HDV into ProRes 422?

[Gary Adcock]

[Sean ONeil] “You don’t get TRUE 10-bit from HDV period. “

Actually you can,
live capture out of the HDV cameras as analog component or HDSDI can be anything from 8 – 12 bits info as long as you are not reading it from the tape.

I have used this method to capture 10bit out of a few cameras to do greenscreen. without the pain of working in the compressed tape version.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

[Jerry Hofmann]

You Couldn’t output to tape, without transcoding the sequence to another codec you can record to tape via FW…. you could do things this way though, then burn a DVD all day long…

Still makes sense to buy a capture card or Io HD…IMHO… I don’t like the idea of transcoding in CPU after native capture. Takes more time, and takes more storage space… have to have both the HDV and the Pro Res online… I suppose you could trash the HDV files after Compressor is finished, but that’s scary too… what if the compression had a hiccup? You’d have to recapture/recompress… I really like the idea of a capture card or an Io for the job.

Jerry

[Walter Biscardi]

[gary adcock] “[Sean ONeil] “You don’t get TRUE 10-bit from HDV period. ”

Actually you can,
live capture out of the HDV cameras as analog component or HDSDI can be anything from 8 – 12 bits info as long as you are not reading it from the tape.

I have used this method to capture 10bit out of a few cameras to do greenscreen. without the pain of working in the compressed tape version.”

Yep, we’ve done the exact same thing here with the Varicam in the past. HD-SDI out of that, and many other of the small HD cameras, it an uncompressed signal. Compression only happens when that signal is recorded to tape.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Graeme Nattress]

I think that somewhat defeats the point of the magic new codec agnostic timeline though. HDV plays back just fine – it’s it’s rendering that’s a pain. Playback of HDV on a ProRes timeline should be fine, and then any rendering goes to ProRes, which is also fine.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

12bit info won’t travel over HD-SDI and I seriously doubt the component connection would have a 72db SNR.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

Best thing about live capture from Varicam is you get the full 1280×720 resolution AND 10bit. With recording to tape, you only get 960×720 and 8bit. HD-SDI will make a really big difference as the camera head is capable of much greater quality than the tape format. This is not always the case with cheaper cameras (to the same extent it is with the Varicam).

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Sean Oneil]

[Graeme Nattress] “I think that somewhat defeats the point of the magic new codec agnostic timeline though. HDV plays back just fine – it’s it’s rendering that’s a pain. Playback of HDV on a ProRes timeline should be fine, and then any rendering goes to ProRes, which is also fine.”

One of the reps at the Apple booth told me that new multi-format timeline feature will not perform very well with HDV, and that I would want a quad or eight-core Intel Mac to do it. Even then she reccomended not doing it at all.

Of course, she could have been refering to using an HDV timeline, which would make complete sense. So you could be right. HDV on a ProRes timeline could work really well. The only issue is keying and CC.

[Graeme Nattress]

Keying and CC are related to that you shot on HDV in the first place though, and transcoding cannot help these aspects in any way.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Ron James]

Thanks to all of you for this excellent information. I can’t wait for the new suite to ship so you guys can run it through the paces.

James

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Graeme Nattress] “HDV is pretty slow to compress back to, but ProRes should be faster to compress back to. Processing times for adding effects would be faster on the decode on ProRes, but slower because you’re rendering more pixels as it’s full raster…. So, hard to tell precisely without a proper speed test, which we can’t do until it ships.”

And to add to that if you watch the FCP6 Demos on the FCS page on apple.com, ProRes422 is not mentioned as a codec that will play multiple resolutions/frame rates/codecs in real time. Virtually all other codecs are……..*shrug*