Which HDV editing program do you use?
 

Hello.

I am wondering what others on this forum use for editing/capturing there HDV videos with.

I have a Canon HV20, and use Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 for capturing and editing my videos.

What programs do you like or think are the best?

Thanks!

I have Pinnacle studio 10, Ulead media Studio Pro 8, Avid Liquid 7, and Sony Vegas 7.

They all have their pros and cons but of those I find Sony Vegas to be the all round best fit. It's a powerful program and I find it to be a well organized interface. Liquid is quite good but IMO... the interface is no where near as well put together as Vegas.... of course this is just my opinion... I'm quite sure others have theirs.

Canopus Edius here. The interface takes a little getting used to and some feel it's missing a few advanced features, but it works smoothly with 1080i HDV footage on my new laptop. I'm also going to experiment with Premiere Pro and maybe take another look at Vegas.

Premiere Pro 2.0 with CineForm.

Mike

Jacob,

With PPo 2.0 and the HV20, you are a perfect candidate for the BMD Intensity card. For $249 you get HDMI import (digital) but more importantly, you can capture directly to a variety of higher quality codecs than HDV. It will give you a more fluid and higher quality post production workflow.

-gl

Thanks for telling me about this.

Let me see if I understand this correctly.

I can record to MiniDV tapes. Plug my camera into the card on my computer, and record in full 1980X1080 format from the tapes through the HDMI input/output.

Is this correct?

Yes. For timecode/machine control you will use f/w and the video input will be through HDMI.

-gl

Hi Jacob

I use PP 2.0 also .............. and will have an HV20 this week.

How does PP2.0 play for you and your HV20???? Are you using Cineform?

Thanks
JohnG

No, George, that's incorrect. Once the video has been captured to tape, there is absolutely *no* advantage to be gained by capturing the contents of the tape through HDMI: it's only upscaling the already-compressed HDV 1440x1080.

If you capture directly to the computer through the Intensity card, then you'll bypass the HDV compression and get the benefit of choosing an alternative codec (such as uncompressed, Cineform, MJPEG, etc.).

This NOT about avoiding HDV compression completely. This is a discussion about general workflow and avoiding HDV for post production is a good idea. By using the Intensity card, you can save a step by transcoding real time into a decent codec for post workflow.

If you want to avoid HDV compression in total, you should be looking at a different camera.

-gl

I am not using Cineform. I have never used it before, but I am thinking of downloading the trial version.

Premiere captures 1080i for me without any problems. After capture, I am surprised with the performance that Premiere gives me when working with HDV clips. I was expecting slower performance then what I am getting.

Working with 1080 24p clips in premiere is not as easy as 1080i. I do not like the fact that there is no template for capturing and working with HDV 1080 24p.

Also, I do not think there is a way to remove pulldown from HDV 24p clips in premiere as well. I have removed pulldown from Canon 24p clips with TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress, but no luck so far with premiere.

Oh, I see what you're saying now. I didn't realize that today's hardware/software wasn't powerful enough to decode HDV while encoding to a decent codec in real time.

Why? The HV20 and Intensity provide over 800 lines of resolution in uncompressed 4:2:2 for just $1,350. I think there are plenty of other reasosn to buy a more expensive camera, but avoiding HDV is not one of them.

SpeedEDIT here. It blazes through HDV like it was DV. :)

Is there such a thing as a HDMI hard drive recorder?

I have seen some portable HD recorders, but they all use firewire as input.

I wonder if they make one that uses HDMI as an input.

George, I use Sony Vegas7 for editing and transcoding. I didn't see the intesity acrd listed on Sony's site for supported hardware, but only the much more expensive Decklink cards shown.

Do you happen to know if Vegas supports teh Intensity card as well?

The rumor is that it does indeed work. If anything, you *can* use the included capture utility from BMD and then bring the clips into Vegas. It should work as normal however.

The Intensity would also provides a great monitoring ability so you could go directly from the card to a monitor with an HDMI input.

