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HDV workflow options – to MXO or not to MXO
We have always captured and edited HDV native in Premiere CS4 without too many issues. However there is always room for improvement.
See if you can follow the following:
1. Video shoot with Sony V1U
monitor on-set via HDMI to 1080lcd monitor.
Viewfinder and flip out LCD on V1U are notoriously inaccurate for color and luminance.
Image on LCD via HDMI looked quite nice (subjective observation, but accurate colors and luminance based upon iris setting and human brain).
2. Playback out of HDV deck to similar LCD monitor via HDMI – looks roughly the same as camera direct output.
3. Capture into CS4 (PC) via firewire. Nothing new here.
However playback within CS4 looked dark and desaturated. Playback with 2nd LCD computer monitor on full screen mode looked roughly the same with the added benefit of lots of artifacts in the blacks. Eeek!
So as a test, I exported a clip to DV-AVI as well as to f4v – the blacks looked ok but the overall image was less than spectacular.
4. Captured the same section of HDV, via HDMI, through Matrox MXO2-mini, to the Matrox i-frame codec at native 100mbit quality. Playback on LCD monitor via HDMI, from both a 1080i and a 720p sequence looked so much better than the native HDV – albeit a bit softer/smoother with subjectively better color reproduction.
Now I know we are talking apples and oranges here – comparing HDV to HDMI/i-frame codec.
So I dragged the HDV video to the Matrox 1080i sequence and that shows another difference. Granted, it is trying to render/play the HDV out HDMI in real time, and it actually does a decent job of this.
The i-frame video looks crisp, but the skin tones in particular are a bit soft/smooth. Compared to the HDV, which is almost too much detail, but with a different color representation.
The exported AVI and/or f4v, predictably, looks roughly the same as the native HDV. So the real issue seems to be how you monitor the HDV vs how you capture it.
Because the LCD computer monitor is rather inaccurate as it turns out, I started adjusting the NVIDIA color settings, using a Premiere color bars signal in a floating window in either monitor. With the new settings, the HDV playback native in Premiere actually looked better.
Likewise, using the Matrox monitor calibration tool also with bars makes the LCD via HDMI look its best. However the HDMI vs the HDV native are still night and day. Which is correct – time will tell.
Changing the Matrox output from YUV to RGB shows yet another difference – the blacks show some degradation and the smoothness is reduced.
So obviously there are some things to figure out before committing to one particular method.
But I thought I’d share the experience so far with the group.
Mike Cohen
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1 Reply
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As a follow up to my own post – I had mentioned dragging HDV onto a Matrox sequence to check the HDMI signal. The main thought behind this is although we recorded HDV in the field, and captured the firewire to HDM mpeg, the HDMI signal going to the 1080 LCD looks overall better than on the computer monitor.
However playing back HDV in a Matrox sequence caused Premiere to crash – not sure if it is getting bogged down in the attempted real-time transcoding or another reason.
However to check the image quality for a few seconds may in fact be worth the crash.
Mike
PS – FWIW, using Win 7 64, 8 gig ram, decent NVIDIA card, eSATA storage. RAID test coming soon.
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