. Otherwise I just convert raw M2T files and play them from a USB stick.

Too late. It already has. HDV got off the ground a couple of years ago.

Such are the problems with being fairly early adopters. While I don't at all agree that you need a $3k computer to edit HDV (you can definitely get away with spending less than $1000), you're right that until the media and drives become as cheap as DVD, it's not going to become mainstream. Most people are just going to burn SD-DVDs of the stuff until the time comes where HD is easy and cheap to burn and watch. Future-proofing, man. In 10 years I'm gonna be so glad that I have HD footage of stuff I was working on "back in the day".

Well, I certainly have to agree with you on aq lot of the points you're making. I suppose one could argue that there "are" ways to edit the footage on a sub $3000 machine, it's not as simple as editing dv footage currently is. I, myself have access to high end gear at my work, but personally edit on a three year old Powerbook - so I cut in HDV on it, convert it to M2T, and play it back on a server type machine like the Avelink. But it's not simple, really.

But what really gets me is all the banter about HD acquisition - especially the RED, which boasts 4k resolution. Who is going to be able to take advantage of that in the current HD arena? I understand of course that the better quality your acquisition medium is, the better the end product will be - no matter what the end delivery ,method is. Everything shot for broadcast will be compressed by the time it reaches your eyes on your television (save perhaps via HD antenna, though I can't imagine that somewhere along the pipeline, there isn't some sort of compression.)

I've even read articles stating that the difference between 720p and 1080i is almost indistinguishable to the naked eye on many popular HD televisions - until you go with a large scale device. And I often wonder why I need 1080 resolution when so many productions are shot in 720p?

And as far as HDDVD and BluRay, I almost wonder if it will have a hard time competing in this world of streaming content. As I said, I stream much of my high def material from my computer to my television, and I see little need right now for HDDVD or BluRay. And you know, that's compressed HD as well!

Of course most of this argument is a mute point when you look back to 8 or 9 years ago when DV was first coming out. You needed a fast machine to edit it, if you didn't have built in firewire, it was an expensive add on, you didn't have any affordable way to burn it to a dvd, DVD players were still relatively expensive, so your main option was to output it to vhs to share with your friends.

It's both a frustrating and exciting time right now for HD. The fact that you can get a sub $1000 high def camera is nothing short of miraculous when you think of it. Just give it time.

I have a $1000 (Under $1000 now... pricedrops w/ AMD and whatnot) computer that edits HDV flawlessly (cuts and playback)

Real-time rendering isn't the best but it takes maybe 10 seconds to render at full resolution and I can watch it with no hiccups...

Either way, it's not impossible to work with... I sent the edited footage back to my camera and plugged it into the HDTV we've had for years (We have had this TV for 5+ years and haven't seen any HD stuff on it until now) and it looked amazing...

I think you're blowing it out of proportion, HD-DVD players can be had for $200 (xbox 360 version) or $3-400 (I saw the RCA one at Compusa for $260)

Even the footage burned to a DVD looks incredible, sure the HD stuff looks better but for how inexpensive this camera is the footage is amazing.

It's the raw M2T on a standard DVD.

I don't even see the point of this thread.....It is easily possible to keep the cost down to the $1000-$1500 range. Besides, who cares if the camera only costs $1k if the quality is there??

cos its better than buying a $1k computer to edit $3k camera? ;)

actually at uk prices (not the cheapest) you can chuck together a 2.4Ghz core2duo system with 2gig of ram, 2x 250gig hard disks, dvd writer, 512Mb dual DVI output nvidia card, all shoehorned into a little shuttle xpc box, along with twin 19" 1440*900 res LCD panels and a keyboard and mouse for 1950 US (1000 quid UK)

To play on the PS3, it would need to be H.264, VC1, or MPEG-2 (enhanced) in the correct format to play as HD. The PS3 will not play HD-DVD format as it is Blu-Ray. Different file format in how the startup and menuing is done from what I have seen.

You might be able to play the M2T on the PS3, but you may have to copy it to the hard drive. Don't have one and have not heard that anyone tried, but it might work.

Go to any builder of HDV editing computers like Guy Graphics or B and H and look at the specs and then the price. No one sells an HDV editing computer with compression boards for under $3000. The price is more like $6000. Why? because a $1500 computer is inefficient, complete with workarounds and crashes and render rage sessions. And can you hand Aunt Tillie your Hi DEf DVD to see your kids little league game? She will look at you with fish eyes and wonder if it will make a good coaster. Because she does not live in the world of PS3's...My point is money. To be up to date and be able to communicate this wonderful new technology takes more money than the general public has at this time...So HDV is a nice dream for gear heads and videophiles...but for the general public?

