@ Paul Frederick:

I think your workflow is one of the better ways to archive HDV originated material. However, I'm curious if the quality of your AIC file played through the Kona is better than playing a straight HDV timeline with renders? I understand that the exported HDV file will be a lot worse than the AIC file, but playing directly from the timeline should be better 'cause you will drop one recompression step.

You might want to think about PhotoJPEG@75%. Graeme Nattress is a big proponent of it. I think the filesizes will be comparable to AIC and you have a 4:2:2 colour space (better for graphics).

@ Evan Donn:

That's what I ment when I said "I hate the change in workflow with AIC". I do not think that the difference between HDV and AIC is insignificant but I will have to do my own testing for that. Thanks for the valuable comparison and the time you put into it.

Ben,

For the work I'm doing I color correct every shot. I also often use dissolves. When I render in the timeline it renders to HDV (even though it does so in 4:4:4 color space) since that is what the project is set to for HDV native editing. I think it looks worse playing straight out through the KONA after this HDV render then if I use RT Playback while editing and make the AIC master.

This is my subjective opinion, its mostly visible in the blockiness of the dissolves.

I usually lock in the edit first, then add color correction, then render the project out to AIC. I will have to try the photoJPEG at 75% for a render and check that out.

Codec Test
 

I was recently trying to decide which codec was best for editing and color effects myself as I do a lot of CC in my videos. I did this simple test to find out which codecs could handle effects best from HDV source material. The test is here:

http://video.terpstar.com/extra/

I appologize for not having something exciting like soldiers to test on, but a white wall tends to show banding when using lesser codecs.

Clearly to me HDV is right out and AIC is still too compressed. DVCPro seems to be the right choice in spite of the smaller resolution. I would consider PhotoJPEG75%, but it does not want to play back at realtime on my machine (1080i) and therefore is not editable. I'm interested to hear what people think about this.

-Chad

Chad,

Very interesting results. There is a clear dilema going to DVCPro however as you noted, the resolution is lower. Now I think the test needs to be done with a resolution chart to see how it holds up at the lower esolution of DVCpro. Wish I had one on hand.

Paul,

I found a decent res chart online and proceded to simply export it from different timelines in Final Cut (AIC, DVCProHD, & JPG75). The TIFF files are available here:

http://video.terpstar.com/ResChartTest/

The AIC and JPGEG75 are pretty much indistinguishable, but of course when I stretched the DVCProHD image to 1920, it showed a little bit of loss. However this is a small trade-off to me when you consider the compression artifacts which AIC produces (as seen in my previous test). However, not wanting to really lose any resolution, I would be interested in an intermediate for the Mac which is similar to Cineform products. If anyone has heard of such a thing, be sure to post it here. Otherwise, I can't see any alternative to DVCProHD when working on a Mac since PhotoJPEG75% is uneditable at 1080p24 (at least on my 1.25Ghz FW800 machine).

- Chad

It seems to me what is going on here is an indistinguishable result using AIC with the JVC HD100 and terrible results using AIC with Sony Z1 or FX1. All of my personal tests have been with HD100 24P or 30P footage.

The question is: Is the difference in 6-frame GOP vs 15-frame GOP, or Progressive vs. Interlace, or both?

It is Interlaced vs. Progressive Tim.

AIC loves progressive footage. It hates Interlaced. The progressive footage from a HD100 and a XL-H1 looks indistinguishable when converted to AIC. But interlaced footage converted to AIC looks a mess.