Huertis announced $500 Indie Toolkit
 

It seems it is still over priced, but I'll let you experts decide.

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/...=1073279685000

Wait? Does this mean a G4 1ghz with FCP4 will edit HDV for $500?? What's the difference between our freeware/shareware stuff and this new version by Heuris?

Someone please tell me if this is true - the "MPEG-2 encoding software" mentioned in the article is the same as the $5,000 version?

I'm confused?!

It's the same thing, pretty much. The difference between the shareware and this is that it's a brand name. They're sticking their name on the product, which means they'll stick by it. Shareware isn't, so if something gets screwed, we're screwed. That's my (and others') take on it.

Will I buy it? Unknown....Money is always tight. That's a month's rent right there!

heath

But, I think their MPEG-2 encoder is real-time for any G4 1.25 or higher?

I'll spend the money if it does things easily and faster. Does anyone from Hueris ever answer questions on here? I know some of the other companies do and I'm appreciative of that fact.

Murph

They never called me back...

hwm

Please note that it will only work on the JVC JY-HD10U at this time and there is no mention of any others that will be supported in the future.

Do you work for Heuris?

heath

No I just read the same story at Macnn and Maccentral and they both mentioned the camera that it supports.

Isn't that the HD10U all we care about anyway? I'm sure that they'll upgrade the toolkit to include other cams when they come out. However, at this time...I can see what they're not mentioning anything else....ain't none out to support!

Hey Heath, I just got my hands on a Pentium 4, 2.26hz computer with Windows 2000!!!!!! So, I'm desperately looking through dvinfo for PC solutions...as far as I can recall, the best solution is Vegas with the HD plugin right? I'm not sure if you can point me in the right direction? Also, I can shoot you some footage up here in HD...but, we're in the middle of winter. Everything is covered in snow..

Murph

Murph,

You can get me that footage (can you do it in DV on an XL-1?) in the Spring, no rush. I have two shorts in front of it.

PC--try Vegas, it's cheap; or, if you have the cash, go for Premiere with the Aspect Plug-In.

heath

I've got a PD-150 right now. But, I've got friends with GL-2's and I think a XL1s. It depends because by spring people run out and buy new gear! I'll figure something out.

I'll try out Vegas and I have Premiere, but Aspect is $$$...damn. Anyone out there selling a used copy of Aspect?! lol

Murph

On their website it says if you preorder by February 1 you can get it for $399. Does anyone know if you can import into Final Cut and then export back to the camera with this software? Isn't this the last hurdle for Mac users?

I'm not sure now...

heath

I took a look at Heuris' Indie HD Toolkit. I compared it to Heuris' Pro Indie HD Toolkit, which is still available for $5000.

The Indie Kit has the XtractorHDV (which gets the footage into the Mac), the XtoHD (which gets it to a DVHS deck) and the XportHD (which an HD mpeg2 encoder so the footage can be accessed on Final Cut Pro--you can't buy this seperately).

The Pro Indie Kit has the XtractorHDV, the XtoHD and the MPEG Power Professional - DTVHD (which encodes the footage so you can go back to the camera--not sure how much of a difference it is from the XportHD), which is still nearly $5000.

What do you all think? Can the Indie HD Toolkit get the footage back to the HD10, or just DVHS?

heath

From the sounds of it...it's worthless because everything offer is free online now. Right?

Is it non-realtime editing or something? What's up with everyone out there...create a cheap Mac solution, so we can get on with our lives!!!

Murph

Like I said earlier, and many others agree with it: It's a name brand, shareware isn't. Heuris backs up their products with their name and tech support. If it doesn't work, they'll make it work. Shareware is different.

heath

Hmm, this actually sounds good to me, if the HD encoder does a good job it will most certainly be worth the $399. I will check it out at MacWorld today or tomorrow and let you know.

Paul

Hey Moog, how's it going? Yeah, if you could check it out first hand that would be great.

Thanks again..

Murph

Well I looked for them at MacWorld but couldn't see them anywhere, they weren't listed as an exhibitor in the show guide, so I don't have a report I'm afraid. I'd really like to take a look at the encoding quality and see it demoed before ordering.

Is it just me, or has the Heuris site gone down. I haven't been able to connect to it for a few days.

Can someone else try this and post their results.

I also tried to call about a week ago and got no return.

DBK

Heuris is strange: site goes down a lot, calls aren't returned...Hmmm...

heath

Does anybody know what format their camera capture utility converts the footage into?. All their blurb says is that it is a format that is FCP friendly but doesn't say what that format is, I assume they reccomend you edit in that format.

Thanks

Well to answer my own question. I just talked to Heuris technical support (they are aware that their website is down right now).
Their camera capture utility will capture and demux the Transport Stream files from the camera directly to an .aif audio file and an .m2v file (program stream) that is Quicktime friendly, so you can load this into FCP and render it out in another format for editing, (as FCP will not edit MPEG2 directly as far as I'm aware, just play it back) or you can convert it to another editable format using Quicktime Pro or any other conversion tool that's available.
Their Mpeg2 encoder (when it is released on Feb 1st) will encode directly from the FCP timeline to MPEG2 TS (a transport stream file that is readable by the camera or DVHS). The support person did not know the exact bitrate of this file but thought it would be the same as is output by the HD1OU. As this is a Quicktime codec, I imagine you could also encode from Quicktime Pro or Compressor. They have a special offer of $399 on this package if you order before Feb 1st.
If I've got anything wrong perhaps someone from Heuris will correct me.
Sounds good to me. It saves a couple of steps in the shareware pathway to do the same thing, if that is important to you.
I'd like to compare the quality of the encoding to the free Mpeg2enc HD encoder first though.

Paul,

Does that mean when we're using the shareware utilities that we don't need to convert the demuxed files (.m2v) to Pixlet, etc.?

heath

I have edited m2v files from Final Cut after using Project X to demux. You need to have Quicktime's mpeg2 component installed and mpeg2 is not the ideal editing format, but it does work.

I'll go with Pixlet!

heath

Whenever you edit a highly compressed MPEG2 format directly (such as is output by the HD1OU) you are going to get more quality degradation than if you go to an uncompressed or (allegedly) lossless compressed format such as DC30. How much that degradation will be depends on how much compositing you do in your timeline, and how many times your editing software has to uncompress and recompress during the editing process, this is the case with regular DV, but it doesn't seem to bother most people.
That's why, even if Apple or someone else develops a codec for editing MPEG2TS directly under Quicktime, I think I'd stick to editing uncompressed (or at least LESS compressed) HD if I have the disk space and bandwidth to do so, especially if I'm doing much compositing. But I guess the proof is in the pudding as they say.

Mogg,

Do you recommend DC30 over Pixlet? I've only made 2 or 3 Pixlet clips of my short film to edit (still owe you all jpegs from that shoot). Let me/us know!

heath

You probably have just as much or more experience with Pixlet as I do, but I did notice a problem with black and white footage using Pixlet in a short piece I edited which transitioned from color to B&W and back, odd artifacting was very visible. I don't know if this was a one-off case or if it's repeatable, but it happened. I tried the DC30 codec afterwards and found that it edited so seamlessly in FCP (on my G5) and looked so good, that I would use that. I'm using a SATA RAID array though, which gives good throughput.

I'm using a FireWire drive, so that doesn't help things.

heath