The general public will do what they've always done with their home videos: rewind the tape in the camera and then hook the camera up to the TV to watch what they've shot.

Most of the general public will have HDTVs before they buy an HDV camera anyway.

Also, technology drops in price fast. In a year, the cost of the components you mention will be vastly lower. I built a PC last year for my landlord -- he wanted everything top of the line (didn't want a Mac ;), but just for office work, no editing, gaming, etc -- the components cost over $1000 on Newegg. I kept his components in a "Wish List" on the site. This year, the same list of components cost $248.

Ralph, exactly what is your point? What does it matter if the "general public" can't afford what it takes to edit and display true HD footage? (Even though I don't agree with that. People afford what they want to afford.) I mean, I can't take advantage of the great features of a Ferrari or Lambhorgini, but that doesn't mean there's not a market for them.

Ralph's right guys. I'm going to return my HV20 and pull out my JVC VHS camcorder circa 1991 and get real. What was I thinking?
(BTW - I also have a $1500 PC that edits HDV flawlessly and renders SD mpeg2 at 2X realtime, plus previews HDV full screen on a 32"LCD HDTV [$699 6 mos ago]. My HDV-to-SD DVD's look great on my 42" plasma [$1799 2 1/2 yrs ago]) (Hmmm, maybe I should really get real and go back to my Sanyo 20" CRTV too while I'm at it.)

I don't know anyone who'd casually go out and buy a turnkey HDV editor. But those specs will filter down eventually.

My old P3-933 (brand new then) was middle of the road when I had my Elura. MiniDV was new, WinMe crashed all the time, and I barely had enough space to edit a full tape. There were 'pro' class systems like Ralph mentioned but they weren't affordable. DVDs weren't available and even CDROM wasn't common enough to share with all my friends and relatives. I had to redub to VHS. I even learned to edit between MiniDV and VHS direct from the camera (I thank Canon for keeping the analog input ports). Sure it's inconvenient, but it was new technology that gave a very nice image even when downgraded.

Nowadays almost any PC can do better than that old P3 (I still have it and use it for DV extraction ... go figure). I burn DVDs for sharing or post online. Last year I bought a spare camcorder for 1/10th what I paid for the Elura (7 years later). Did I overpay for that technology with money and inconvenience? Maybe. I could have waited longer for it to get cheaper and done C-VHS instead. But then I wouldn't have the 720x480 progressive images of my relatives that have passed on. Nor the nice videos of travels and family events. I was paying for the preservation of memories using the best medium I could pay at the time. So now I'm doing the same with HDV. Would I buy a $3k system to edit? No. Do I wish it didn't cost 3k at this time? Yes. But I can wait. Tape is cheap and I can re-dub to a higher grade later on when the price has caught up.

Just a heads-up that you don't need a HD-DVD burner to move your files around on shiny discs. DVD Studio Pro is quite happy burning high-def h.264 files onto standard 4.7 GB red-laser discs. HD-DVD players and macs can read them with no problem, once I find my install discs for final cut studio (DVDSP took up too much space on my drive) I'll burn one and see if I can play it on a straight xbox 360 (which, thanks to yesterday's software update, can play straight h.264 files off a disc or drive. I can confirm that it works fine.)

Dedicated editing systems are expensive by nature so they can offer optimal performance, but you can edit HDV effectively now on any decent dual-core computer with the right software. Such computers start around $1000 or so and you could push the cost below that mark if you had to. The key is finding software which can handle HDV well, which may require something better than consumer-priced programs. But Pinnacle Studio Plus 11 for $99.99 says it suppors HDV editing and HD DVD output (using standard DVDs), so that's a good starting point.

If "Aunt Tillie" owns an HDTV, which is fairly common these days, you can just take your HDV camera over to her house and play the video from that using a component cable. If she doesn't have an HDTV, make a standard widescreen DVD and let her enjoy the footage from there.

It's not money that's the problem: it's the two competing HD disc formats and the sense that there isn't a compelling reason to upgrade from SD DVD players. Where I live many people either already own an HDTV or are thinking of getting one, but hardly anyone has bought an HD player yet. That's not because of money, since you can buy an HD DVD player for as little as $299 now. A recent rumor is that Wal-mart has ordered 2 million HD DVD players to be sold at this price or lower, so apparently they think the general public is ready for this.

