I just got my HD100U today, but I am still awful naive with this thing.

When I connect it to my firewire port, XP detects a new device but I can't find anything new showing up in the device manager.

Do I need a mac to do this??

Doug,

Normally, you use an editing program to capture, store and edit your video. Moviemaker should be in your windows app somewhere. But it won't work with HDV, just DV. Otherwise, you'll have to get a better app.

PC will be fine. Im pretty sure windows will not capture HDV all by itself though. You need to capture in video editing software that supports HDV. I believe theres also some sort of freeware utility that will just capture it, but I forget what its called or where to get it. Anyone know which one I'm talking about?

I've captured it using HDV Rack, or Pixela HD Capture. Pixela was the free capture utillity bundled with the HD1 camera.

There are several PC tools that will capture the HD transport stream from the HD100U, however only a few editing packages can do much with the data (particularly the 24p mode.) Vegas will work, but it works much better using CineForm Connect HD. Aspect HD has also been upgraded for 24p HD100U support under Premeire Pro, so PC support is pretty good. In the 30p HDV mode most editing tools will work as that mode is nearly identical to the signals from the HD1 and HD10 cameras.

You can pick up Pinnacle Studio 10 Plus (click here) (http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Products/Consumer+Products/Home+Video/Studio+Family/) which will support your HDV camera natively. It will be out in 2 or 3 weeks (First week of October) and cost about $120 @ best buy. Getting started on a NLE like Studio is a good idea because there is a huge user base for Studio products and a fine forum to help you specifically with Studio editing.

There is also Sony Vegas Movie Studio that manages HDV now, and is the #1 selling application in the PC Video editing channel for consumers. It's very much a serious app, with internal/external monitoring, keyframing, etc. It's essentially Vegas' professional with scripting taken out, and limited number of tracks.
Sony has HDV down pretty solid, and was the first app to support HDV, giving them a lot of experience in the HDV editing/capturing/output area.

Actually Liquid Edition 6 was the first NLE to support HDV, not Vegas, and from all accounts I hear Pinnacle Studio is the most popular consumer NLE not Movie Studio. This is why Avid wanted it so much they bought the company...

Studio 10 is based on the Liquid engine now, so it has even more power than before.

Guy, Technically KDDI had the first NLE that shipped with JVC's HD1, then CineForm introduced Aspect HD for Premiere 6.5 (now Pro.) I was at JVC both NAB 2003, the only NLE software that supported HDV was from KDDI and CineForm. Other completing products appeared months (some years) later on the market.

Ah, but the HD1 isn't HDV ;-) and cineform isn't native HDV either, its a proprietary codec.

He's got you there David. Might I remind you of the DC-2000 which was years ahead of it's time and how native HDV editing was derrived?

It's all good. I have both Liquid 6 and Premiere. For HDV it's Liquid. (http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Products/Consumer+Products/Advanced+Video/Liquid+Edition/Liquid+Edition+version+6.htm)

Guy & Stephen,

The JVC GR-HD1 was the first HDV camera on the market, it compiles with the HDV specification of the similar name "HD1". The newer Sony cameras are HD2 spec'd HDV cameras. The JVC GY-HD100U is again a HD1 spec'd camera.

As for native vs digital intermediate based editing that has nothing with HDV editing and support. CineForm was listed on http://www.hdv-info.org/ in the very early days -- which informally verifies our compliance. Also is it very likely that more HDV sourced material is edited with CineForm technology than other solution as we are shipped as standard elements within Premiere and Vegas (the highest volume PC products for prosumer applications.) Of course we argue the digital intermiate solutions are better than native (see http://www.cineform.com/technology/quality.htm) but editing of video is not about manipulating transport streams, is about creating emotional, educational or entertainment media using images and sound. Whether your shooting HDV, HDCAM or Film, we are damn good at building the tools for content creation. :)

David,
I'm with you in the fact that the content is the goal and quality content can be cut on anything. Let's leave it at that, shall we? There's been some good links posted and Doug Meyer can click and view different options.

The HDV specifications were developed after the HD1 was released wasn' it? HDV 720p's spec is based on the HD1 but the HD1 never bore the HDV logo (and still doesn't I think).

I wouldn't try to say Liquid supports editing a codec because it can import and convert that codec to another codec for editing. HDV is ONLY HDV and not an intermediatry codec. Your process supports importing HDV streams but it is not editing HDV, unless you are editing the native stream.

Its no different to saying an NLE supports editing uncompressed video because you capture from an uncompressed source into a DV codec and edit in DV. You are editing DV, not uncompressed once the conversion takes place. By the way, I am not making comparisons here of the qualities of the codecs, just the process's in use.

When Liquid captures or imports a HDV stream, the stream remains unchanged, so you are editing the native HDV stream, hence you are editing HDV.

