HDV vs DVCPro HD codecs

[13]

To capture DVCPro HD from your HDV tapes you will need to capture it through a capture card like a Kona.

The signal that the Camera or HDV deck sends out is an HDV signal and so unless the computer is told to look for that signal it wont see it. You are telling the computer to look for a DVC Pro HD signal but you are trying to give it a HDV signal. The Capture card will take the HDV signal and then give it to Final Cut Pro in the DVC Pro HD Codec.

[Graeme Nattress]

There’s a couple of misconceptions there:

“just wanting the extra quality of the DVCPro HD codec” – but you’ve got two issues here. First, you’ve recorded in HDV therefore any “damage” has already been done. Your video is HDV quality as that’s what you’ve recorded. From now on in, all you can do is make the image worse, not better and at best, keep the quality as good as it is on the master-tape. Second, the quality of DVCproHD, if better than HDV is only slightly, and indeed, in the case of 1080i, it’s quality could be said to be worse due to it having lower resolution.

The most efficient codec for HDV is, you’ve guessed it, HDV. Just capture and edit native. Apple got this right and it works well. In FCP 6 you can even render to the nice prores codec and therefore avoid the damaging effects of rendering back to HDV.

Of course, if you’re mastering back to HDV, you’re resigned to that render back to HDV anyway and it’s un-avoidable. If you’re going out to a wholly better format – D5 or HDCAM SR, then save of going fully uncompressed in the timeline, prores will give superb results.

Graeme

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

[J. Tad newberry]

aha, thanks Graeme.

what you say makes total sense. i had asked some of these similar questions before going out to shoot this week, and someone had given me the idea to capture my footage at the DVCPro HD codec. i am also shooting HDCam on this project, so maybe the person giving me the advice only meant for me to capture the HDCam stuff at the DVC Pro HD codec. this really gets confusing! so, my main camera is HDCam, my second camera is HDV (1080i), and i’m putting them together on a timeline and have to eventually deliver a master on HDCam tape stock. i don’t have an HDCam deck at my facility, so i was going to do a sort of “offline” at my place, then go to the post house and (spending as little time and money as possible!) recapture whatever needs to be recaptured and dump out to my HDCam master tape.

i realize that if i capture all my HDCam footage at HDV codec it is sort of shooting myself in the foot on all the HDCam shots, but kind of at a loss here where to go next…

in the meantime, i’ll finish capturing my 10 hours of HDV at the HDV codec. thanks again…

[Walter Biscardi]

[mortimer heathcliff] “i just shot 10 tapes on a Sony Z1 (1080i on HDV tapes). trying to capture them in the most efficient format, and wanted to go with DVCPro HD…but neither the native codec nor my Blackmagic codec will work.”

As noted earlier, you need to feed your signal to a card like the AJA Kona series in order to capture to the DVCPro HD codec.

[mortimer heathcliff] “but i was just wanting the extra quality of the DVCPro HD codec. any ideas?”

It’s not necessarily extra quality, you can’t get any more quality out of your HDV image than what you started with. What you get is much more realtime and ease of use with the DVCPro HD codec vs. HDV. We convert HDV to DVCPro HD all the time here and never edit in the HDV codec because I find it simply too slow. We’re also going to explore working with ProRes 422 now with our Mac Pro machine.

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

[J. Tad newberry]

thanks walter,

what a bummer that my Decklink SP card can’t take in DVCPro HD! i figured that wouldn’t be the issue, but i’ve got an email going to BlackMagic to see if they might have a solution. also, i’m surprised that you find HDV to be slower to work with than DVCPro HD as the HDVs are smaller files, ain’t they?

oh well…i guess at this point i’m stuck editing in HDV. hopefully episode #2 will go smoother!

[Graeme Nattress]

HDV is a touch slower to deal with, but can get a bit slow for rendering back to. If you’re doing an offline with it, I doubt that would matter too much, but for people who wish to go back to HDV tape, it’s a right pain, and indeed, in that situation there’s no easy way around that aspect of HDV.

As you’re shooting HDCAM, for offline purposes, going to DVCProHD is fine as long as you recpature it uncompressed for the online. It’s not good form to use the offline media for the online as you loose some resolution in the process as DVCproHD has a samller frame size than HDCAM.

I don’t think recaptureing HDV is a pleasant tast due to the consumer nature of the format, so if you can just keep that native and not recapture for the online, that’ll be good. You can do that now that FCP6 can have multiple codecs on the timeline, so you could have a prores timeline, and put HDV and DVCProHD on it for offline. At online, make the timeline uncompressed, recapture the HDCAM and go.

Graeme

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

[Shane Ross]

[mortimer heathcliff] “what a bummer that my Decklink SP card can’t take in DVCPro HD!”

That is a standard definition capture card..it cannot capture HD. No SD card can. Not too much of a shocker.

[mortimer heathcliff] “i figured that wouldn’t be the issue, but i’ve got an email going to BlackMagic to see if they might have a solution.”

The solution is simple…get an HD capture card. Decklink Extreme does it.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Walter Biscardi]

[Shane Ross] “[mortimer heathcliff] “what a bummer that my Decklink SP card can’t take in DVCPro HD!”

That is a standard definition capture card..it cannot capture HD. No SD card can. Not too much of a shocker.”

yep, I’ll second that.

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

[Andrew Kimery]

[Graeme Nattress] “HDV is a touch slower to deal with”

Granted this all depends on the speed of your machine, but in my experience there is a pretty sizable difference in terms of speed between working in an HDV and DVCPro HD. Where I’m at now we have 14 editors working on machines ranging of Dual 2ghz G5’s to first gen Mac Pros and everyone complains about working w/HDV compared to working w/DVCPro HD or DV. We do a fair amount of mixed format timelines, “animating stills”, and effects and working in HDV just makes me want to gouge my eyes out sometimes. We also have some random problems w/HDV that are specific to our workflow and that doesn’t help matters either.

-Andrew

[Walter Biscardi]

[adkimery] “working in HDV just makes me want to gouge my eyes out sometimes.”

That’s a fantastic way to put it. 🙂

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