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Express Pro HD and HDV
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Just did some more research on this. Avid say that with Xpress Pro HD you will be able to ‘play and edit’ footage encoded with the 8 bit DNxHD codecs. This means you can import DNxHD QTs and use media that’s been digitized on an Andrenaline and you will be able to render effects in titles in DNxHD over any HD footage. But you can’t capture or digitize DNxHD or layoff back to tape.
George
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…As of right now. That will probably change. The way I described would mean that XPro HD 5.5 users would be able to capture their HDV footage as the lowest-end 8-bit DNxHD format, edit it in RT, then output it as native HDV. In other words, you’d be able to capture the footage as 8-bit DNxHD, but not output it…for that you’d need Adrenaline or higher. This is a typical Avid “save the Adrenaline!” maneuver.
Again, since it hasn’t been released, no one outside the company knows. My reseller told me the above, gleaned from conversations with those he knows at Avid Corporate. Again, it is purely speculation, but it makes sense. HDV requires pretty monstrous system resources, so I find it very difficult to believe that Avid would leave the HDV footage in its native state and still allow XPro HD 5.5 users with low-end system specs RT HDV editing. Also, when you take into account that Mojo is not capable of handling HDV (and I don’t mean the RT downconvert of HDV footage to view on an SD monitor), since it’s an SD-only device at this time, you realize that you’re going to be relying stricly on your CPU to do all the work when working with HDV footage. This is why I believe the above speculation from my reseller is accurate. It may not necessarily be right, but it makes perfect sense and would definitely be, in Avid’s own words, “an elegant solution.”
What you described about being able to “‘play and edit’ footage encoded with the 8 bit DNxHD codecs,” is a feature that is already available in the current version of XPro HD. The problem is, everyone I know–including me–who’s tried to edit DNxHD footage on their XPro HD systems as of now are experiencing hefty delays, since XPro seems to have to do some sort of conversion process to the footage as it imports it. Also, it seems as though the system gets a bit sluggish when you finally start working with it. Unfortunately, this lengthy wait pretty much makes the feature worthless to most. I suspect/hope this will be remedied this fall when the HDV release comes out.
Stay tuned.
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yes let’s hope it does change. avid always change their minds and are generally quite rubbish with releasing anything on time. and there’s a lot of peeps on the avid forum having achingly long imports and renders using DNxHD. as you say, this kind of sluggish performance is not that useful.
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A lot about Avid Xpress Pro HD is explained in my review of the product:
https://www.uemedia.net/CPC/postindustry/article_12339.shtml
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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