Working in HDV

[Andrew Kimery]

Isn’t this one of those questions that’s better asked before you’ve captured all the footage? 😉

For nearly the past two years I’ve worked at a company where we’ve done thousands (literally) of short form projects (5-30min) natively in HDV (typically mixed w/DV, DVCPro HD and/or DVCPro 50 footage) and it’s not this impossible codec to work with that everyone seems to make it out to be. Would I rather work in DVCPro HD or Pro Res? Yeah, but we don’t have the storage capacity for it and I don’t like the idea of losing the tape’s TC and the ability to batch capture. One of the big reasons to get out of HDV is to get away from the compression and 4:2:0 color space to help keep vfx, gfx, etc., looking clean, but if you are just offlining in HDV that’s not a consideration you really need to worry about, IMO. Also, like was mentioned before, you can work natively w/HDV but set the seq to render using ProRes. HDV is also slower when it comes to exports and compression (like making DVDs or web exports for the clients/producers to look at) so that should be factored in as well especially if you are using a non-Intel Mac.

-A

[David Roth weiss]

[Barbara Ballow] “I have decided to redigitize all the source tapes in native HDV.”

Barbara,

Though painful in the short term, in the long run this is a decision that will have numerous benefits. And as you note, watching the material as it get digitized is a great way to familiarize yourself with it. Your positive approach is commendable.

Good luck,
David

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

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

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

[Rafael Amador]

I would recapture. Better now than in the middle of the editing.

Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM-BlackMagic Extreme
PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM-AJA ioHD
JVC DTV-17″
SONY EX-1 . SONY PD170
..and always a big mess on top of the table.