Ps3 is a must
 

I have a 3.2ghz intel with 1 gig of ram on a 2 year old computer and I edit HDV just fine. Its about 3-5 times realtime to render but its not to bad.

I play my hd videos on my PS3 from DVD data disks, usb drive or copy them to the hard drive. The PS3 plays m2t's and AVC files, one note if I render to the blu-ray format in Vegas 7 the PS3 won't recognize it.

I edit DVCProHD (transcoded from HDV) on my seven year old G4. G4s like mine are going for about $200 on eBay right now. That's economical HD editing for you! :)

You too? Funny, I did all the editing of a wedding on my older dual 3.06 Xeon in 1080i with minimal stress. The longest part was creating the M2V and AC3 files. The 1080i to 480i M2V to M2V/AC3 conversion did take a little longer though. My new system is faster but that project was done.

I play the M2T, burned as a data DVD, right from the disk. No nood to move to HD.

I copy some of my favorite AVCHD files (.mt2s or .mts) directly to my PS3 hdd. It plays them great.

Erik

if you own a digital SLR, you know that the camera is by far the most inexpensive part of the kit. video, particularly HD is even worse.

editing worthy pc's for hdv start around $1000 us for the hardware, but that number ends up looking tiny compared to the software and all the other toys you might want to make the system usefull.

i think you really need to analyze the expense list before you set out. its pretty easy to hit the $10000 mark eveing using a low priced camcorder. its just one small part of the system.

people (here) arent picking the hv20 because its cheap. they are doing it because its cheap, and really really good. so, it may save you 3k over a more pro level cam, but you cant be misguided into thinking that somehow everything else costs 75% less.

anyhow,
the system we set up is a dual core amd 2.6 (5000+) with 2gb ram, black magic card, 19" widescreen lcd, 2 500gb drives, and cost in the range of $1200. all the software that runs on it is prolly over $5000.

terence.

I guess I am pretty much mr general public. I just got a hv10 for family stuff and beyond a sound background in stills photography and I have no special affiliation to video. I do have a reasonable PC but not 3k's worth. I would think its probably closer to being worth 1250 these days. It has no issues editting HDV, right now I just ran through 3 x 1 hr tapes to cut into a 15 minute clip. All in I rekcon maybe 4 hours work tops. No more then I would have spent converting and balancing pictures from an hour long shoot.
Sure right now if you want to watch it on a plasma \ lcd screen then you have to lay out some serious dosh on the screen, but I would imagine if you cant get a video card to output hdmi direct to the screen then you can do it via standard dvi cable which quite a few screens do accept. Yes if you wished to burn it to Bluray or HDDVD you need a burner and a player etc, but its not a requirement if you can site a pc within a cable run of your screen. Or just get a dell 24 inch lcd.
Until the screens drop more in price I probably wont be watching it on anything other than my pc at hd res, however, in a few years time when I do get a screen I will know that for a modest investment in a great camera I have much treasured footage of 'da kidz' in HD rather then SD. Sure I should wait a while until I get the full setup and things settle down, but for now I can record \ edit and watch it on relatively cheap kit.
You want scary, go buy a 40k digital back to go on a 5k body with an 8k lens and a 2k prism finder, then buy yourself a spare of each and a range of lenses, then a peli case to carry them, then insure them, then get your amex broken anytime you try take them on a plane.
I understand your point, however I would respectfully disagree. Im no huge fan of canon but I respect their kit, and a 1k HD camera really made my year. I couldnt justify blowing 8-10k on a video camera for personal use but the HV10 has meant that treasured memories are now stored at 4x the resolution lol. The editting part is easy, even my slow laptop can do it, and viewing in the lounge, yeah maybe it has to wait a while.
Personally Im fairly stoked that I have a justification for buying a ps3, its the cheapest bluray player ;) An argument even the Mrs has to accept.

edit: re software, adobe premier elements (70 bucks from frys who seriously need to open a store in the UK!,) vlc (which is free) and mpeg streamclip ( also free ) seems to be all I have needed so far.

Also I have a server with a gigabit connection (legacy from a previous job) and most of the family are on over 10mbit (mostly 12-24 mbit) broadband so streaming highdef video over the net is great.

