HDV output workflow question

[Mactrix]

What kind of workflow should this be?

Why do you capture HDV with Kona? Why not native via FireWire?

Why you need to digitize as DVCPRO HD? You would recompress
your footage.

[David Battistella]

Mactrix,

HDV is a bit of a nightmare to deal with once it is inside the FCP environment.

1. It is long GOP i frame. Mpeg 2 constant bit rate stream.
2. Consumes a ton of system resources because it needs to be rendered
3. It is in the 4:2:0 color space

Many people have take to capturing HDV as DVCPro HD because both FCP and the KONA products are accelerated for dealing with these codecs.

They are also in the 422 color space (much preferred) and require less rendering and system resources than HDV. HDV is great on tape but very much a pain when you introduce it to a post workflow.

In response to the initial post

Capture firewire.
Use the Kona as a monitoring device.
Output firewire after you render the sequence.

David

Peace and Love 🙂

[Kozo Okumura]

According to what I have been hearing, HDV is very difficult format to edit because of long GOP issue.
you have to render everything to edit. So, people are suggesting to digitize as DVCPro HD codec via SDI.
But what people don’t talk about in workflow is outputting process.

Do actually people buy DVCpro deck just for outputting as DVCpro HD?

[Kozo Okumura]

David,

thank you for your response. can you explain more?

so, are you saying, when editing is done in FCP, the copy the entire sequence and paste on to a HDV codec sequence and re render the whole sequence and output via firewire??

or DVCPro HD sequence can be output to HDV deck as HDV via firewire?

Kozo

[Mactrix]

The long GOP thing is true for complex projects with lots of cuts.

However DVCPRO HD would be an additional strong compression
applied to the footage. Also most people are using analog connections
and will lose again quality. You also won’t benefit from DVCPRO HD’s
4:2:2 sampling as the HDV source is 4:2:0 and there is no chroma
reinterlacing due to simple capturing.

[David Battistella]

The Reality is that HDV is a pretend HD solution. It’s not HighDefVideo is some sort of monster that is pretending to be HD but in actuality it is HighDigital Video. It should not be confused with professional HD codecs like DVCPro HD, which are optimized for use in FCP and operate with SMPTE based timecode and in the 4:2:2 color space.

As for the recompression. You are already dealing with an Mpeg 2 constant bit rate 20 or more to 1 compression ratio in a format that needs rendereing on output to recreate the LONG GOP structure. Best case is to work completely in HDV output your master to HDV and let a dub house provide what you need from that tape.

Many people are getting around the issues of HDV by capturing it uncompressed or recompressing it to a suitable format for post production.

David

Peace and Love 🙂

[Kozo Okumura]

thanks David.

I understand the difference between HDV and DVCpro HD. but my question was simply about workflow since my company wants me to find what is the best way to spend their limited budget to get HD solution.

Since, we mostly do long format documentary, we have to shoot in HDV.
Only the answer I am looking for is that,

if you are not editing as HDV natively because of GOP issue, you have to edit as DVCpro HD.
my question is what do you do from there if we have only HDV deck.
for some reasons, people here don’t talk about it. it is weird….

Do you have to re-compress with HDV codec?? and re compress with HDV codec which is mpeg2 going to take as long as you encode video for DVD? do people actullay do that? it sounds crazy to do HDV-DVC Pro HD-HDV back again.

i would appreciate to answer my question.

thank you!

[Mike Parfit]

Hi,

Our situation may be relevant.

We’re doing a long-form documentary on a G5 quad, using HDV and some DV on FCP 5.1. We recompressed to DVCPRO HD and tried that for a while, but eventually did not see huge time savings, and were concerned about the recompression issues. We have gone back to editing directly in HDV. It does not seem too difficult. We do not have many effects, so that probably helps. It seems to make sense to have as few recompressions as possible from the original.

To output to HDV from the HDV timeline just requires several hours of conforming and then straightforward output through firewire to the deck. We have done that several times to show HDV rough cuts. However, when we output later we’ll probably rent an HDCAM deck and go to it through the Kona card.

Does that help at all?

Mike

[Walter Biscardi]

[Mike Parfit] ”
We’re doing a long-form documentary on a G5 quad, using HDV and some DV on FCP 5.1. We recompressed to DVCPRO HD and tried that for a while, but eventually did not see huge time savings, and were concerned about the recompression issues.”

Did you capture it native as DVCPro HD or HDV and then use FCP to convert the footage to DVCPro HD? It works much faster when coming in through the Kona card to DVCPro HD. That’s the workflow we’re just starting up here on a new series being shot in HDV. There will be a lot of color correcting in this show so we’re getting it out of HDV as that format just is not friendly for heavy post effects and it’s much slower to edit with overall.

I’ve found HDV a nice aquisition format, but MPEG-2 Log Gop is certainly not an editing format.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Mike Parfit]

Did you capture it native as DVCPro HD or HDV and then use FCP to convert the footage to DVCPro HD? It works much faster when coming in through the Kona card to DVCPro HD.

Hi, Walter,

I’ve read a lot of your posts on this subject and much appreciate them.

We captured in HDV and recompressed when we tried DVCPRO HD. We just didn’t find working in DVCPRO HD that much faster, probably because of the simplicity of our narrative structure. We have a Kona 3 and no more budget for an HD10AVA to let us capture the component analog, so we brought the HDV in through firewire. Under those circumstances, we eventually thought that we’d better keep the project as close to the original as possible. If things turn out really grim for color correction we can either recompress or recapture, but we don’t anticipate that. Does that make sense?

This also allows us to output HDV fairly simply if necessary since we don’t own or have ready access to any other kind of deck. For rough distribution of work-in-progress material where resolution doesn’t matter we just go out of the Kona 3 in composite to an on-the-fly DVD recorder.

Thanks,

Mike