Editing HDV on a laptop, what workflows?

[Adam Chapman]

Hey guys,

I am working a camp for my old college this entire week, as a counselor and videographer, and I have ran into a problem. I'm shooting about 15 hours of general video for the week (in JVC 720p60) and the only system I have to edit with is a 1.66 duel core Vista laptop with 2gb of ram. I normally use this laptop for my production schedule and MS Word, but as a safety back up, I put my second license of Adobe Production Suite on it. The laptop itself only has 20gigs left free space on the hd, but I did manage to grab my WD My Book 320 (via USB2.0).

I have been asked to put together a highlight video by Friday to show to the kids and then parents on Saturday. I am just afraid I will start capturing the HDV files and run out of room by the 5th or so tape (or even if my laptop can handle editing HDV). Is there any workflows for situations like this? The plan of deliver is just SD for the highlight video, and I am shooting HD just because in later this month I am putting together a promo with my real editing station. I know little about cineform but I have heard excellent things. Would using cineform reduce the size of the hdv files and allow smoother editing? If cineform is the case, would NeoScene work for what I need? Other ideas?

I'm shooting with a JVC GY-HD200UB, for the record.

[Ervin Farkas]

Your best option is probably downconverting to SD in the camera and edit that.

Cineform will make your file size increase significantly.

[John Wiley]

I second Ervin.

Down convert to SD for editing. As far as file sizes go, either HDV or SD will take up 13gb per hour or footage. 13gb x 15 hours = about 200gb so you should have plenty of sapce on that hard drive. Cineform will make much larger file sizes so I would not even bother going that route, seeing as you will be delivering in SD anyway.

I CAN edit HDV fairly efficiently with Vegas on my 2.0ghz core 2 duo laptop with 4gb ram (I was surprised by how well it handled, actually) but it is not ideal. I only edit in HD if I want to deliver in HD which at this stage is very rare. Everything else I shoot HD, down-convert during capture and enjoy hassle free SD editing.

[Brian Luce]

That CPU can easily handle native m2t files in Vegas, dunno about Adobe though.

[Bryan Daugherty]

I would also be concerned about editing HDv on that system given that the My book uses a USB interface. In my experience it can really bottleneck the process. Also concur that SD versions would be easier given the circumstances.

[Taky Cheung]

I use Proxy Editing (bait-n-switch) method to edit with my laptop

L.A. Color Shop Blog | Proxy Video Editing / Bait-n-Switch Video Editing Method

Mostly just convert the HD version into a SD version of the video. Edit them with the laptop. When done, bring back to laptop and open (or import) the project on desktop. When prompt, point all video files back to the original HD version for rendering.

[Renat Zarbailov]

Thanks Taky for the idea,

So if you were to edit in Premiere CS4 using AVCHD .MTS files, what format would you batch encode to for fast proxy editing? Also, if supposedly you chose to edit in low-res AVI's, wouldn't Premiere have format issues when later you'd feed it .MTS files for rendering?

On another note, what is the lightest/smallest laptop out there to adapt this workflow?

Thanks again!!!

Originally Posted by Taky Cheung

I use Proxy Editing (bait-n-switch) method to edit with my laptop

L.A. Color Shop Blog | Proxy Video Editing / Bait-n-Switch Video Editing Method

Mostly just convert the HD version into a SD version of the video. Edit them with the laptop. When done, bring back to laptop and open (or import) the project on desktop. When prompt, point all video files back to the original HD version for rendering.

[Taky Cheung]

I have been using Microsoft AVI with Video 1 codec. It's light weight and fast to edit. With such, any laptop even netbook can be used in editing.