combing HDV and digibeta on a small system without a digi deck etc?????

[Shane Ross]

Capture both sources at the same resolution…8-bit or 10-bit uncompressed. You might need to rent an HDV deck for this, but you should have your friend capture all the footage, digibeta and HDV at 8-bit uncompressed (that is really all you need) and then edit both formats in the same timeline flawlessly.

[Wes]

sounds good but I’m not sure that my system is going to be able to handle 8-bit uncompressed

I have a pretty basic setup of a dual G4, with 1.25RAM and very basic graphics card – it deals with DV and HDv fine but I’ve never tested it with uncompressed

I have the Sony FX1 HDV camera as my deck

??????

[Shane Ross]

If it is a dual 877 G4 or higher it can handle 8-bit uncompressed. All you need is either anotehr internal SATA drive, external SATA Raid, or External FW 800 drive (G-Raid) and a FW 800 card. You are gonna need this if you are attempting to do this project. Being digibeta footage, and the client wanting a digibeta master, making it all DV is a pretty bad way of going about it. 8-bit uncompressed is your best bet.

And what you can do with your HDV material is capture it at HDV resolution, then convert it to 8-bit by either dropping it in the timeline and rendering, or exporting it with FCP or quicktime to 8-bit. Or rent an HDV deck and capture 8-bit thru your friends capture card.

What does he have, BTW?

[Wes]

Thanks heaps for the advice

He doesn’t have a HDV deck but has the digibeta deck (they mostly do high end commercial work)

I have a Sony FX1 (and the smaller HC1) which I’ve only used to capture HDV over firewire.
So as you have suggested I could either capture HDV over firewire and render in my system – or could I use the FX1’s component outputs to capture 8-bit uncompressed throught my friend’s capture card??

Also, will using 8-bit uncompressed mean I can’t use my broadcast monitor which is hooked up over firewire?
I assume I’d need a good graphics card to make this work.

thanks heaps – I’m learning!

[Shane Ross]

If one of the cameras has Component out, then yes, that would be the way to go. Compoent out from the camera thru their capture card to 8-bit uncompressed. And no, you will not be able to see this play in realtime on your monitor via firewire. You’d need a capture card of your own for that. But, if you pause it, you should be able to see it…and get an idea of the color.

Now with the FXI and the component outs, I don’t think you are going to get timecode from that camera…as there is no RS-422 control. So if you ever need to revisit the project you are out of luck there.

But wait until morning to make you decision. Others will chime in with their ideas. Walter is good about this, and he is DA MAN.

[Steve Connor]

I’ve just done a similar job for a DVD release, Because of the large amounts of footage, I captured all the Digi material to the DV codec via FW on a Sony J30, I captured the HDV material downconverted to DV from the HDV deck.

I did the whole project in DV with the aim of recapturing to 10 bit for the online, however client was in a rush and he was more than happy with the DV quality, so we mastered back to Digibeta via SDI from our Blackmagic card. Quality was very good and the client was happy.

I’ve seen the final DVD and it looks great

However we were working with good quality footage with only minimal graphics and captions, if you have a lot of graphics and captions or you are going to broadcast, I wouldn’t recommend this route.

Steve Connor
Cardinal HD

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[Wes]

Thanks Shane and Steve (have filled out my profile)

Thought of going the DV route – I’ve dealt with digibeta that way before in a similar situation with a private client and the quality was more than adequate.

However with this project we are going to broadcast and it’s important that I keep the quality to the maximum level that I can. Particularly on the HDV orginated footage, as the network this is going to isn’t convinced by what HDV has to offer and is still pushing for everything to be shot on digibeta (yet the budgets aren’t there to do this!)- I’m working on them and pushing my business to develop everything on the HDV side of things.

Shane, I grabbed about 5mins of HDV footage and using compressor rendered it into 8-bit uncompressed (took about 40mins). Within FCP on my cinema display comparing the orginal HDV to the 8-bit there is a significant loss of detail and sharpness. However doing the same comparison on my broadcast monitor it’s difficult to pick the difference! The 8bit being just a tiny touch softer but acceptable. Am I right to assume this is because with the monitor I’m comparing SD to SD and on my cinema display I’m comparing HD (HDV) to SD???

Therefore, would it be safe to assume then that given final delivery is SD, I could treat the HDV by capturing it as HDV and just rendering what I need to 8-bit. Quality would be fine?
This would mean timecode is kept as well – I can’t imagine us revisiting this project but it would be good just in case.

Also, I just made an 8-bit sequence and played the 8-bit clip out onto my monitor and it works over firewire! Even tested my system with two layers of 8bit, a speed ramp and color correction and it hadnles all this fine. This is getting great!