-gl

Ok, follow up. Apparently, BMD has not moved it's support into Vegas 7 so, you may want to wait until NAB to see if they update their support policy.

-gl

a simpler question for a beginner in editing
 

i need help understanding the basics of this discussion. i have 6 years of high quality SD family, nature and wildlife footage from a GL! and now have a HD canon xha1 that i want to begin editing. i own adobe PP1 that i purchased for $75 from a friend...and wanted to know should i upgrade to PP2 and stick with that program. I have never attempted to edit...so this is a first.

I read all the stuff out there..vegas 7, cineform, and quite frankly it overwhelms me as to the first step to take. i would rather not pay for the PP2 upgrade if there is a better system that could meet both my SD stuff and new HD. Want to reproduce and edit these tapes with the highest degree of accuracy and no loss of detail, yet have it work simply. i am just a biologist, not inclined to be a computer tech, although i am computer savy. thanks ahead for helping a newbie. bill

I guess a better question is, does capturing from firewire to an HD recorder save the video in true 1920X1080?

If I want to record directly to 1920X1080, is HDMI to a computer my only option when using the HV20?

William,

I'll take a stab at your question at the risk of being accosted with sarcasm again :)

The discussion seems to have turned to the reality of what the blessings and curses are with this thing called HDV. What HDV has enabled is a cheap way of capturing HD footage that produces very good results. It utilizes cheap media and inexpensive (relatively speaking) mechanisms to achieve this result. The cameras are also very compact. The downside is the compromises that had to be made in order to reach this place. HDV is highly compressed, the cameras have relatively small imagers compared to the output size, and the resulting data format is tedious to work with from a software pov.

The main problem however is the amount and TYPE of compression used. IT is derived from Mpeg2 and was initially not intended as an editing format but simply a delivery format. Now the engineers behind HDV have tried to make it more general user friendly and have done a fine job but, there are still some problems. The fact that we have a GOP based codec makes frame accurate editing difficult (Thanks to the NLE developers they are finding ways to work around it but not perfectly). Another issue with HDV is the compression algorithm does not handle multiple challenges well simultaneously ie. details and fast action do not coincide in the HDV world so details get lost. The other area of weakness is the colorspace it operates in, 4:2:0. This means you are capturing less color detail AND if you continue down that path in post, you will also have less color bandwidth to work with in your processing like color correction.

So, to overcome these challenges we need to somehow provide a solution that will prevent the limitations from expanding while that many work under limited budgets. The solution is to get the source into a more friendly (less hostile?) post production codec so that you will not lose any more information/detail/fidelity from your original source. This can be done by either transcoding into an intermediate codec like Cineform after you capture or just taking the footage directly into a good post codec like uncompressed, DVCProHD or an MJpeg-based codec all of which are in a better colorspace, 4:2:2, and will suffer less from their compression algorithms as they were designed for post work where as HDV was designed to get as much footage as possible onto a little tape while keeping as much integrity as possible.

For low budgets, HDV makes a lot of sense for acquisition: It's cheap, produces good images and is very portable. For post production it really is the least ideal in the current options and it really doesn't take a whole lot to get it into a better place. So the main idea here is to use HDV where it has strengths and recognize where we should let go of it.

-gl

Nothing on the market does at the moment other than setting up a computer-based solution - a little awkward in my mind for anything other than set-based shoots.

Thanks to the Intensity, HDMI is the cheapest way to do this. This is why it makes a lot of sense for the PPro-wielding editor.

-gl

Thanks George, that's what I was affraid of.

I'm looking at having an Intel Quad Core2DUO system built for me in the next couple of months, and should be able to work with the raw M2t file directly in Vegas, but liked the ieda of the HDMI for output preview. Maybe DSE kows something.

thanks so much for clarifying, simplifying the problem to a novice. Then of course my question on which platform to use for a PC that gives the best product would be PP2 coupled with cineform?, Vegas or what? Or should i give the editing a pause and wait until the software catches up.