I have an iMac core 2 duo with 2 gigs of ram. It cost me around $1900 it edits HDV just fine.

BTW, I have an accelerator card that costs $290 (I bought towards the top end). The GPU is finally being used to its potential. Matrox has used that formula for awhile. Pinnacle with ATI's partnership built acceleration around the GPU and others are starting to lean towards limited GPU acceleration. Hopefully, there will be more implementations. With the new Physics accelerators coming, more power for crunching will be on tap that is sold in such quanities that the price will be cheap.

Just ordered $400 worth of computer parts for a dual core setup and hoping to edit hdv with that... ive been using a 2.8ghz p4 and editing smoothly with vegas7+cineform.. imagine a dual core computer??? :P

-Sam~!

First, an expensive computer is hardly necessary to handle HDV files, but it may be a nice thing to have. Just like you don't need to buy a $40k fully loaded truck to tow your $15k boat, but it'd be nicer...

Thats right if you shop for specific things for your needs you'll be fine with HDV..

I went for a athlon x2 3800 cpu+cheap motherboard with sata 2 slots / a $80 video card / 2gb ram (from newegg kingston's are $34 a gig) / 2 16mb sata ii hdds ( $75bux each for 320gb seagate baracudas from newegg) ended up at $4xx.00 ... OR i could go and spend 3.5k-10k on a turnkey system from b and h and be fine too... but the key is make what $$ you have work for you... i just spent 3.5k on a canon xh a1 and thats all the $$ i had left after that so i did what i had to do heh :).. anyways with software like cineform around you can get away with alot more.. cineform neo hdv is only $249 and will save you from having to buy a 3k+ system.. if you already have vegas u can download a demo from them..

-Sam~!

In response to the first post on this thread... What?? Are you talking about now? not 3 years ago? HDV is quite editable on pretty much any computer that is currently available for $300+. Yes editing software costs money but it always has... so I'm not sure I get the problem? Is it that you think HD distribution formats arent there? HD DVD and bluray are hardly there, I agree, although not as expensive as you make them out to be. But who's to say you cant burn a regular DVD that contains both HD content playable on a computer and NTSC content viewable in a DVD-Video standalone player? Also, 1080p computer monitors can be had for well under $1000. My HDTV is 1080p native and cost under $900 several months ago. And 1920x1200 computer monitors are available for under $500. If you need a $1500 accelerator card to edit hdv you are doing something wrong. As with all technologies, HDV will eventually give way to another widely used standard consumer video format which will not be AVCHD or probably anything youve yet seen. It's likely HDV will be the consumer video format of choice for consumers until new HD or greater standards come out, and as HD is still finding its way into households, that could be quite a while away.

Ralph you can edit 60i hdv in imovie, imovie comes free on any mac including the mac mini which starts at 599. A mac mini with 1gb ram can edit hdv fine I've done it on that and my gfs macbook, two computers well within the grasp of the mainstream.

Also, the hdv cameras can downconvert for you if you don't yet have a tv or computer that can play or edit hdv.

You need to look around a bit more before you start making blanket statesments, hdv is pretty easy to handle these days.

I would have agreed with you like two and half years ago, but these claims are now way off base.

choke the machine
 

Friends,
I am talkng about editing for money....not waiting around for render rage as you have put down 3 filters to your time line, a 3d transition, or a picture in picture, and then what?...a stuttering preview if you are lucky... Then in real time run off the half hour time line to a tape so you can then get ready for your next job. NOt on an Imac....This takes a powerful computer with dual this and quad that and 4 gigs of ram and very fast drives...$2,500 to $5,000 and then a Blu Ray burner. And HD monitors and if you don't want to destroy your camera, an HD deck. That little $900 camera doesn't compare to the work machinery cost to edit with efficiency.

Right?

As HD formats go, HDV is one of the most mangeable. In your original post you were talking about HDV being overhyped and not being able to edit footage with an off-the-shelf computer. Both of these things seem a bit out of date. I agree you might have a tough time playing with three hdv streams and effects in real time, but do you have an HD format that will allow you to do that? I'm not sure I get what you are trying to say about the hv20 or hdv in general. Are you saying we should all work in SD so we dont have to worry about rendering? or that people with expensive computers should spend buy similarly expensive cameras? what about people who need a really small camera that shoots a sharp image and does 24p? at work we do uncompressed HD and it makes me really appreciate compressed video since our $14k raid allows us to play ONE stream of video in real time...