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entering HD world: questions
FCP 6.05, MacBook Pro 2.2 GHZ Dual Core 2 – 2GB RAM
, Leopard up-to-dateI am looing for someone to read my issues/doubts and help throw ideas back and forth so I can make a good decision about buying equipment.
OK, so I am a latecomer, intending on stepping into HD world. I am looking for advice on the pros and cons of a few options out there. As a reference, I am a filmmaker who likes to work with prosumer equipment, small cameras with the basic manual features / imputs but good image quality. My last camera was a Canon Optura Pi which did 30p (simulated) and I was quite happy with it.
1- So, I see there are these new cameras that record onto SD cards and internal HDs, in “Full HD” (1920×1280) format MPEG4-AVC / H.264. These recorded in a format that has to be converted in order to edit in FCP6, correct? How much image quality / resolution is lost in this process, and is this conversion a long process? My Mac’s specs are above this message.
The audio format on these is surprisingly below the usual miniDV 48 Khz 16 bit quality… it seems to be AC3 Dolby-type format, which is compressed, correct? Kind of like Mp3? How much of a difference is this in terms of sound quality?
What sort of backup process are people doing for these cameras that don’t use tape? Since there is no more tape to store away and recapture when needed, how are people dealing with long-term storage? Just plain large hard drives?
2- I am looking also at some HDV cameras, especially the new Canon Vixia HV40, which CLAIMS it records in full 1920×1080 onto HDV tapes… But isn’t the HDV format essenctially 1440×960 in reality?
How does the image quality of cameras like this one compare to the new AVC format cameras, at least in terms of codec, compression quality… I know that other factors are involved, such as sensor size, lens quality, etc…
The attractive part of these cameras is that they will play my old miniDV tapes. But on the other hand, sticking with the soon-to-be-obsolete tape-world means I will need to get a HDV deck/player so I don’t wear down my camera by using it as a player when capturing, correct?
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4 Replies
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1. No loss. You’re converting to a higher quality format. The Dolby audio is fine. This is the same format used for iTunes audio.
2. HDV is 1440×1080. It’s squeezed horizontally for compression, but displays as 1920×1080.
Image quality depends on the camera. AVCHD is at least as good as HDV in my view, and tape is so dead.
All the best,
Tom
Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop” -
Let’s cut to the chase. How much money are you willing to spend? A better answer can be framed with a budget in mind.
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JG, thanks for the reply. I am willing to spend between 600 and 1300 dollars, preferably including a wide angle converter.
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Thanks, Alan. So you are looking at consumer cameras, and not prosumer cameras. Prosumer cameras I would say are in the 2500-7k range and usually have at least an XLR tap on them.
Unfortunately, I personally don’t know much about consumer cameras, but I can offer some very general advice. I would look for something tapeless and something that shoots in AVCHD. This will transcode to ProRes with log and transfer, but you have to make sure that it’s going to work from that particular camera. And yes, the transcode process can take a little while to be sure. Also, 1080 ProRes is a bit processor intensive so be prepared for that and also be prepared for increased file size in terms of storage.
HDV is even more processor intensive than ProRes an turns in to a nightmare when outputting/rendering when editing with native HDV. Time code is a joke and quality is just ok. I don’t know if you care about those things, though. AVCHD has at least a more advanced and newer codec going for it (Mpeg4 vs Mpeg2 of HDV) and with tapeless, you won’t have to worry about recapturing from tape, and you won’t have to buy a VTR of some sort. This is from the post side of things.
From the camera side of things, unfortunately, the cow doesn’t have an consumer HD forum, but perhaps you can troll around the HDV, Canon, HMC150, and XDcam forums and see what people are talking about.
Sorry I couldn’t be more help in that regard.
Have fun,
Jeremy
Jeremy
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