Your product clearly allows for importing HDV but not editing HDV. Its a technicality but it is true non the less.

We were developing for and editing HDV at the begining (so your semantics aside) the JVC GR-HD1 was the first spec'd HDV camera. The spec existed before we had access to our HD1 unit. Even JVC web site still promotes it as "the world's first consumer HDV camcorder" (see http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?productId=PRD1206000&pathId=29)

And generally I will also consider the HD1 a HDV camera as well, but the reason for that is I was under the impression HDV was developed from what JVC did with the HD1/10, not the other way around. So the HD1 conforms to the HDV spec but isn't technically a HDV camera (HDV is a trademark or something isn't it?).

It does beg the question, why wouldn't JVC certify the HD1 as HDV and put the HDV logo on it if it is HDV?

Here is the press release for the HD1
http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/press/2003/gr-hd1.html (Jan 03)
No mention of HDV

Here is the current 10U web page
http://pro.jvc.com/prof/Attributes/features.jsp?feature_id=01&tree=&itempath=&model_id=MDL101394

None of it states HDV or sports the HDV logo.

Any idea why that might be?

The HDV specifications were developed after the HD1 was released wasn' it? HDV 720p's spec is based on the HD1 but the HD1 never bore the HDV logo (and still doesn't I think).

I wouldn't try to say Liquid supports editing a codec because it can import and convert that codec to another codec for editing. HDV is ONLY HDV and not an intermediatry codec. Your process supports importing HDV streams but it is not editing HDV, unless you are editing the native stream.

Its no different to saying an NLE supports editing uncompressed video because you capture from an uncompressed source into a DV codec and edit in DV. You are editing DV, not uncompressed once the conversion takes place. By the way, I am not making comparisons here of the qualities of the codecs, just the process's in use.

When Liquid captures or imports a HDV stream, the stream remains unchanged, so you are editing the native HDV stream, hence you are editing HDV.

Your product clearly allows for importing HDV but not editing HDV. Its a technicality but it is true non the less.

Just wandered on into the HD100 thread to see what's going on... and blow me down if I don't see the same incredible self-delusion and piffling nitt-picking over banalities that seem to make some sad peoples lives worth living when a question is asked by a newbie about some technology that they need unbiased and informative information on.

So many leeches who see an opportunity to push their particular product, regardless of it's true worth to the person asking the question. Then like some snotty nosed braggart who finds they've been trumped by reality, they look for a loop-hole to exploit...

I went through this rigmarole when I bought my HD10u, then the process happened all over again when I bought my FX-1... I blew heaps of time trying out some recommended program that some five-knuckle-shuffler guaranteed worked with HDV of any flavour - only to end up deleting it as the Hard Disk excrescence that it was.

After 2yrs of working with both the HD10u and FX-1e I can honestly say that all the 'Real-time' promises and 'Native-HDV' statements have all been baloney, except for those with a fortune to toss around on incredibly high spec'd computers - which could probably give the same performance gains without the software. Much software that's pushed in the HDV arena is placebo ware, so be prepared to lose some bucks if you want to do the research yourself.

Bottom line: Cineform's products are the only reliable one's I've found for capture and conversion to a truly workable HD 'lossless' video stream. I couldn't care less who had the first HDV labelled bit of nonsense on the block... That arguement is for tossers. Real users of these JVC cameras want to know stuff like - ConnectHD/AspectHD demo would be worth getting to use the HDLink utility for capture/conversion or VLC which is free may work for capturing the HD100's video stream and then there's CapDVHS and Womble that are also free tools that would be worth more than a cursory glance.

When some PC novice posts asking for re-assurance, it might be worth earning some respect by giving it. I'm sure Doug is still wondering whether Mac would be the better platform.

Well, Doug I'd be sticking to PC if I was you. Save your money, because HDV is better supported on PC at this point, and many of the ancillary devices you may want to add have greater connectivity possibilities to PC than to Mac (Avel Linkplayer, Buffalo media player, Roku Photobridge and a whole batch of HD capable playback network devices such as the PS3 and X-BOX 360 which have WMV9 HD capable DVD drives).

What a shame you had such problems, can't imagine why with your attitude.

With an AU$1000 upgrade to my PC it could edit native HDV in 2 stream 1080i and 3 stream 720p with liquid. You can now do this on a new PC which is barely above what is now a typical multimedia PC: dual core 3GHz (minimal cost over a single core 3.2GHz), 256MB decentvideo card (add maybe $200 over a standard 128MB) and 1-1.5GB of RAM(most get 1GB now anyway).

No product is perfect, and while Liquid has its quirks, it does work. And by the way, Liquid isn't my product, it is Avids, I am just an end user.

@Steve Crisdale- I promote Liquid merely because I want to help people with HDV. David promotes Cineform because he wants to help people with HDV. Guy promotes Liquid because he wants to help people with HDV. Same for Douglas Spotted Eagle.

