After adopting Nate's explanation about 1440 x 1080, I'm doing fine with DecklinkHD. DecklinkHD displays AIC clips through its display out. But when you do something like placing transition, it would hang up.

So, I export the project to Blackmagic HD JPG, edit and apply it back to the AIC again. This works well.

So I have to switch the codec, huh? And export how? As a QT movie or a QT compression?

heath

As Frederic mentioned, it is faster to use "media manager" to convert the project. Caputer footage with iMovieHD, read it in with FCPHD, place them on a timeline with 1920 x 1080 AIC codec, make offline with media manger at Blackmagic JPG HD if you have DecklinkHD. It does all of the necessary resizing for you. Then after editing with JPG HD, use media manager again to convert the project to AIC, relocated and show the original AIC clips.

Maybe, I should make a new thread for this topic alone.

It rumored FCP HD will edit HDV natively? I not like all this HDV --> AIC confusions.

Davi,

When Apple release FCPHD which is compatible with HDV, the issues mentioned in this thread will most likely be solved.

The rumour is FCPHD to use AIC.

<<<-- Originally posted by Davi Dortas : It rumored FCP HD will edit HDV natively? I not like all this HDV --> AIC confusions. -->>>

FCP HD will almost certainly use the AIC method.

If you want to online HDV natively, there is LumiereHD.

Native editing, in my mind, would be to use the HDV MPEG2 codec on the timeline and have FCP able to do MPEG2 magic like the free software for the pc that comes with the JVC camera. I don't think this is going to happen, but I'm concerned about the quality of the AIC codec - anyone done any tests to see how good or bad it is??

What I'm hoping the AIC does is leave the I-frames of the HDV as compressed I-frames,, and also use them to decode the P and B frames back to I frames, and then store them, if you know what I mean. I don't know if that's how MPEG2 works - do you have to fully decode a P and B frame back to image data and recompress to something else or is there a state between being fully compressed and fully decompressed where the frame is independent like an I frame? Dunno...

Graeme

Graeme,

I will provide the files very soon.

Graeme,

I've been meaning to say (off topic) for you to say Hello to Wendy for me. As you probably know wendy and I were at York Uni, Ontario together for a year about a decade ago. I wish you both (belatedly) the best of luck with your new(ish) baby.

To the matter in hand. You can get MPEG2 (or MPEG4) onto the FCP timeline, it'll just always be unrendered, even without effects. However this timeline can be rendered out/exported, which is what I meant by native online.

Has anyone been able to extract MPEG2 I frames and figure exactly how big they are?

Any chance you'd be able to do the rather nifty difference test with a GOP of HDV and AIC that you did with Pixlet and PHOTOjpeg in your kenstone.net SheerVideo review? Unfortunately there do seem to be reports that there are additional artifacts in AIC as compared to native HDV

Thanks Dylan. Wendy says hello!

I've found that putting MPEG on the FCP timeline causes problems. It might be fine for a cuts only edit, but for more complex stuff FCP does weirdness and that can hurt.

I'm finding that just editing HDV seems to break it quite quickly. I don't know what Sony were using to edit their clips for the presentation, but the presented stuff didn't look too hot. The raw clips I converted myself to uncompressed look best, but I still see stuff in them. The AIC is, indeed, looking crumbly....

Graeme

So it looks like AIC introduces many compression artifacts. I've done some digging around trying to see if iMovie caches the transport stream before demuxing it and encoding it to AIC but no success.

Many of our customers are now saying that they prefer to keep using Lumiere HD because it allows you to preserve the quality better or encode to a 4:2:2 HD codec directly from the M2T.

Furthermoe, it looks like there is no way to choose better than 'medium' quality when exporting a timeline from FCP (You can from QT Pro).

We decided to continue development on Lumiere HD to introduce many new features and a slightly different workflow.

More on that soon...

Frederic

Frederic had me make a QT movie in 10 bit uncompressed, then open the QT movie and save it as an AIC at Best quality. However, when I did the first QT movie (10 bit uncompressed), I noticed that the image was stretched out vertically. I will now save as an AIC at best quality and see if it "flattens" out properly.

heath

<<<-- Originally posted by Frederic Haubrich : We decided to continue development on Lumiere HD to introduce many new features and a slightly different workflow. -->>>

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! This is great news.

Hopefully Apple will do their part and iron out the MPEG2 audio sync issue. HDV start/stop detection would be a nice addition.

<<<-- Originally posted by Frederic Haubrich : We decided to continue development on Lumiere HD to introduce many new features and a slightly different workflow.More on that soon... -->>>

what about TC support? will it be here?

filip