-
HDCAM, AE, and HDV
I am working on a music doc feature which has about 90 minutes of multicam music performance. 4 cameras were Z1Us. The 5th was a rented Sony 900 HDCAM. I don’t have a deck that plays HDCAM.
I have been editing HDV native. I originally brought the HDCAM footage in by having the 900’s owner play back his footage w/ window timecode to a an HD monitor and shoot that with a Z1U. This worked for the offline edit. I used the multiclip function (w/5 angles) to cut the songs. Now it is time to bring in the HDCAM scenes to complete the final edit.
We decided to try to use Affer Effects to take the HDCAM to HDV. He brings the HDCAM song into a after effects comp, then makes a movie using the HDV compression option. We are using upper field field first. The resulting HDV file looks good and plays back normally both in QT7.1 and on the timeline in FCP 5.0.4.
When I first brought in the HDCAM to HDV after effects footage I put my edited multiclip on V2 and the new clip to V1. I then just deleted the window timecode scenes. Plays back great. Simple, right?
When I try to render all or print to tape it is extremely slow. I let a piece go 10 hours and it completed only 71% of a 4 minute 30 second song. None of this happened before the new footage was brought in.
I even tried making a new multiclip with the new footage. Print to Tape still was going to take forevever (I bailed after an hour).
Any ideas about what is clogging the computer (G5 Quad 2.5, 4.5 G RAM, 4 TB SATA Raid, Kona LHe)
Jay
-
6 Replies
-
Well… Let me ask you this. Why are you working in the native HDV codec? Its extremely slow and exhustive on your system. To understand what I am talking about you need to know about HDV and Long GOP method of recording. Most all video is using what is called an I-Frame method, HDV is completely different, that is why the Batch Capture screen is so very different in FCP.
According to Sony, HDV was created wholely to be a transport stream, not an edit stream, meaning that HDV was to be used to transfer data to tape and then to a hard drive in a format that can be edited. That is partially why there are timecode problems when you have to go back and recpature at a higher resolution. The other is the complicated Long GOP method – to define it simply, for every I-Frame there is 14 frames of GOP (groups of pictures). So basically for every second of video there is two accurate frames of video and the others are just interpolated images between the I-Frames.
So…. to make a long story short, that is why it takes soooooo long to render a timeline or Print To Tape. The codec has to literally build each and every frame of video to the HDV standard and it would take the most powerful computer in the universe to be able to do this in realtime (by today’s technology).
To simplify things tremendously, you really should capture using any other HD codec for the purposes of speed and quality.
_______________________________
Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions -
Wayne,
I appreciate your position on I-Frame versus large GOPs. I really do. I went around and around on this before deciding on HDV codec for the edit. The major bugaboo is the HDCAM footage. Editing HDV native has been relatively trouble free and effecient. I can live with the 20 minute conforms for 4 minute songs. 20 hours is a problem. Not having an HDCAM deck is a problem. If I had the deck I would probably go 8-bit uncompressed. This said, something happened to the HDCAM footage on its trip through AfterEffects to HDV. I wonder if anyone might know what that something is?
Aloha,
Jay
-
I don’t use HDV, but from what I heard the best way to work with it is to capture it with the DVCPro HD codec.
-
Ok… I’m sorry if I came off sounding like a preacher on HDV. It absolutely amazes me how many people use it with understanding it first.
Let me ask you this… Why are you using After Effects to convert your video? Compressor would work alot better. It would put it into a proper format that FCP can use. I think your long renders are due to the fact that AE uses RGB rather than YUV color space and it seems like you may be having translation issues between it and FCP’s HDV. Try using Compressor to convert your video and give that a shot but be warned it should be an overnight process because Compressor is very thorough and slow but the results are fantastic.
Again, I appologize if I sounded like an ass…
_______________________________
Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions -
Trust me, I have pretty thick skin regarding HDV at this point. No harm no foul. I did a fair amount of research and made some difficult choices. I probably should have rented the HDCAM deck and gone uncompressed much sooner in my process. There was lots of advice encouraging the native HDV choice, but none of those folks were trying to incorporate 30 minutes of HDCAM footage into a 2 hour movie with my kind of deadline.
Or more to the point, maybe I should not have had the 900 on the shoot. The glass was the attraction.
The guy with the 900 who did the After Effects transcode was capturing it via Cinewave. Will Compressor handle Cinewave”s flavor of uncompresssed?
Thanks for your advice.
Jay -
Thanks for your suggestion of compressor. It is working like a champ. One night of compression and all of my HDCAM stuff will be good to go. You are the man.
Aloha,
Jay
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up