Major ommission on V1

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by Paul Frederick

BTW, if someone knows of a quicker way (then real time) to make a 4x3 LTBX or CROP downconvert from an HDV master, (excluding $$$ external hardware) then I'm all ears!

Unfortunately it involves $$$, but you might want to look at the Matrox MXO. I think it would do what you want...

http://www.matrox.com/video/products/mxo/home.cfm

See the review in the current issue of DV magazine; the author used it for this sort of application.

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Paul Frederick

Greg,

You're right, the memory stick does provide camera set up storage. I may use that one day but since I'm the only one that uses my camera, and there are already 6 Custom Presets, I don't see it being used nearly as much as what I would've used the downconvert feature.

Also glad to hear I'm not the only one who uses the downconvert feature!

Sharing set-up files is a good way to paint several cameras so that they match up in post or provide an overall look for a given network. In the old days, this meant going in and tweaking pots on a circuit board. Today, it's much easier by loading files into the camera via some type of flash media (or via FW in the case of the Canon XL2).

Many folks here have benefitted from the excellent work done by other members who have contributed camera 'looks' files for the JVC HD100 and Canon XL2. I suspect we'll see more of that in the future, perhaps for the V1 as well.

Oh, and most importantly, the memory stick is how the firmware upgrades are distributed for the XDCAM cameras. Don't rule out that possibility on the V1 either!

Regards and Happy Holidays,

-gb-

[Chris Medico]

Originally Posted by Paul Frederick

I may not have worded my original post well. I mostly do work for broadcast, which as Barry states, means 4x3 MASTERS (for now in my area). SOME of my clients (Local commercial spots)...want to edit in SD LTBX. It's quicker and IMHO better to let the camera downconvert then to go through the long render times in FCP to make the master in SD 4x3. Shooting in HDV provides better "raw" footage to work from.

The bigger issue for me is I shoot/edit hour long documentaries for PBS. I want an HD master so I edit native hdv then make a Master copy on HDV (which takes close to 6 hours to render!). I'm also asked to supply a 4x3 LTBX master. So I just make a real time 4x3 downconvert for broadcast, using the LTBX feature from my HDV master. I've also had to make a 4x3 version once using the crop feature. It's quick, convenient and most importantly, makes a better downconvert then using Compressor.

To render these out in FCP from the HDV timeline takes FOUR times as long! For me time is money. I use this stuff to make a living, not just for a hobby. I know FCP can make 4x3 copies but it requires LONG render times. For a 30 second spot, that s not a big deal, for any long form project it's a MAJOR problem.

Maybe these features aren't useful to some but to others they are VERY important. Especially those of us working in broadcast. While TVs are mostly 16x9, most every station still wants a 4x3 master! I wish it weren't so but it is! I'm not in the biggest market (it's #93 in the country), but thats the way it is here. I can't believe that it would cost that much more to add (actually LEAVE) this on the camera. Personally I'd rather see them lose the Memory Stick feature which to me is useless and is something I'll never use! Why include this on a "professional" camera? Anyone who wants high quality stills will be taking them with a higher rez still cam. You see, to each his own!

I still have my FX1, so I'll be OK as I'll use that camera to do the downconvert. The point of this thread was to make people aware of this fact in case they missed it in an earlier thread like I did. Some people are just now getting into HDV, this MAY be their first camera, and they may be working for a broadcast station. This is a major piece of info they'll need to know. Also since SONY's decks all provide this feature, you don't think this is part of the reason it's been eliminated? I guess I respectfully disagree with you on that one! Personally, for the same cost of one of those decks, I'd rather buy another camera as a feeder deck. Then you have a spare and/or a second camera to use. I know it's wear and tear on it as a feeder, but to me it makes more sense. If they start "eliminating" some features from the cameras that the deck provides, it'll make them more desireable to own. So far, while it would be nice to have a deck, I can't justify the cost over another camera to buy one.

BTW, if someone knows of a quicker way (then real time) to make a 4x3 LTBX or CROP downconvert from an HDV master, (excluding $$$ external hardware) then I'm all ears!

I use the downconvert feature when I'm in the field with the laptop. It just can't handle HDV. I use Liquids media quality setting to keep the SD and HD versions of the captures separate. I don't know if FCP has such a feature.

With that in mind, I can do my web stuff in SD using the laptop since its MUCH faster than trying to edit HDV with the laptop AND when I get home I can capture the footage again on the desktop in HD if I want to make something that needs HD. I just transfer the projects over to the desktop and bump up the media quality setting in Liquid. I have liquid only recapture the video that is being used in the project. A BIG time saver there as well.

