Are we ever going to get preview HDV during capturing?

[Vince Becquiot]

A wild guess is that it has to do with HDV being long GOP.

Most of the frames aren’t really there until Premiere actually indexes the footage.

I’m pretty sure that trying to index and capture at the same time would create a big overhead and possibly drop frames in the process, if even possible.

As far as I know FCP doesn’t have that function either.

An easy way around it would be to connect a monitor to the camera.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Vince Becquiot]

And let’s be honest, HDV is really on it’s last leg so I don’t think Adobe is making that a big priority:-)

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Mikkell Khan]

Oh is it? What is being sought after now instead?

Would need to know since most of my equipment is geared towards HDV and I would like to know what I should be focusing on in the coming months.

Mikkell Khan
Director
Diamond Films Ltd. (Trinidad and Tobago)

[Vince Becquiot]

This wasn’t meant to be a put down on HDV, but most the cameras coming out now, professional or consumer are geared towards solid state technology. People who were in the HDV market and are now buying new equipment mostly go with XDCam, P2, or AVC 100.

So yes, many people, including me at times, still use HDV, but I don’t think there’s an easy solution to seeing a real time preview and I doubt Adobe is spending its dear dollars it…

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Tim Kolb]

…or the prosumers are heading toward AVCHD.

HDV is not like DV in the sense that DV actually turns the FW cable into a real-time video conduit. HDV is being moved as data and when you’re previewing, you’re decoding on the fly. When you capture, you’re transferring zeros and ones and adding a decode/view step in there would have to be a parallel process.

I’m not sure how many other NLEs have come up with a way to view HDV when capturing…I assume that some can. It’s been a while since I worked with HDV myself.

I’ve never captured AVCHD through a cable, so I have no idea how that might work.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Eric Jurgenson]

You can preview HDV during capture with a Matrox RTX2 or Axio LE card installed in your system.

[Dave Middleton]

Avid Liquid 7.2 allows you to preview HDV on capture.

Think the days of Liquid are numbered tho. Suspect Avid are pushing people onto their other systems.

[Colin Browell]

[Tim Kolb] “HDV is not like DV in the sense that DV actually turns the FW cable into a real-time video conduit. HDV is being moved as data and when you’re previewing, you’re decoding on the fly. When you capture, you’re transferring zeros and ones and adding a decode/view step in there would have to be a parallel process.”

HDV and DV are fairly similar in that respect. During capture both are transferred as compressed data which is dumped onto the hard drive. For preview, the compressed data is also forked into a preview branch where it passes through a decoder and then to a renderer window – DV and HDV are treated the same. The GOP structure of HDV doesn’t prevent a preveiw being possible, it would just mean that the deocoder may have to wait for an I-frame before the preview was available.

HDVSplit can do preview while capturing in this way. I suspect that the reason why PPro doesn’t do preview is the extra processing power required to decode it (decoding isn’t necessary for capturing which is just dumping the firewire data onto hard drive), which may make unbroken capture unreliable.

[Cha Reilley]

I have had the same problem using my Sony HDR-HC1E Camera with Premier Pro CS3 if it is used in HD. That particular camera is not mentioned in the ‘supported’ camera information either. A capture preview is available in SD only. This is the same in CS4. I understand that Adobe might address this problem in later varients of Premier.
Although there may be no preview the content is still recorded and can be previewed through the Camera monitor as a stop-gap solution.

In the meantime and in frustration, I loaded up a trial of Sony Vegas V.9 which does show my camera by name and shows a capture preview with no problem

[Gideon Bar-tal]

Just got myself a new sony with HDV output. I conected my camera to computer via iLink the way recomended for download and capture. But the computre would not capture HDV only Standard DV. when I aseked why the answer was “check that your computer software supports HDV 1080i format.
Does Premiere Pro suport this format?
If yes how do I capture

I just got my Sony HDR – HC7 HDV 1080i format camera. I am not able to capture the HDV format with Adobe Primiere pro 1/5 I get a messege to check and see if my software suports 1080i.
does it support or do I need something new?