[Mark Maness]

Yeah, you’re right, Gary. What I meant was that compared to a higher resolution SD such as XDCAM, downconverted HDV (to me) doesn’t look any better that standard miniDV like that of the Canon XL1. Mind you, that I don’t have any problems with the Canon XL1. My company used a couple XL1s for the last three years as a main form of acquisition. But my problem tends to be that DV has much more dense black levels than the SD video of the XDCAM shooting IMX 50.

I know it sounds like I’m bashing HDV but I’m not. I’m just venting some of the issues I’ve noticed when comparing it to Sony’s XDCAM at IMX 50. Yeah, I do realize that’s not a fair comparison but its the only one I have to compare. And all of this is just my thoughts. My whole purpose is to see what your thoughts were on this.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Ok, guys… I understand exactly what you are saying, but I’ve got a question and I want to see what the experts say. We’ve recently acquired the Sony HDV system as a secondary camera (cost effectient) and I’m trying to fine that best way to use it since HDV is not very friendly when mixing with other formats. You’ve mentioned that capturing via component is better than firewire, and I would have to aggree that sounds very plausible. BUT, when you hook up your HDV machine via the component output, are you using the firewire port for machine control? Our post house ( very small one) has a AJA IO and AJA Kona2. At the moment, we are still SD video but with plans to go HiDef in the very near future. How would I have to hook up my HDV for the best workflow for this (SD video)?

Here’s the other wench that I’m dealing with. Our primary format is Sony XDCAM, a tapeless format. Its absolutley awesome in quality but mixing it with HDV isn’t seeming to work as well as we thought. I thought the theory sounded great and even Sony thought this would be great. But FCP 5.0 with its HDV support and IMX support isn’t quite up to snuff compared to their claims in advertising and at NAB in Las Vegas. So the major problem for me would have to be, how can I make this work without losing resolution? And I know the answer is, I’m trying to do too much with mixing and SD format with HDV. I have to downconvert to DV which meas loss of resolution.

So…. I guess what I’m getting to is that DON’T mix HDV with SD video (especially a higher resolution (picture sharpness) SD video).

That’s my question and my two cents, all within one post!

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Yes, I did notice the lagging throughout the computer. One of my computers (the G5) is only a month old now, so I don’t believe its the computers. It does make since to ask but one is three years old and the other is one month old and it does the same thing on both computers. Both computers do have AJA boxes attached (an Io and a Kona2). But I’m not sure that has anything to do with it.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Well, I have noticed that problem myself and I have two totally differnt systems. One is a G4 Dual 1 gig processors with 1.5 gig of RAM. The other is a G5 Dual 2.7 gig processors with 4.5 gig of RAM. I see that same effects on both systems.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Hey guys… I think this is a HUGE bug in the software since Apple is tellig you to set it to Best Quality.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Well, I did forget to mention that I using it on a G4 Dual 1 gig with an nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4600 (so that I can have true dual flat panel monitor support). Now, on my G5 Dual 2.7, it seems to run fine. But that shouldn’t mean that I have to have a G5 to use it properly.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Yes, it is very sluggish… There are many, many problems with FCP 5. One is when I render any Photoshop title, I get aliased edges which look terrible.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

How is your HDV machine hooked up?

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

We use it BUT you need to know that you must shoot in IMX50, not 40 or 30. If you have and do, you’ll have to render everything out and then the video is very jittery. We have 13 shows that was shot in IMX40 to conserve disk space. Now, I’ve got a real mess. I’ll have to capture all that footage using the DVCPRO50 codec and and edit in that too. But from now on, we are bitting the bullet and shooting in IMX50.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Mark Maness]

Yeah, I noticed these errors myself… I think they may be attributed to MacOS X 10.4.1 update. Since that update, my systems have been acting very strange.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions