I asked some questions to Mark Brennan at technical sales from heuris about the new encoder, I asked if it would be sold alone:

"The price for the MPPDTV-HD software is $4785. We don't offer the DTVHD software by itself. Our software is cumulative. If it were available it would be priced around $3830."

This is of course very bad news, I believe that it is a very high price for something witch is not real-time at all... I hope some other company will do an encoder for mac (Apple?) to get Mpeg2TS files back to the camcorder.

<hope some other company will do an encoder for mac (Apple?) to get Mpeg2TS files back to the camcorder.>

What do you mean by get files back to the computer..thanks.

Actually, I wrote "back to the camcorder", not "back to the computer". I mean that we actually cannot export back to tape from macintosh directly to the HD10.

RE: Heuris.

1. 3 months ago they said they would have a $600 D-VHS ONLY plug-in for FCP ready for my review July/August.

2. They sent me a prototype of a new version of Xtractor for HDV.

Now nothing! Which is a major screw for the HDV market.

Possibilities:

1. As Paul speculated, maybe they are doing an OEM deal with Apple which could mean we have a long time to wait.

2. They realised Apple would eventually pull HDV support inside FCP. And since Apple's Compressor is FREE, they would have NO market to sell a $600 plug-in to FCP.

3. They realized that by selling the "MPEG-2 alogorithm" within a D-VHS ONLY plug-in for $600--how could they justify charging $5000 for the "flexible" version. So by avoiding the HDV market, they can stay in the up-scale market.

4. They have run into technical problems. I was never able to record back to the camcorder using their $5000 software. Maybe they are trying to fix it.

What can we do?

1. Contact Bit Vice who sells MPEG-2 encoders for OS X at a very reasonable price.

2. Look for alternatives. I'll soon start a thread about ways I tried and failed--and a way I have succeded in recording to D-VHS under OS X. I need to check recording back to the camcorder this weekend.

One possibility that I've discovered is that the Womble editor on the PC has a built in MPEG2-TS encoder that let's you specify bit rate, frame size, GOP size etc. It also says it takes Quicktime Motion Jpeg sequences as input. So theoretically this could be a pathway to re-encode MPEG-2 TS, converting to motion JPEG first. I haven't tried it yet, I just bought the editor the other day, but I'll let you know. If anyone else out there has tried it please let us know.

Womble will generate TS -- and you don't need to go through JPEG, but you could.

And the TS will go to D-VHS and you'll see a perfect pix while recording.

BUT, D-VHS playback is not perfect! There are huge fluctuations in the bit-rate

Part of the problem may be that you cannot set the TOTAL MUXED data rate with Womble. And Womble tech support sucks. Worse they don't have a Forum.

I agree with Steeve on his review of the Heuris... ahem... little problem. The guy told me they just received the camera and have yet to find a way back in...

Apple will support HDV, Heuris must know that for sure.

I guess it is always a wait or trial game on new technologies.

Will the Bit Vice Mpeg encoder encode 720p resolution Quicktime files? and if so, couldn't you then just Mux to TS with Womble or another Muxer?

The problem is NOT encoding. My 4HDV package will let you encode HD on a Mac.

The problem IS the MUX to TS. Obviously there is a trick that JVC shared with KDDI. Aspect HD has just solved the problem!

By the way, Bit Vice and Apple's Compressor only support SD, not HD. Everything other than Heuris is for DVDs.

Hence the need for my HDVviaduct plug-in. It took a good deal of work to code, in C, a plug-into enable HD encoding.

By the way, the other issue is that the JVC MPEG-2 file is not compatible with the Apple MPEG-2 encoder. So I had to code, again in C, HDVbridge to overcome this problem.

Steve, your package sounds very interesting, but I'm unclear as to how the workflow goes. I think if people understood that better, they would be more willing to jump on it, I for one would. Perhaps it would help if someone who has bought it would review it, or if you simply explained exactly what it does and how each of the plug-ins works. I am trying to help, not be critical, it sounds like you've put in a lot of work here and produced something very helpful.

HERE ARE A FEW PARAGRAPHS FROM THE "EDITING HDV' CHAPTER IN THE "SHOOTING GUIDE"

Capture with DVHScap to files. One file per tape.

The OS X MoreMissingTools shareware utility can be used to demux a Transport Stream to an .mpg MP2 audio file and an .m2v video file. And, the OS X madplaywrap shareware utility can be used to convert an MP2 file to an AIFF file. Unfortunately, there are two obstacles to using MoreMissingTools and madplaywrap.

First, the madplaywrap utility cannot accept an audio file with an .mpg extension from MoreMissingTools. Second, and more seriously, the JVC MPEG-2 video Elementary Stream files are incompatible with Apple’s ($20) MPEG-2 decoder. Therefore, MPEG-2 Elementary Stream .m2v files output by MoreMissingTools cannot be played by Apple’s QuickTime Player nor imported into Final Cut Pro.

The HDVbridge software plug-in supplied with 4HDV removes both obstacles to editing HDV. When used with MoreMissingTools, HDVbridge corrects the problems with the JVC video files and generates an .m2v file plus an .mp2 audio file. The .mp2 file is then converted to an .aiff file—which FCP can import—by madplaywrap.

Before importing the .m2v files are processed to .mov proxy files that FCP can import. The .m2v files are not uncompressed because a single HDV tape would require 300 Gigabytes of storage!

For the Final Cut Pro version 3 or version 4 editor, the 4HDV bundle will enable you to edit with Final Cut Pro as you usual. Playback from both the View and Canvas will be smooth. Moreover, effects will be real-time within the limits determined by FCP and your Mac’s architecture. Naturally, version 4 will handle more streams in real-time than version 3.

Apple’s Compressor (included with Final Cut Pro v4), unfortunately cannot support an image size of 1280x720. Heuris offers an MPEG-2 encoder that plugs into FCP which solves this problem. The Heuris MPEG Power Professional 2 DTV-HD ($4785) plug-in generates both Program and Transport Streams. Please contact Heuris to determine if its MPEG Power Professional 2 DTV-HD encoder supports the HD1/HD10 camcorders.

If your NLE has neither a built in MPEG-2 encoder nor an MPEG-2 plug-in, the timeline can be output as uncompressed video with PCM audio. In this case, a utility must be used to encode the audio and video. The HDVviaduct software, plug-in supplied with 4HDV, enables the ffmpegX utility to encode an HD Program Stream file from uncompressed video. (Without the HDVviaduct plug-in, ffmpegX is limited to SD resolution video.)

Eric Bilodeau wrote:

"...I mean that we actually cannot export back to tape from macintosh directly to the HD10."

What do you give up by not being able to export edited footage back to the camera? Does this problem affect all editing, or only certain uses, such as special effects?

Brian

<<<-- Originally posted by Brian Mitchell Warshawsky : Eric Bilodeau wrote:

"...I mean that we actually cannot export back to tape from macintosh directly to the HD10."

What do you give up by not being able to export edited footage back to the camera? Does this problem affect all editing, or only certain uses, such as special effects?

Brian -->>>

You give up getting your production to videotape!