[Asmund Voll tesdal]

[Walter Soyka] “I agree, especially with digital formats like DV and HDV, which record a data stream to tape. They don’t have “proper” separate timecode tracks.”

True, but they do have seperate sectors in the data stream for video, audio, tc and control. These can be independently overwritten, so the same principles apply when it comes to “crash”, assemble and insert edits. (And by the way, dvcpro actually have seperate control- and cue-audio tracks.)

Anyway, back on topic; I guess I don’t need to repeat that one shouldn’t stripe entire tapes before shooting, but I thought one thing sort of drowned a bit in the discussion: What we all want is nice, unbroken timecode, and my best tip to achieve that is to leave the cam running for a few secs extra so you always have something to pick up the tc on in case you need to rewind or eject the tape for some reason. And when you’re done with a tape, add a few more seconds, so the nle gets some postroll.

I know, it’s basic stuff, but (hopefully) well worth repeating.

[Asmund Voll tesdal]

Have you considered just doing it in DVDstudio pro? I’m assuming that’s what you’re using, since you mentioned final cut. “Authoring” a dvd with no menu, that will just start playing your video when played, takes just a few minutes. If you make a simple template, it could be as simple as bringing in your video and audio, dragging it into the track and naming the disc.

You will of course have to encode to mpeg by doing it this way, and if that comes in addition to having to play out to xdcam the total time your machine is in use will increase. But you might save some work time, and if you can do the encodes overnight it might be a better workflow for you. (Also, I would assume a 2-pass encode in compressor should give a better result than most dvd-recorders.)

Åsmund.

[Asmund Voll tesdal]

[Chris Tarroza] “As an editor, I have experienced the pain of trying to key DV footage and the ease of keying HD footage.”

Not going to argue any of the points made here, I absolutely agree that HD looks nice.

But that said; Isn’t it a bit unfair to base the comparison between SD and HD on DV? SD can be so much better than that. 🙂

[Asmund Voll tesdal]

Well, IMX30 has a bitrate of 30 mb/s (megabits), so a 10 sec clip should be 37.5 mB (megabytes) of video. Don’t remember the audio format for IMX, but I’ll guess 16 bit 48k, which in 8 channels for 10 secs should be 7.68 mB. Then add some metadata on top of that, and you should have an approximate size.

[Asmund Voll tesdal]

A simple setup would be to just get a video splitter (aka video distibution amplifier or vda) and two dvd recorders, and feed them with video from your cam, going trough the splitter.

[Asmund Voll tesdal]

Looks like he’s just using quad splits. To get the setup in the picture on ebay, you’ll need three quads, just run the output from two quads into two of the inputs on the third quad.

[Asmund Voll tesdal]

In this context I believe they are referring to PAL as in composite. You’re correct in that 625/50 is “PAL” frame size/rate.

[Asmund Voll tesdal]

If I remember correctly, the aspect ratios of NTSC and PAL are not the same. I’m guessing they’re pretty close (and yes, PAL is also non-square), so I don’t know if you’ll actually be able to see the difference.

[Jim McMahon] “•Divided width (854px) by 1.78 (16:9), which equals 480px wide. This accounts for the 16×9 squeeze.”

Since the image is already 4:3, dividing by 1.78 is too much. If you have a PAL 4:3 image, dividing width by 1.33 (75%) should give a correct aspect for anamorphic.

Also, I didn’t quite get what you mean here:

[Jim McMahon] “•Final size is 480×854, but when unsqueezed on a 16:9 screen, the frame size will be 854×576.”

When you say final size, do you mean the frame size of the final video? Unless I’m completely missing something, that needs to be 720×576.

[Asmund Voll tesdal]

Just one thought; how does the cost of extra time spent grading less-than-ideal footage compare to the savings of renting cheaper cams?

Just wondered, because I heard some talk about when people started shoooting on DV, only to find the savings being eaten up by more time needed grading. I wasn’t around at the time myself, so I don’t know, but is a situation that could hit low-budget HDV productions in the back? Just curious, really.

[Asmund Voll tesdal]

Which format are these tapes? Did you record them yourself or recieve them from someone else? Maybe a DV/DVcam issue?

Just the first thing that popped into my head.