Thanks again for your help. this is such and incredibly giving forum of experts who help each other along. bill

Thanks for all the help.

I think I am going to have to get me one of these Intensity cards. =D

It may be wise to wait at least until NAB (Mid April). You should get a good feel for where everyone is at in their direction. Sony released Vegas 7 last fall so I am not positive we will see what they are up to next. However, I have had a conversation with BMD and they are not planning anything with Vegas in the forseeable future so that may weigh into your decision there.

-gl

I spoke too soon; you are, in fact, wrong.

It's been possible for quite some time to capture HDV and transcode to a decent codec (such as Cineform) in realtime, even on modest new computers. So, again, there's no point to the Intensity card unless you're going to bypass HDV.

There still is a lot of confusion about the value of HDMI. Look at the following figure to help you understand this. Double click it to get a readable size.

PPRO 2 / PROSPECT HD / QUAD CORE .....HERE

YUMMY ! YUMMY ! - Very Happy !

The 24f project template setting can be downloaded from Adobe's site.

Herman.

Thanks for the 24f template.

Can the intensity card output HDMI to a HDTV from a PC?

Harm,

Interesting chart.

It appears that the lower part of the chart assumes one would import via HDMI back into HDV. This is not the concept we are discussing and would certainly show no benefit. The idea is to take the HDV footage and get it out of HDV into a more usable codec for post work. The HDMI interface facilitates this objective rather easily. Of course, it does not change the quality of the original footage rather it prevents any more damage being done to it. That is the advantage of using the HDMI interface provided by BMD. Otherwise, you could do a separate transcode after you captured via HDV, which some still do with Cineform. That adds an extra step that I prefer to avoid.

-gl

HDV -> HDMI -> capture into a new codec

HDV on tape -> HDV on disk -> software transcoding to new codec

Both involve 1 transcode. I guess there is an extra step in terms of time, but not in terms of quality.

Indeed. If I can do it in real-time and use that same interface for monitoring it's a win win.

-gl

What are some codecs that can be used with the BMD Intensity card?

I know it comes with a JPEG codec, but I am not sure if that is the bast way to go.

If you had the choice between Cineform and BMD, which would you choose?

Pardon my confusion here – but is everybody talking about exporting via HDMI *after* being recorded to DV tape?

As far as I understand, once the signal is record to tape, it is compressed – and there is no going back. How then can you get an uncompressed signal (from the recorded tape) via HDMI if it has already been compressed?

Or perhaps I don’t understand this correctly.

Thanks --

You have it correct. The idea here is to take it from such a highly compressed codec (HDV) into a better post production codec in preparation for all the processing that happens in post and a codec that is easier to work with in terms of CPU overhead and accuracy.

Ideally, you would avoid HDV all the way but, next best option is to at least avoid it in post where there is a lot of work done to it.

-gl

Think of BMDs Jpeg option as the windows equivalent of the DVCProHD codec on the mac. It's very close in terms of data rate and quality so for most it will be very acceptable. OTOH the Cineform codec is a solid performer and since you can capture directly into Cineform via the BMD Intensity card you may be better off working in that space.

-gl

Thanks George.

So why not capture (from DV tape) via firewire with something like CineForm Intermediate codec?

What is the advantage of using HDMI?

Thanks

There is none.

The Intensity/Mjpeg codec offers a few advantages:

-You *can* bypass HDV compression by capturing directly to the computer via HDMI in either Cineform, BMD's utility or even PPro.

-In post, you can capture full-frame video (1920x1080) directly (Prospect HD can do this but at a higher cost).

-You can monitor via HDMI output to an HD Set in PPro.

I think the advantage is certainly greater for PPro and FCP users. For Vegas users, tell Sony to open up a standard architecture.

-gl

From a Vegas user: amen to that...

We're seemingly SOL in regard to BMD until Sony does so.