Editing XDCam, HDV and DV

[Mark Raudonis]

[John Rogers] “I’m trying to find the best settings that don’t involve excessive rendering and transcoding.”

You may want to try the “reshoot” plugin. If that doesn’t work try the “better planning” button.
Finally, if all else fails, try the “punt it to a different editor” key stroke combination. (This one always works).

Dude, you’ll have better luck inventing anti gravity boots than trying to avoid the fact that multiple different codecs WILL require EITHER rendering or transcoding.

Good luck.

mark

[Bret Williams]

I’m currently editing a piece that has 1080p pro res, 1080i HDV and 1080p/i xdcam ex all in a 1080i pro res sequence. All those formats play real nice and play back in real time with a green bar. Even in safe rt mode. I’m even editing off the client’s portable lacie rugged FW800 drive.

I don’t have any DV, but it is definitely going to look worse next to 1080 HD footage. Nothing you can do about that. It’s less than half the resolution. If you up rez the DV separately to pro res, it will look a lot better than letting final cut do it. Use compressor.

[John Rogers]

Thanks that’s very helpful.
Just tried res-ing up the DV separately and comes out ok.
Will try the ProRes timeline again – not sure why the HDV is coming up Red.

Thanks for taking the time to reply fellas – appreciate it

[William Campbell]

I just finished a XDCAM EX 1080 30p project where I also brought in some HDV 1080i clips. Since most of the material was EX my timeline was native 1080 30p EX. The HDV came in just fine without render problems. For online I rendered the sequence to ProRes. It looked fine and there were no issues.

[John Rogers]

Great – thanks for the advice. I’m def leaning towards cutting it all on an EX timeline and transcoding the DV to that.

[Bret Williams]

The only problem I have with the ex timelines is exporting the final video to a self contained movie. I think there is some conforming or something going on and what should take 5 minutes wants to take 10 hours. Then I switch the timeline to pro res, take some time rendering it and then I get the quick output to a self contained.

Plus, the only time I’ve had trouble downconverting to SD for DVD, was with XDCam ex seq. Always looks like it’s field doubled, even with frame controls in compressor. Shouldn’t be that difficult. Everything just seems snappy and happy in a prores seq.

[Bret Williams]

I take that back. The HDV looks bad in either xdcam seq or pro res 422 seq until rendered. However, I have some 720 HDV in there that is progressive and looks fine before render. Just a bandwidth issue. A faster drive and computer and it’d be better. My Mac Pro is 4 years old.

[Bret Williams]

I take it back again. If I move the hdv clip to the beginning of my sequence, it plays perfectly rt without rendering. If I move it to the end, where there are many many rt clips before it, then it plays at a much lesser resolution. But all the xdcam plays the same regardless, even though it’s a prores seq. HDV just sucks all around.

[John Rogers]

Thanks for all your help with this Brett – much appreciated