We are each going to promote the program we know best. I know Liquid very well and could help with just about any hardware or editing scenario where HDV is concerned from pro down to consumer. This is why we all promote these programs because they do work. Liquid is a native HDV editor and so is FCP and soon Avid Xpress Pro will be too. Some NLE's use Cineform. OK, that is established.

I wrote above that Pinnacle Studio 10 Plus is a good start into NLE's and it supports HDV natively and there is a huge user base of very talented people using Pinnacle Studio to help if needed. Guy added that Studio 10 has a Liquid engine underneath. That started the playfull discussion between David and Guy, that's it.

We're just guys talking here, nothing malicious. Sounds like you know what doesn't work, join in.

Vegas edits native HDV too, if we're gonna toss that in the mix, as does Vegas Movie Studio (99.00 retail app which replaced Pinnacle in sales after both of them beating each other every other month). That said, I'm not sure why any app would boast native HDV editing. It's not optimal, not by any stretch. CineForm or converting HDV to 4:2:2 are the only answer for our client base, but as you pointed out, everybody has their fave. For me, Pinnacle just isn't my cup of tea. FCP is my other choice, but it doesn't work (for me) as well as Vegas on the HDV side. In fact, here in Toronto, we just did a Vegas vs multiple apps shootout in both practical and theoretical...I won't say who the group picked as the winner in a group of mostly FCP and Avid users....but I wouldn't post that we had the shootout if I was embarassed at the answer. :-)

I'm not contending to be an expert, nor that my recommendation is the 'Holy Grail' for any HDV camcorder purchaser.

I also did NOT say that I had "such problems".

My empathy: for it was just that, lay with Doug Meyer. His original post requested nothing more than a means for his system (a PC) to identify the camera so that he could capture some footage he'd no doubt recently taken.

His comments left no doubt that he had made enough attempts to be totally frustrated by what he rightly or wrongly, perceived as a hardware problem.

He wasn't asking about which NLE or codec was going to provide the best performance or R/T editing solution.

I don't own a HD100; but my experience with both the HD10u and FX-1e indicate that it's unlikely that his HD100 will be visible to any NLE he may have on his system, regardless of any driver he may or may not have installed.

So, in the interests of educational assistance it would have been nice to have seen responses that either pointed him to threads with accurate information on making the HD100 "visible" to his OS, and/or likely possibilities for the capture of the HDV material once the OS is capable of "seeing" his cam. He did state that he's a novice, so some attempt at empathy seemed warranted.

Even queries about the OS he's using are conspicuously absent. Was he attempting to capture via Firewire or...? What shooting mode (thankfully someone thoughtful did ask that at least!!) was he attempting to capture?

The things that "Non-novices" should be aware of if they want to get a new piece of hardware running with their current set-up, were what Doug was hoping could help him out. I'll assume you'd expect the same consideration from "those in the know" if you faced the same circumstance... but then you may prefer to be given a sales pitch.

I don't own a HD100; but my experience with both the HD10u and FX-1e indicate that it's unlikely that his HD100 will be visible to any NLE he may have on his system, regardless of any driver he may or may not have installed.


Good points, steve, and I apologize for missing that. I only responded to the post above mine, and missed the original. Consider me appropriately chastised.

Doug,
Although this has been posted MANY times here....here's another direct answer.
1. Go to Control Panel/System/Hardware mgr
2. Look for the unidentified (or identified) AVC device.
3. Right click,/Properties, choose "Update Driver"
4. Choose "I'll install myself"
5. Browse to Sound, Video, Game controllers
6. In that dialog, scroll down and find "Sony". You'll see it twice, you want the topmost one.
7. In THAT dialog, choose the Sony DVHS driver.

JVC cam will now show up.

In fact, here in Toronto, we just did a Vegas vs multiple apps shootout in both practical and theoretical..

Douglas,

Whenever these shootout's occur it always leaves me wondering who was at the helm of each NLE. Do you know what I mean? There are nice advantages working in native HDV. As Guy said, if we had to, we (Liquid Broadcast users) can bring in the HDV and change it to DVCPro50 422 for SD or Uncompressed 2VUY or RGB AVI for HD. It's all good.

I like Vegas. I tried it for a while (on trial) and it had some neat stuff. Cutting is cutting on Vegas, FCP or Liquid. That's for sure. But if I have to get deep and get the best results, it's Liquid. Some of my counterparts here in Chicago use FCP/HD and our group uses Liquid. We marvel at each other program and the same goes for Vegas and XpressPro and Edius. There are some really nice features in all of them. Everyone of us has cut on Premiere and left it idle.

OT: I wouldn't mind sitting in the editors chair for a shootout. What were the parameters? Footage provided? or end to end editing?