Since Liquid does the letterboxing based on how I setup the timeline AND it doesn't reduce performance over normal SD 4:3 editing I see that as a viable option. It works great on the laptop that way. I did the entire One Lap of America last spring using that technique and it worked very well. Everything I shot with the HD camera I brought in downconverted to DV but still 16:9 and just dropped into a 4:3 timeline. No performance hit at all and the end result was nicely letterboxed for 4:3. The tape is still HD and will look great when I get the DVD project finished.

I wish I knew more about FCP. I'll be helping a friend set up his new FCP system right after Christmas. Maybe in my playing around with it I'll be able to offer a better suggestion.

I now understand your pain though.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Originally Posted by Paul Frederick

BTW, if someone knows of a quicker way (then real time) to make a 4x3 LTBX or CROP downconvert from an HDV master, (excluding $$$ external hardware) then I'm all ears!

You answered your own question above...FCP isn't too fast for rendering LTB from wide. If you have Bootcamp, I'd urge you to try Vegas or Edius.

It wasn't a cost issue, it was a memory issue, if I remember all the discussions correctly (I'm not home, so can't go through old email).

As Greg mentioned, on the V1, the primary use for the card slot is to save/transfer/archive camera settings.

[Chris Medico]

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

You answered your own question above...FCP isn't too fast for rendering LTB from wide. If you have Bootcamp, I'd urge you to try Vegas or Edius.

Wow. I wouldn't have guessed that was the case.

I'm going to set up a test on my machine doing both with LE7 to see how much of a performance difference is really there. From just working with the program I can't seem to tell a difference.

I'm not trying to sell anyone on Avid. Its just what I use.

Chris

[Paul Frederick]

DSE,
Are you saying that in Vegas or Edius you can render FROM AN HDV TIMELINE an SD 4x3 LTBX version faster than real time? WOW. If that is true then maybe it's time I really do consider moving to one of those programs. I like FCP for alot of things but it's speed at rendering is definately NOT one of them!

I guess I'll have to look into using the Memory card, only thing, the memory cards I have are the older "large" ones. Sigh.

Chris, I'd be interested in hearing what your test shows too.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Sorry, missed the words "real time" in your sentence. Vegas and Edius are both faster renderers than FCP with HDV, but not faster than real time, unless you've converted to a 4:2:2 intermediary first.
Using an uncompressed or lightly compressed 4:2:2 intermediary in either of those two apps, you'll get a faster than real-time conversion, but of course, the conversion to one of those two formats is added time, unless you capture using CineForm's real-time capture app. Premiere is much the same.
Outside of that, hardware is your only option, and that's real-time, not faster than...

[David Morgan]

I'm with you on this one. It's easy to say just forget ilink but if you need a lossless transfer then what else?
I typically shoot presentations on a Z1 (although I own a Canon A1). I shoot in HDV. Instead of injesting to Final Cut in HDV, I simply transfer out of the camera via ilink to a DVCAM tape and bring that in for editing. It's then letterboxed but, it's DV not HDV. As you say, HDV is nice but it falls apart in post. Let alone the cost for an HD monitor and possibly a deck. In Sony's defense, their deck is nice. It will do HDV as well as DV, so if your in the market for a deck anyway (for DV) I'd buy the HDV deck. I edit in DV and finish the same. Out it goes. The client still has the original in HDV for future, that is, if and when HDV becomes a more robust format for editing and not just shooting.

thx for the warning. I was about to buy a V1 but chose the Canon for other reasons.

[Bob Grant]

From what I've read the incamera / VCR downconvert does not produce the best conversion possible. Secondly there's a minor annoyance with the centre cutout downconvert on the Sony cameras and VCRs that do have it, the top few lines are black / grey depending on the content of the following lines. That can cause some issues down the track.

If you need to produce both 16:9 and 4:3 masters for broadcast then surely the quickest and best approach is to use a hardware box with ARC capability, you could then record both a 16:9 and a 4:3 master to two decks at once. This would give the fastest and highest quality result. Most broadcasters seem to have these tools on hand anyway however for artistic reasons may not choose to do the conversion themselves. One warning though, very little of the pro broadcast kit will accept firewire so you might have to be running SDI to use these boxes.

[Tony Tremble]

Quite frankly, I don't know what Sony were thinking not allowing me to record to video8 tapes on my V1e. Now that's a missing feature if there ever was one.

