Problem converting HDV to DV

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[James McLean] “We shot 5 hours of HDV footage.

Our camera wasn’t set on “Down-Convert” (we tried to set it but it wouldn’t let us) so we couldn’t capture it onto our normal editing program (old version of Adobe Premiere Pro, number 7 I think, which only plays DV footage).

So we captured it on Final Cut Pro but that captured it in HDV. So now we need to convert it to DV.”

I think that in-camera down-conversion only works on analog and uncompressed digital (SDI) output but not DV/HDV.

Two options then:

• re-render your footage in FCP or other software (Squeeze, AME, etc.);
• re-capture using a different mechanism: set the camera to down-conversion; connect its S-Video port to a GV ADVC-110 or similar analog-to-DV converter; capture the output of the converter via FireWire into FCP or Pr.

Alex
DV411

[Ann Bens]

Imo its better and easiest way is to set the hdv camera to downconvert and capture it as DV through firewire on CS5 directly.

[Ann Bens]

Should say Pro 7. Downconverting is done in the camera so Pro should be able to see the DV stream.

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[Ann Bens] “Imo its better and easiest way is to set the hdv camera to downconvert and capture it as DV through firewire on CS5 directly.”

I think you’re right that it’s the easiest, and should be possible – e.g. Sony FX1, Z1 and Z5 all support down-conversion on the fly via FireWire/DV.

James did say his camera wouldn’t let him; is it possible his camera doesn’t support on the fly down-conversion?

Alex
DV411

[James Mclean]

Thanks for all your help, Alex and Ann.

We’re trying to load the footage again. See how it goes. 🙂