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HDV vs DVCPRO HD vs AIC
Hi all,
I am working with an HDV project that requires multicam editing. It’s been frustrating as I’m trying to figure out the absolute highest quality and smoothest workflow for this project. We overshot an enormous amount of footage 12hours for what could amount to a 20min piece. I captured 6hours of footage and was told by my partner that AIC is much smoother and better for editing. We were debating to go from HDV to DVCPRO HD or AIC… or just keep it native. After speaking to some people, the person that I trusted suggested editing natively, and then exporting the final to uncompressed 8 bit and master it on HDCAM. I am wondering if this is still the way to go, as I don’t want to spend vast amounts of render time in HDV native, or to recapture at AIC, edit at home and spit to tape or just start over completely, bump everything up to HDCAM and digitize DVCPRO HD.. to be clearer, I’ve layed out my options and would like the best solution. too many ways to skin the cat, too many problems with HDV…
a) edit HDV native with cuts only. export the project to Uncompressed 8 bit (i think I can do this with the media manager, in order to keep the project w/ reference to the HDV Timecode.. but since it’s mpeg2, I doubt it will remember it properly. Master the project in Uncompressed, and do all efx and color correction in HDCAM timeline and spit to tape.
b) take all footage that was captured at HDV and export to AIC, capture the rest at AIC and then work in AIC timeline with renders/ efx titles et al. Print to video or export to HDCAM and edit to tape….
c) bump all 12 hours of footage to HDCAM and digitize at DVCPRO HD, edit on a offline computer in DVCPRO HD and reconform it to HDCAM…
*I would rather save the tape stock on c) but if that’s what it calls for, then we’ll do it…..
*finally, I would love to edit with a format that is 1920 X 1080, but easy on a computer processor, that way I dont’ havce to deal with a funky media manager, especially going from 1440 to 1920 or 1280 to 1080… this piece might be a split screen video, and if I map it out like that on DVCPRO HD I might have trouble doing a smooth conform and will have to resize everything to fit, no?
thanks
lili -
2 Replies
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My advice is capture from HDV to DVCPro HD via a Kona card. Edit your project in DVCPro HD. Then master directly to HDCAM from your DVCPro HD timeline via the Kona.
Edit once, master once.
This is our workflow with all HDV work and we’ve delivered three broadcast HD documentaries using the HDV to DVCPro HD workflow.
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
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I tested DVC ProHD and found it diminished the quality of our original HDV. We were going out to a 35mm print so we needed to hold on to every bit of quality. We went from FCP editing HDV native out to a D5 master. Worked almost beautifully except for 2 unrendered dissolves that we had to insert. The render times were a pain as we edited but it saved us a lot of money for the raid and card to do uncompressed which would be the ideal.
If you do cuts only, then editing in HDV would work beautifully. My experience is that it saved us detail we would have lost going to DVCProHD. Our tests also showed that AIC looked better than DVCProHD which everyone has said doesn’t make sense but it did.
Media Manage the final edit with large handles and you are set to go direct to HDCAM or lossless with only 20 min of material.
Your mileage may vary but it is worth doing a test with a short clip and examine it yourself at a friendly post facility.
Please post back if you do a test.
Good luck.
>a) edit HDV native with cuts only. export the project to Uncompressed 8 bit (i think I can do this with the media manager, in order to keep the project w/ reference to the HDV Timecode.. but since it’s mpeg2, I doubt it will remember it properly. Master the project in Uncompressed, and do all efx and color correction in HDCAM timeline and spit to tape.
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