Who needs all this newfangled HD digital wide-screen nonsense? If Video8 was good enough for my father it's good enough for the rest of us.

Douglas, next time you speak to the Sony designers don't let them forget about us!!! TIA

TT

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Originally Posted by David Morgan

As you say, HDV is nice but it falls apart in post. Let alone the cost for an HD monitor and possibly a deck. In Sony's defense, their deck is nice. It will do HDV as well as DV, so if your in the market for a deck anyway (for DV) I'd buy the HDV deck. I edit in DV and finish the same. .

So you're saying DV holds up better in post than does HDV? That is simply not so. On a scale of less than optimal, they both fall apart or hold together equally well. HDV that has been converted to a DI such as a CineForm DI or other similar, holds together wonderfully for editing. Your comment leaves me to believe that either:
a- you read more than you attempt
b- something is mismanaged in your workflow.

It's quite easy to demonstrate.

Yes, HDV falls apart if your render several times from the subsequent file. So does DV. HDV is more lossy, but that's like saying Britney Spears is more attractive than Paris Hilton, or Tammi Faye Bakker is more unattractive than Phyllis Diller. It's an argument of such miniscule proportion that it's not one worth having.

Create a file of generated media in any application such as Photoshop. Render to M2t. Render same to DV. Now re-render the subsequent files 10 times and compare to original. Both suck. HDV slightly more so than DV, but then again, it's significantly greater resolution.
On the flip side, shooting, capturing, and editing HDV yields a significantly greater quality image than capturing DV and editing from there.
Search the threads, you'll find a WMV file in which I did exactly this, to prove the point.

[David Morgan]

The guy posting this thread had a working method he could count on. Besides, if one's distribution (another practical consideration) is DVD, then a few years down the road might be a better opportunity to take advantage of the higher res. of HDV. Computers will be faster, HD-DVD should be more mature and one of the 18 HD formats might be more of a "standard". As a matter of fact, P2 technology could make HDV a dead format. Till' then, I'm stickin' to what works.
If Sony isn't careful, they're liable to inherit Panasonic's crown for taking the most idiotic shortcuts. The lack of letterbox over firewire is important. But thats just this man's opinion.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

I agree: the guy posting this thread as a workflow he can count on. Therefore, this might not be the optimal option for him to work with, and that has to be taken into consideration.
DVD distribution might be better served currently, but the fact is, working with full resolution from acquisition until the last moment is the optimal workflow, regardless of which NLE you're using. It's not theory if it's been demonstrated in multiple situations with various NLE's. There is a reason HDI's exist, and quality of delivery, speed of render to HD master or SD master are one of them, the value of archiving not withstanding.

[Chris Medico]

Ok, here is what I did.

I shot some video of Christmas packages being opened with V1U. I selected a 1m30s section and downloaded it in 16:9 HDV and then downloaded the same section using the downconvert function in the camera to get 16:9 DV.

I selected the same 1m of video from the center of each video file and dropped them each onto a 4:3 timeline which was configured to use the DV25 codec.

I started the background rendering and timed it with a stopwatch from start to finish.

The results:

RAW HDV 16:9 to DV 4:3 took 3m 21s to render

Downconvereted from the camera DV 16:9 TO DV 4:3 Took 1m 6s to render

The computer is a HP with AMD 4200 processor. The render drive is a 2 drive RAID0 array. The processor showed about 60% utilization during the render. Liquids render is a single threading application but it will render two items at the same time if you have a dual core CPU or dual CPUs.

I'll let you each draw your own conclusions based on your individual applications. For my application missing the letterbox over iLink is not an issue.

Chris

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Chris Medico

I'll let you each draw your own conclusions based on your individual applications. For my application missing the letterbox over iLink is not an issue.

Chris

In my HDV@Work series I had Sequence with mixed 720p30, 1080i60, DV 4:3, DV 16:9 and cell phone MPEG-1. From it I made 720p, 1080i60, DV 4:3 anamorphic, DV letterboxed, and even PAL letterboxed.

Now I'll admit this is not a typical work load as it was an experiment, but I found it very EZ to create the Timeline and then let the software auto-create each output I wanted.

I understand that most posters use FCP and that's not likely to change. But, there are NLEs (Xpress Pro, EDIUS, Liquid, Vegas) that are ahead of FCP in handling mixed resolutions and aspect ratios. So I agree that for the FCP user who must deliver 4:3 this is an ommision. But, if you move past the Premiere/FCP model -- it isn't so terrible.

If read my series, I desribe how simple it is to do a key-framed Pan & Scan which is far better than a center cut.