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best cheap way to monitor dvcprohd on a DV system?
My FCP 5.11 edit system is just
a mac pro
(2ghz, 2gb, 2x250GB raid0, 7300 video card)
2 17″ monitors (1280×1024, one DVI+VGA one VGA)
a canopus advc-100
and a SD TV with composite inIf you were me and someone came and said could you cut a wedding video shot with a HVX200 in DVCPROHD and the footage has already been captured and they’ll give you the files . . . is it a doable project without spending more than $600 on new equipment?
Given my budget, even cheap HDTVs (or that Dell monitor with the component inputs) and an HD output card is not an option.
The client will probably wind up just watching the project on a DVD player hooked to a HDTV so I don’t know if it makes sense to stay in DVCPROHD and edit blind (sort of) only to deliver SD.
And I really don’t want to buy equipment that likely won’t pay for itself soon when my wallet is still smoking from buying the mac pro + FCS.
So what would be the cheapest way to have a way to monitor while I edit that gives me something better than the canvas? Here’s what I came up with…
#1 I make a DV timeline and render everthing to that. Then once all editied, bring that into a new DVCPROHD timeline and reconnect all the media to the original clips.
#2 is to edit in DVCPROHD on one monitor and replace the second LCD with a 21″ CRT I’m not using now, set it to around HD resolution and fill that with the canvas. I even have a second 21″ CRT I can edit on if I have to go down to one screen.
I know the colors will be wrong but I should be able to see detail and detect focus problems at least, unlike with #1 and #3. The client already said the raw footage looked great. So I don’t expect I’ll have to do much more than cuts, a few transitions and some titles.
#3 is to render to 8 bit SD and get a little card/box to give me composite output and use the TV I have. That sounds like it could be under $600 but does it reeally gain me much over approach #1?
With each method I can then play the resulting DVD with burnin TC at a friend’s place with an HDTV and take notes and go back and fix anything I missed. Repeating if needed until the DVD looks fine.
Please let me know if it makes a difference which is the best option if their footage is 24p vs. something like 60i.
Finally, the client wants to exlore the idea of getting HD finished product. Can those windows media HD-DVD players play HD resolution WMV files on regular DVD-R’s? If so I could provide that if they buy such a player.
The other option I see is them buying a HD-capable Home Theater PC. But will the client see much of a difference between a DVD or HDTV with one of them upscaling versus watching the video on a home theater PC with a CPU and video card that can output true HD? I’d guess it depends on the HDTV size and how good the upscaling is.
Any advice is welcome.
–Shayne
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8 Replies
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I’m not absolutely positive this will work for you, but it’s worth a shot to try. Since you’ve got two monitors, go to Window>>Arrange and set it to “Standard”. This will put your Browser, Canvas, Viewer, and Timeline into the left monitor. Now, go to View>>Video Playback and set it to Digital Cinema Desktop – Full Screen. This should turn your right monitor into a playback monitor. I know this works with HDV, as I’ve used this method before and the playback looks very good. As far as I can assume, this method should work with DVCPROHD. Good luck.
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The best way to monitor DVCPro HD is via a downconvert and the best way to do that is with an AJA Kona card. Any of them will do the downconvert. Not sure if you can use the camera itself as the downconverter.
Rendering everything in a DV timeline will take hours. If that’s your only option, then that’s really the only way I see you being able to do this. But definitely not a way I would every recommend ever working.
When working in HD you want to monitor HD. The saturation and luminance looks very different when monitoring the true HD than the downconverted SD.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Walter,
could you elaborate on that? DO you mean an SD monitor shows less saturation and less luminance than an HD monitor? -
[Ntz] “Walter,
could you elaborate on that? DO you mean an SD monitor shows less saturation and less luminance than an HD monitor?”Here’s what I mean. The SD signal is degraded and will not show you the full luminance and color information that the HD feed will show you. And an SD monitor cannot handle the levels of color that an HD monitor will handle.
Let’s take red for example. Not a very happy color in SD as you will see a lot of bleed and issues if you try to oversaturate the red. In HD, you can push red a lot further and it holds up fine. In fact you can push saturation a LOT further in HD that you would in SD.
If you are shooting HD and you color correct your footage in SD, you’ll notice that all the colors that looked so rich on your SD monitor fall flat in HD. In SD I would be leery to push the FCP 3 Way Color Corrector past about 115 on the Saturation slider. In HD I routinely push that to 150 and higher.
If you’re shooting HD and plan to finish in HD, then you should only be monitoring HD. For offlining, by all means, use an SD downconverted signal, but when finishing, you really need to look at HD.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Shayne,
It seems to me you and your client need to decide on a delivery format before you go buying anything. If you are delivering on good ol’ DVD then I vote for setting up a compressor batch to turn your DVCProHD footage into the anamorphic DV that your system likes, and can play out to a monitor. Do you take a hit in quality? Yes. Would it be better to down-convert using a hardware solution like the Kona card Walter mentioned? Yes. Does that workflow let you do what you want to do on your current system without buying new hardware? Yes You’ll still see a little benefit from the original copy being shot in HD.
Depending on what kind of distribution you’re looking at, there may not be a viable HD format for you. When Walter does HD I believe he outputs to tape for Food Network. If your project is headed to home theaters, DVD is probably your best bet. If an HD capture card is beyond your budget, I’m assuming Blu-Ray or HD DVD authoring and replication are as well… never-mind that no one has or uses these yet.
The newer version of Compressor uses an optical format conversion technology (extent of my knowledge and understanding) that’s supposed to do good work. Your Mac Pro should be able to tear through the conversion relatively fast (probably an overnight thing)… I’m happy with the speed of ours.
If your client absolutely must have HD, then they need to pay for it. I’m not saying you can get away with charging them the cost of your HD conversion, but the costs most definitely go up. If you and / or they aren’t happy with that reality, then they probably shouldn’t be your client.
I’ll admit that I’m saying all of this knowing very little about what your project actually is, or who your client is and what they actually want or need done.Hope that helps a bit,
Zak -
Excellent advice Zak. Definitely a major purchase decision to jump into HD. I didn’t purchase our 1200A HD Recorder until we had a long-term need for it and it would pay for itself.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Thanks for all the advice. I’m definitely not buying anyting until I need it.
It seems like SD project might look better than DV in the end on a big HDTV, even going through DVD, and an SD card might be in budget and something I’d use sooner rather than later.
Does anyone know of a pci-e card or a box that offers analog SD in and/out for $600 or less? Though I’d also need a way to adapt it to composite-out for now.
–Shayne
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[Shayne Weyker] “It seems like SD project might look better than DV in the end on a big HDTV, even going through DVD, and an SD card might be in budget and something I’d use sooner rather than later.”
Maybe. SD looks terrible on our HDTV Plasma screen whether it’s Cable TV or a DVD. Depends on the TV but you’ll find most true HDTV’s don’t deal well with SD.
[Shayne Weyker] “Does anyone know of a pci-e card or a box that offers analog SD in and/out for $600 or less? Though I’d also need a way to adapt it to composite-out for now.”
AJA Io LA is a little over $900 and is my recommendation. You can find cheaper SD cards and boxes out there, but AJA is a broadcast centric company with tremendous quality. The LA gives you Component, S-Video and Composite and since it connects via Firewire, it can move from desktop to laptop and continue to work as the Macs get upgraded.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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