studio monthly article: HDV to DVCPro HD via MM

[Walter Biscardi]

[mortimer heathcliff] “question: wouldn’t this method introduce artifacting of some kind since it is merely trying to uprez from a lesser quality codec?”

Any software recompression either via Media Manager or Compressor is generally inferior to hardware recompression via a card like the AJA Kona series. I use my Kona 3 board to convert HDV to DVCPro HD and it’s pristine AND done in realtime.

The results I’ve seen from Compressor are only good if you set it to a very high quality and you’re talking about a lot of render time. For my money, it’s better to let the hardware do it in realtime.

But if software is your only option, then test a few clips and see if you’re happy with the results. If so, proceed to your full project.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

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[Nick Meyers]

also worth considering:

whereas Compressor has lots of settings you can tweak to maximise your quality,
Media Manager has NONE.
it will probably do the worst job of up-resing of these 3 options (Hardware, Compressor, MM)

FCP5 introduced improved scaling options in the sequence settings.
i’ve no idea if MM taps into those, or not

so in some ways you might be best just to drop the HDV shot into your DVCProHD timeline and render

if there are no frame-rate conversions needed Compressor shouldn’t be too slow
if there ARE frame-rate conversions then Compressor would be noticeably better than MM or timeline rendering

but nothing beats the evidence of your own eyes, so do a couple of test, and see what works best for you

nick

[J. Tad newberry]

on my wimpy SD monitor, the re-compression looks very good. my guess is that it wouldn’t hold up when going to an HDCam master, but for my offline, it will probably serve it’s purpose. it looks like i’ll have to break down and get some sort of HD capture card (and recapture my HDV footage) before going to online. OR, maybe i just drop the original HDV captured footage into my online timeline and let FCP render it into the finished DVCPro HD timeline, that also has the HDCam footage in it. OR, if (as it sounds from many here), it would probably be best to get the HD capture card, recapture the HDV footage in the DVCPro HD codec for my online, and then all would be well.

so, my question here: do i gain anything at all by re-capturing my HDV footage as DVCPro HD for my final timeline, or should i just leave it in its’ native HDV form for the online?

(i’m confusing myself just by writing this stuff…)

[Sean Oneil]

Certainly don’t fuss over MM’s quality if this is just for your offline. Do whatever is fastest.

I don’t understand how you plan to online to HDCam without a card. Are you taking an EDL to another facility and having them batch re-capture? Or are you delivering a hard drive with your media? If it’s that latter, don’t use DVCProHD. Whether you convert with a Kona, MM, or Compressor – it’s a bad idea no matter what. There is no purpose whatsoever in using DVCPro as an intermediate transport codec – unless you have to deliver on DVCPro tape.

HDCam is pretty lossly. DVCPro is also pretty lossy. And HDV is beyond very lossy. Your workflow idea will incorporate the worst of all three. Take the DVCPro out of the equation since the other two are unavoidable.

You should online at Uncompressed or ProRes. Do this by dropping your HDV media into a UC or ProRes sequence and rendering. Then export a QT Movie. Since those formats are lossless (virtually), the quality of the encoder means little. If those formats aren’t doable, there are still better finishing options than DVCProHD (like Animation, P-JPEG, Cineform, SheerVideo, etc.)

Sean

[J. Tad newberry]

hmmmm, yours is the first post to go against DVCPro HD for the online. but to answer your first question, yes, i am taking the project to a post house for the “online”. i hadn’t been planning on recapturing the HDCam at uncompressed because most of the other people here were saying that DVCPro HD looks virtually identical to uncompressed HDCam…and saves much hard drive space, as well as is a codec i can work with quicker on my timeline.

the HDV footage needs to be married (as a B camera) to the HDCam footage at some point in the process, and others here were saying that HDV is a crappy codec to work in on the timeline, so i went ahead and “uprezzed” it via MM for my offline here at my place. so, with that, i now have my original HDV footage on my drive, as well as the same HDV footage MM’ed to DVCPro HD footage. therefore, i’m doing my offline here all in the DVCPro HD codec, and was planning on keeping it as is for the online as i just dump it out to an HDCam master tape…but you’re saying i would be far better off to recapture all of my HDCam footage in the online in an uncompressed codec? what then of my HDV footage?

either way, i think i need to think of a much better shooting format(s) and workflow for next month…

[J. Tad newberry]

by the way, i don’t have FCP 6, so no Pro Res…

[Sean Oneil]

Converting the HDCam footage to DVCProHD, and then back to HDCam – its not ideal. But its not the end of the world if that’s what you’re stuck with. The HDV footage will look bad though. You can minimize the damage greatly by not converting it to DVCProHD – at least not for the online. I’m not being a snob about this. DVCProHD is lossy by itself. Combining that with other lossy formats in the chain is a bad idea and you should avoid it if possible.

I don’t know your game plan as far as onlining. Where are you taking it? What are they using? Are they using an Avid, or Final Cut Pro (or something else)?

Are they charging you by the hour? Or is the finishing going to be a flat rate? Where is the color correction being done?

If they are charging by the hour, and they are using Final Cut, and you are doing your own CC, you may wish to sacrifice picture quality in order to save time/money. Delivering DVCProHD footage means they won’t have to spend time rendering anything. They can just open your FCP project and start outputting to tape right away. Even though the quality will be hurt, this may be necessary for your budget.

But if they’re using Avid, then they have to render/import your footage regardless. I don’t know if newer Avids can transcode DVCPro quickly and losslessly. If I had to guess I’d say it can’t. If that’s the case there’s absolutely no reason whatsoever to deliver DVCProHD.

All this said, your project is a classic example of when you should use the traditional online workflow. That which is to bring in an EDL or project file, and have them batch recapture everything there with full online quality. Better scaling, and they can capture it Uncompressed. It shouldn’t take too long. Certainly faster than importing footage on an Avid. Just makes sure they have HDV playback there.

Or you could just rent the decks, get a Kona, and do this yourself. That’s what I would do.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

Let me tell you something I just discovered on my own. I captured a bunch of HDCam 1080i60 footage to ProRes HQ. The ProRes media will be used for onlining, but my MacPro can’t handle if for a pleasant offline experience (I need a 9 camera multicam).

So I used MM to convert it to DVCProHD for the offline work (I’ll reconnect to ProRes when I online). The footage looked pretty bad. Compression artifacts were clear as day.

I could have used Compressor instead of MM, but Compressor does use the same encoder. It just does a better job of scaling and deinterlacing. Since I’m going 1080i to 1080i, none of that matters too much. So I don’t think the results would have been much better.

Point is it looks bad. And it’s no surprise why. HDCam is very lossy, ProRes, while not nearly as bad, is also lossy. And DVCProHD is even more lossy than HDCam. 3 generations. And it would be a fourth if I were to master it back to tape D5 tape – let alone HDCam (which is much worse than D5).

All of the camera codecs and all of the editing codecs cheat (except Uncompressed). Even ProRes and HDCam SR. Some are much worse than others. HDCam AND DVCPro are two of the bad ones. And HDV is by far the worst.

DVCPro is good for a generation, maybe two. If that’s what you shot on, then onlining with it can make sense depending on the situation. Otherwise I would avoid it. Its a great camera format and it’s wonderful you can edit natively. But its not a good archiving/onlining/intermediate format. Not at all.

Sean