AVCHD & HDV editing

[Tom Wolsky]

It would be easier if you shot 1440 as the HDV is always 1440 when 1080. You should capture the HDV as ProRes as well and then everything will match.

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”

[Sutharsan Bala]

Hi Tom,

So if I understand you correctly I leave the AVCHD camera’s settings to 1440×1080, instead of 1920×1080, thus making the aspect ratio compatible with the HDV footage?

-Sui-

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” – A. Einstein

[Tom Wolsky]

That’s what I would suggest.

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”

[Neil Sadwelkar]

AVCHD when converted to ProRes becomes HUGE. Like six times the space of the original AVCHD. What I’d do is to shoot 1440 in AVCHD, then lot and transfer that into FCP so you have ProRes files. Then use Compressor to convert them to HDV. So that your HDV original shoot and your AVCHD shoot all is down to HDV and you save disk space.

If disk space is no constraint, then convert the HDV to Apple ProRes, and the AVCHD to ProRes as well and work with ProRes all the way. This second method will give you the best quality.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Tom Wolsky]

You could do that if you’re really desperate for drive space. I’d suggest that going from a low res HD format AVCHD to an intermediate I-frame format and then back done to another low res long GOP format should be avoid if at all possible. One compromise if you’re using FCP7 would be to use ProRes LT, which is an excellent format, high quality, fully I-frame so it doesn’t need conforming on render, and decent file sizes as well.

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”

[Sutharsan Bala]

Thanks for your replies but Im a bit confused. I am worried about disk space because I only have a 2 TB Lacie Quadra drive for editing and a 2 TB Lacie Max disc as backup. If the AVCHD material will be six times bigger, then 1 hour of material would be something like 72 GB. Makes me want to shoot as much as possible with the HDV camera and leave the AVCHD alone.

Id love to edit on FCP 7 but I only have FCP 6.x.x with no possibilitty to upgrade (due to financial restraints).

Maybe what you suggested Tom – to shoot 1440×1080 and then going to ProRes and then to HDV using compressor is the best option? But how will this affect quality when doing two by-passes? And how will the HDV (from the AVCHD material) compare to the HDV-converted to ProRes material? Maybe conforming everything to HDV is the best option for editing this project?

Best regards,

-Sui Bala-

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” – A. Einstein

[Sutharsan Bala]

Hi again,

Didn’t get any responses to my last questions, but I have some new ones.. :p

So; I started capturing some material today and I decided to go ProRes all the way with this – however, now that I’ve captured less than two hours of footage, I’ve used almost 75 GB of harddrive space (!) – I’m, as I mentioned, on a 2 TB drive as my scratch disk and at this rate, I’ll have used it up in no time.

Now my question is; can I leave the captured material as “ProRes HQ” and capture the rest in Native HDV? How will this affect the editing of the two on the same timline? Also, I’ll be starting to shoot using the AVCHD camera next week. How will this affect the Native HDV material on the same timeline + the converted ProRes material?

The captured material looks amazing, however, I’m sure there is not a BIG difference between the converted ProRes HQ material and Native HDV?

I have no clue as to what to do now – should I just re-capture the material in HDV native and delete the ProRes files? They’re after all HUGE and I know I can save a lot of disk space by doing this, especially as I’ll have AVC HD material coming in later which will eat up everything in no time.. 🙁

I’m on an Intel MacBook Pro 2.4 Ghz with 2 GB RAM.

Thanks!

-Sutharsan-

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” – A. Einstein

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Sutharsan,

From what I’ve understood, you have AVCHD files and you are doing a Log and Transfer. L & T only lets you do capture to Apple ProRes, Apple ProResHQ or Apple Intermediate Codec. Either way, your captured files will be huge and will take up a lot more space than the original AVCHD files.

One option is to use FCP 7 and the Apple ProRes LT codec. I haven’t tried this myself, but it will produce smaller files.

If you cannot use FCP 7, the other route is to L & T to Apple ProRes. And then use Compressor to convert the ProRes files to HDV. After the conversion to HDV you can get rid of the ProRes files.

This will be a double step conversion and you will have to test it with your clips to assess the quality loss if any. HDV takes up just 13 Gb per hour.

Editing ProRes and HDV in the same timeline is possible. Check with your system what the performance is like.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Sutharsan Bala]

Thanks for the quick reply Neil,

I don’t have access to Final Cut 7.0, but something tells me I should maybe shell out for it.

I’ll try to make the problem(s) and questions as precise and concise as possible;

Background: I’m making a commissioned short documentary and I’m shooting on two different cameras. One Canon Legria HV40 (shoots HDV 1080i / 50) and one Panasonic TM-300 (shoots AVCHD).

I have – until now, only shot material using the Canon HV40, but will begin using the AVCHD camera soon.

After doing some research on postproduction workflow, it came to my attention (because of my previous questions and consequent answers to this thread) that the best route would be to import the HDV footage using the Apple ProRes HQ codec – as the AVCHD material (still to be shot) will anyway be converted to ProRes using L & T.

Yesterday, I started capturing the HDV material using the ProRes codec and was surprised over the immense file sizes. 2 hours of footage came to 76 GB of storage. I have a LaCie Quadra 2 TB drive for editing and at this rate, it’ll fill up quite quickly. So what shall I do?

1). Re-capture the HDV material into native HDV (making 1 hour = 13 GB) and L & T for the AVCHD material. Question: How will this affect the editing? Does AVCHD converted to ProRes edit well together with HDV native material?

2). Re-capture the HDV material to native HDV, then AVC HD to ProRes and back to HDV native (as suggested) = will there be a huge quality difference?

3). Staying ProRes all the way, but this is not really an option any longer as I don’t have that much drive space and I can’t afford more drives. IF I buy the FCP upgrade, will the ProRes LT codec be good enough for this project? How is the quality? Can I go up to ProRes HQ after editing with ProRes LT?

The end result master format is DVD and BlueRay.

Looking forward to your answers, the time is really short.

Thank you,

sincerely,

-Sutharsan “Sui” Bala-

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Sutharsan,

I just did a trial on a MacBook Pro 15″ with FCP 6. I took in some HDV clips from an HDV camcorder, and some AVCHD clips from a Sony AVCHD camcorder. The AVCHD clips were L & T converted to Apple ProRes (not HQ)

Both types of clips are on an external SATA drive connected to my MBP via a Sonnet eSATA Expresscard adapter. This has a rather fast throughput. Faster than FW or USB.

I put these clips together in an HDV timeline. So the HDV clips play real time and the ProRes clips play ‘green line’ real time.

So, for you the option…

[Sutharsan Bala] “2). Re-capture the HDV material to native HDV, then AVC HD to ProRes and back to HDV native (as suggested) = will there be a huge quality difference?”

will save you drive space if you choose to stay with FCP 6. L & T AVCHD to ProRes and then ‘down-converting’ them to HDV causes minimal difference in quality, in my experience.

If you upgrade to FCP 7 you can use ProRes LT or proxy. ProRes proxy takes up 14 Gb/hour while ProRes LT takes up 33 Gb/hr. So LT is about as lean as HDV. Working ProRes proxy and then upgrading selects to ProResHQ for the AVCHD clips will then save you space.

One caveat. Your AVCHD files may not have a timecode on them, so you need to then figure how you will ‘upgrade’ to ProRes after the edit. Else you can work ProRes LT and not bother upgrading as LT may be ‘good enough’ for AVCHD.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India