-
HD vs HDV
So the suits at my station are convinced that HD and HDV are identical. “It only looks different to an engineer with a scope – not to the average couch potato”.
Nonetheless, what have your editing experiences been with HDV – Good? Bad? Indifferent?
______
/-o-o-\
\`(=)`/…Pixel Monkey
`(___) -
8 Replies
-
I live mainly in a betaSP world so HDV is simply beautiful to me. Not close to HD and the average couch potatoe would see this as well. They may not know wqhat they are seeing but they will see a difference.
It’s a wonderful format for the dollar but if it were as good as uncompressed high definition, there wouldn’t be a need for the expense of HD.
Suits crack me up. They often run the companies that house the artists and engineers that create their income but seldom have they actually pushed the buttons. Makes no more sense than me starting an accounting firm.
-
The same suits are now saying “why do we have to hire Pixel Monkey, when we can use kids to shoot HDV, and get the kids to edit the HDV – after all, ANYONE can edit – we don’t need a Pixel Monkey.”
Welcome to 21st Century editing.
Bob Zelin
-
Make sure to explain the MPEG GOP problem – if you get a tape hit on one I frame, it’s 15 frames later before you get a usable picture back. That’s the main reason I haven’t gotten an HDV camera. I am VERY interested in Panasonic’s new camera
It’s not HDV, looks like it can do over/under crank (like a Varicam) – all for about $3500.00USD….
Jon
-
[Jon Zanone] “Make sure to explain the MPEG GOP problem – if you get a tape hit on one I frame, it’s 15 frames later before you get a usable picture back.”
Hmmm… could you explain this further – or point me to a link?
I think it has something to do with how many keyframes are set per second of mpeg footage, but I’m not sure how that translates in actual editing language… Are you physically unable to edit single frames of video in an Avid? That can’t be right.
______
/-o-o-\
\`(=)`/…Pixel Monkey
`(___) -
No – what I mean is how the GOP is put on tape. Sony & JVC use a different GOP structure. So if you get a hit on the I frame, and your GOP is 7 or 14 frames, you’ve lost a GOP of information. It’s the dirty secret (as the Sony rep put it) of HDV. The Avid, on the other hand, does some voodoo to it so you can do frame accurate edits… I personnally am looking hard at the new Pannie P2/DV camera.
Jon
-
[Jon Zanone] “I personnally am looking hard at the new Pannie P2/DV camera.”
So are we… although the P2 cards have to be plentiful (and thus an expensive initial purchase) to accomodate longer records – like interviews, etc.
However, they’re boasting significant upgrades in the next year-and-a-half.
______
/-o-o-\
\`(=)`/…Pixel Monkey
`(___) -
Hi…
to chime in on the whole HDV thing…
HDV in an editing expereience is not the same as HD or even DVC Pro HD if you want to work with a chaper compressed format.
HDV compression scheme is much like that of DVD…where material is stored in goups of pictures GOP instead of individual frames (like DV, HD, SD, or DVC Pro HD)….
this allows for siginificant bandwidth and storage reductions…so cost is lower, BUT…
It makes CPU’s work really, really hard…
Ironically some systems that have no problem doing real time effects with HD have a much harder time with HDV…
that’s why many systems that claim to work with HDV don’t do so natively, but rather transcode the ingested HDV stream into an intermediate frame based format…makes it it easier to chug through…
basically…you’ll start seeing those render bars pop up pretty quick using HDV with even nicely equipped machines doing software based editing…
So you may want to digitize in the DVC pro codec, if you system allows the option…
or you’ll need an external converter on the way in….AJA is a good choice here…
Yes…you can tell the diffenence at the end of the day…particularly if the stream gets crushed again by the local cable companies encoding the stream to delvier to their digital customers….(Yikes)…
but in most cases while not as good asa true HD….it still looks better than SD… 🙂
hope this helps….
Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX
See My Current Reel
visit the combustion exchange ftp
-
I’ve had a demo from avid on the new Symphony Nitris HD last week. HD looks fine, even HDV but you can forget about any visual effects or colorcorrection. it simply has to much compression. even when you digitize in the new avid compressions. further, HDV is only 1080×1440 and 25Mb instead of 1080×1920 and 400Mb……… So how much HD is it…..
Hein
The Editor Video and Multimedia
The Netherlands
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up