conforming HDV from a HDR-M10 – anyway to bring it in as HD uncompressed?

[Shane Ross]

Yes:

https://www.aja.com/pdf/support/AJA_whitepaper_HDV.pdf

It requires an AJA LH or LHe capture card and a high speed RAID array. But it is very doable.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Michael Gissing]

Capture HDV into an uncompressed HD sequence can be done with either the Canon HDV cameras (with HD SDI out) or via a converter like the Miranda or Convergent bridge boxes.

I have used all three and they work, although my preference is the Canon as it handles camera stop starts better.

[Michael Gissing]

Of course a capture card with HD SDI in is required. As mentioned, the AJA plus the Decklink Extreme (which is what I use).

[Kent Kajino]

Since I had more time than I had money, and I wasn’t renting an editing suite, I captured in HDV and recompressed (in this case blow-up) to uncompressed using media manager.

[Justin Tan]

Thx for the response guys – I have an ‘older’ black magic multibridge extreme so might see if i can use that….

so basically the idea is…

patch analogue component out from HDV deck into blackmagic analogue in (assuming it has it) and use ‘DV’ as a the controller… right?

This is probably a stupid Q – but am i losing quality by going this route? would quality be better if I captured via firewire and resized/export in FCP?

thx

[Steve Connor]

You will lose some quality as soon as you drop to the analogue signal path.

Simply capture HDV via firewire, then finish the project in the HDV codec which is MUCH easier to work with than large uncompressed files, then when you have finished simply drop your finished timeline into an uncompressed timeline and it will be rendered out to uncompressed.

We do this regularly and the quality is excellent.

[Justin Tan]

This was the original path – the problem is that the rest of the footage it is being conformed with is true HD 1920×1080 – so one way or the other there will be some rendering going on (hence wanting everything in true uncompressed HD) – need to look at how much footage is in HDV and might end up going the media manager route…

[Shane Ross]

What format of HD is the other footage? How is it TRUE HD? Is it HDCAM? HDCAM SR? Viper Slipstream? Panasonic? Arri?

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Walter Biscardi]

[Justin] ”
This was the original path – the problem is that the rest of the footage it is being conformed with is true HD 1920×1080 – so one way or the other there will be some rendering going on (hence wanting everything in true uncompressed HD) – need to look at how much footage is in HDV and might end up going the media manager route…”

Even HDCAM is compressed and it’s a 1440×1080 frame size stretched back out to 1920, just like HDV. We actually convert HDV to DVCPro HD here using the Kona 3 and that is an outstanding way to work. No lengthy render at the end of the project to lay off to tape.

Keep in mind if you really want to work in uncompressed HD, you need a very fast hard drive array in the 250mb/s range, generally that’s a Fibre Channel array.

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

[Keith Koby]

If you have more time than money and want to go the software conversion route, try Lumiere HD. I think it does a superior job at converting HDV to any other codec including uncompressed and dvcpro hd. Otherwise, the Convergent Design boxes are outstanding and they take the original digital signal and convert it to baseband hd sdi, which is better than taking analog outs from the deck through a multibridge or kona.