HDV Workflow Query

[Walter Biscardi]

[qcostello] “Does anyone have any workflow suggestions that would allow us to work offline on two systems and then later do a faithful online back into HD? Thanks as always for all the help.”

Capture everything in HDV to start with and when you’re done with the offline, either recapture everything in DVCPro HD or uncompressed HD. Either way, you’re still starting out with HDV which I’m finding to be a bear to color correct. When it looks good it’s amazing, when it looks bad, it looks really bad.

Our workflow was to capture HDV initially, but then we switched to DVCPro HD capturing through our Kona 3. We’re editing and finishing the project in DVCPro HD 1080i / 50.

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

[Quinn Costello]

Thank you for the reply. I don’t know that this would necessarily accomodate our system restrictions inre: to the fact that we’re editing offline on a G4 using Lacie firewire drives. How about capturing to the DV/NTSC 720 codec and then re-digitizing later on a G5 with a Raid Array. We’ll be doing our color correction, audio mixing and graphics/titles tweaking during the online. Thanks.

Quinn Costello

[Walter Biscardi]

[qcostello] “Thank you for the reply. I don’t know that this would necessarily accomodate our system restrictions inre: to the fact that we’re editing offline on a G4 using Lacie firewire drives.”

I’m pretty sure HDV files are smaller than DV files. They work fine on a laptop with a Firewire 400 drive so they’ll work fine on the G4. HDV is the most heavily compressed format I think we use, something like 25:1 compression.

But if you really want to drop them down to DV, you can do that too, just make sure to keep everything at the exact same frame rate as the HDV originals.

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

[Uli Plank]

HDV is exactly the same data rate as DV (25 mbps), only JVC has less (19 mbps). The problem might not be the drives, but the G4. HDV needs an awful lot of processing power for smooth editing. What level of G4 do you have?

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Zak Mussig]

I’m with Uli on this one. I wouldn’t even attempt to edit HDV on a G4. Set your video device to down-convert to DV for output. Work in DV. Maybe you’ll have an opportunity to online to DVCPro HD.

Zak

Zak

[Joe Moulins]

Quinn, take a look at my post about workflow below. In my case, we want to both avoid editing HDV, and converting to DVCPROHd (only because we’re required to deliver HDCam SR, which I didn’t point out in my original post).

Might work for you?