HDV Workflow without an I/O card?

[David Roth weiss]

You can capture HDV as ProRes on the fly via firewire. There’s a tutorial on the Cow by Chris Poisson, use the search function and you’ll find it. But, editing native HDV with an octo-core ain’t all bad.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Jeff Carpenter]

I capture to Apple Intermediate Codec over firewire. AIC is like HDV, but it fills in the GOP structure with all “i” frames. It takes up more drive space but is easy to edit once you’ve got it in there. And because the conversion isn’t too complicated it can do it live from firewire.

[David Roth weiss]

[Jeff Carpenter] “I capture to Apple Intermediate Codec over firewire.”

Jeff,

How come you capture to AIC and not ProRes?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Why use Pro-Res and not AIC?

I’m not trying to be difficult, I’m just saying that it never really crossed my mind to worry too much about which one I was using since they seemed so similar.

Yes, Pro-Res HQ is better, but it takes up more space. From what I can tell, regular Pro-Res and AIC are pretty much the same in terms of space. And since all my output is SD DVD, I can’t tell any difference between the final product when using one or the other.

Heck, I can’t really tell the difference when it’s still HD, either. So what I’m saying is, they seem to be about the same for what I do, so the fact that I picked one over the other was more of a coin-flip kind of choice.

[David Roth weiss]

[Jeff Carpenter] “Why use Pro-Res and not AIC?”

I believe ProRes is, for sake of a better term, more lossless than AIC. Its the newer, better replacement for AIC. Doesn’t mean you have to use it though…

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Alec Gitelman]

Ok, so I will capture HDV, besides being able to reference the media on tapes drive space is also an issue.

However, what happens when I start applying effects? My impression was that HDV crumbles when manipulated because of the i-frames. Am I wrong?

[Jeff Carpenter]

“More lossless” is a term that comes into play when lots of filters and alterations to the video are going on.

Ok, so there’s the answer to your original question: That’s not me for 90% of the work I do.

So, given what I do, I guess it just didn’t really matter which one I used. I was never able to find a difference in my own work, so I didn’t dwell on it too much at the time.