Have HDV Camera But No Blu-ray etc. Current Shooting And Editing Options ?

[Ed Dooley]

You have a couple of other options too:
4. Convert to ProRes and edit with that.
5. Do a search of this forum’s posts because this has been asked and answered many, many, many times (this should be moved to number one!). 🙂

Keeping it as HD(V) right up to compression will give you the best results, and as you said, give you the option of an HD DVD later. Stay away from SD DV.
Ed

[Walter Biscardi]

[Ian Brown] “I have a Canon HV20 but no means of burning to Blu-ray at present as I have no intention of paying the exorbitant prices asked for hardware and disks. (I know about Toast’s ability to burn hi-def to a normal DVD but as I have no intention of getting a Blu-ray player for the next couple of years, that method won’t work).”

Have you actually done the research? About $500 for a burner, $17 or less for the discs, Toast 9 can author and burn a BluRay disc, $239 for a BluRay Player at Costco. Not exorbitant at all.

[Ian Brown] “1. Shoot HDV, capture and edit as HDV, then Export to QT Movie and burn an SD DVD.”

As long as you have a hard drive big enough to hold the HD Exported movie for as many years at it will take you to move to BluRay and re-author the project as a bluray movie later, this will work.

Otherwise, do this method and also lay back to tape for future recompression at a later date.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Ian Brown]

Thanks Ed – I take it that your suggestion would be to follow my option 1 ?

I will also follow your other suggestion and do a search ! It’s strange, but when I get a problem I sometimes wrongly assume that I am the first one to experience it !

[Ian Brown]

Hi Walter, I suppose it all depends on your definition of “exorbitant”.

I am in the UK and the current prices for a Blu-ray DVD Burner are around £600 as compared with £60 for a standard DVD burner.

Discs are around £10 each. When I can burn a normal DVD for under 20 pence, I think you will realise why I consider the Blu-ray prices exorbitant !

Burners 10 times the price and discs 50 times!

In a couple of years or so, those prices will have dropped to around £100 and £1 respectively and I will then consider them to be reasonable.

I think you may have slightly misunderstood my intentions. There is no way I would keep the HDV material stored on my HDs when I have it on the original tape.

I will keep the original tape and then, if necessary, I can re-edit it at a later date and burn to Blu-ray.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Ian Brown] “I am in the UK and the current prices for a Blu-ray DVD Burner are around £600 as compared with £60 for a standard DVD burner.

Discs are around £10 each. When I can burn a normal DVD for under 20 pence, I think you will realise why I consider the Blu-ray prices exorbitant !”

In the US a DVD Player is about $20 compared to $239 for a low cost Sony BluRay player.

Last November when I purchased the Sony BDP-S1 BluRay Player it was $999. So the prices have already dropped by over 2/3 in just over 6 months.

If this is just for your own pleasure, then you might consider it exhorbitant, but at just $239, it’s definitely a reasonable cost. We can get BluRay discs for abotu $8 but these are write-on only, it’s about $17 for the printables.

If this is for business, the costs of the BluRay investment should be paid for in your first job. All of our BluRay equipment has been paid for several times over.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!

[Ed Dooley]

I didn’t (quite) say that. Some people don’t like editing HDV and would rather get it into another codec right away. If that’s the case for you, then going to ProRes might be better. I personally edit HDV without issues (except the conform time at the end), but I mostly do long form stuff without the crunch schedule of a 30 second spot.
Ed

[Ian Brown] “Thanks Ed – I take it that your suggestion would be to follow my option 1 ?
“

[Ian Brown]

Thanks Walter, as you guessed I am a pure amateur.

If I were a professional I wouldn’t think twice about parting with the cash.

Recently I had an assignment and produced 8 DVD copies that would have been worth at least £1,000 of anyone’s money.

What was my reward …………… a tin of Roses chocolates, and an extra shine to my halo.

[Ryan Mast]

Hi Ian,

Understanding you’re on a budget… another option for presenting HD video is to play it from a computer through QuickTime Player or (my favorite) VLC (videolan.org). Compress your video to the Apple TV format, and VLC will play it quite happily. And so will your Apple TV, if you are so blessed. Saves you printing to tape every time. If you’re connected to a data projector or LCD/plasma screen with decent resolution, it will give you a pretty good image.

Personally, I usually shoot HDV, edit ProRes, and deliver on SD DVD. It’s an inexpensive workflow — you don’t need RAID arrays or any special replication equipment.

You might want to go listen to this week’s Digital Production Buzz (by Larry Jordan et al). They had a representative on from the DVD Association talking about a provision in the Blu-Ray format for burning Blu-Ray content onto red laser DVD’s, bypassing the AACS fees. Might be something to keep an eye on. Anyone else know anything more about this?

[Ian Brown]

Thanks for those suggestions Ryan.

Unfortunately it’s not just a cheap method of display I want, it’s also a convenient one.

Playing through a computer is even more fiddly than plugging my camera into a TV and how do I distribute my videos to folk who have no suitable computer ?

Although, we on this forum, want the highest possible quality, 99% of our audiences don’t even notice or care about the things we rave over, whether it’s that ultimate sharpness or special technique. (Sorry, I’m just rambling).

[Jason Porthouse]

Ian,

I would definitely shoot HDV – seems pointless and retrograde to have an HD camera and shoot SD. Then, as far as workflow goes, you need to test. You may find ingesting SD via the cameras downconvert better than editing HDV native and converting in compressor, but I doubt it. I’d be inclined to edit HDV native and only go to SD in Compressor before authoring in DVDSP. You won’t lose any space and you’ll have your HD edit for a later date should blu-ray become affordable. The only thing you may want to do is go to ProRes after you’ve locked picture, before exporting your QT. You’d need to render your sequence but this is likely to be faster than conforming HDV, and any graphics or animations you’ve included will look a lot better.

HTH

Jason

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