@Steve Crisdale- This is exactly what I was talking about. Douglas helped you and if you'd have been on Liquid I could help with your questions. So it's not only promoting a products, it's offering help as well. Good luck..

I finished a 9 camera FX-1 concert shoot in multicamera on FCP about 2 months ago. 11 hours of media, just for the performance.

Native HDV editing in FCP works pretty good! Output to HDCAM via Kona 2 worked fine also...

Good points, steve, and I apologize for missing that. I only responded to the post above mine, and missed the original. Consider me appropriately chastised.

Doug,
Although this has been posted MANY times here....here's another direct answer.
1. Go to Control Panel/System/Hardware mgr
2. Look for the unidentified (or identified) AVC device.
3. Right click,/Properties, choose "Update Driver"
4. Choose "I'll install myself"
5. Browse to Sound, Video, Game controllers
6. In that dialog, scroll down and find "Sony". You'll see it twice, you want the topmost one.
7. In THAT dialog, choose the Sony DVHS driver.

JVC cam will now show up.

Thanks Douglas!!

I hope Doug Meyer hasn't been so traumatized in the mean time, that he's gone and put a down-payment on a Mac...

Douglas,

Whenever these shootout's occur it always leaves me wondering who was at the helm of each NLE. Do you know what I mean? There are nice advantages working in native HDV. As Guy said, if we had to, we (Liquid Broadcast users) can bring in the HDV and change it to DVCPro50 422 for SD or Uncompressed 2VUY or RGB AVI for HD. It's all good.

I like Vegas. I tried it for a while (on trial) and it had some neat stuff. Cutting is cutting on Vegas, FCP or Liquid. That's for sure. But if I have to get deep and get the best results, it's Liquid. Some of my counterparts here in Chicago use FCP/HD and our group uses Liquid. We marvel at each other program and the same goes for Vegas and XpressPro and Edius. There are some really nice features in all of them. Everyone of us has cut on Premiere and left it idle.

OT: I wouldn't mind sitting in the editors chair for a shootout. What were the parameters? Footage provided? or end to end editing?

@Steve Crisdale- This is exactly what I was talking about. Douglas helped you and if you'd have been on Liquid I could help with your questions. So it's not only promoting a products, it's offering help as well. Good luck..


multi-format Footage provided on hard drive/network, semi-specific goal to reach, a very wide variety of media possibilities, including having to color correct (or not) and output to a televison monitor. No hardware assistance. Software only. I use a laptop, but I've gone against several desktop systems.

Well, I'm a Vegas user for a long time now. And I believe it is an heavily underrated broadcast tool. Yet the support for HDV isn't what I would like. Because of that and some posts I installed liquid. It should have better HDV capabilities...

In an hour or 2 it was deinstalled again. It might work fine, just not for me. I like Vegas better, the workflow is a lot faster there (I'm used to it too - I have to admit....) and it has more options. Vegas + ConnectHD will be fine too. Videoquality might be the slightest bit lower (due to interm. codec), but that doesn't weigh up to the other advantages of using vegas for me.

It is personal, no doubt about it...

Just waiting for full support of the HD101E (not just beta like in the 1.9 version of cineform)

Douglas, saying you use a laptop rather understates your grasp of the technology. I have a year old multimedia P4-3Ghz laptop with NLE aboard and compared to the set up I saw during your Thursday seminar in Toronto, it's a can opener. And, speaking of the seminar, thank you very much for one of the absolute best presentations I've seen in four decades of adulthood. I wish I'd taped it, but even with my aging memory system I came away with a vasstly expanded understanding of the HDV universe.

David Hurdon

multi-format Footage provided on hard drive/network, semi-specific goal to reach, a very wide variety of media possibilities, including having to color correct (or not) and output to a televison monitor. No hardware assistance. Software only. I use a laptop, but I've gone against several desktop systems.

Sounds interesting and fun. I like these new competitions coming about. There's no doubt about the fact that technology has become affordable. Our sister company uses Pinnacle Silver edit suites and they were purchased for $35,000 when new. Now Liquid 6 pro comes along on a turnkey for $5000 (XW8200). Anyway, It's all good and I find nothing bad about any of it. Whichever NLE is selected it will get the cutting done.

Well, I'm a Vegas user for a long time now. And I believe it is an heavily underrated broadcast tool. Yet the support for HDV isn't what I would like. Because of that and some posts I installed liquid. It should have better HDV capabilities...

In an hour or 2 it was deinstalled again. It might work fine, just not for me. I like Vegas better, the workflow is a lot faster there (I'm used to it too - I have to admit....) and it has more options. Vegas + ConnectHD will be fine too. Videoquality might be the slightest bit lower (due to interm. codec), but that doesn't weigh up to the other advantages of using vegas for me.

It is personal, no doubt about it...

Just waiting for full support of the HD101E (not just beta like in the 1.9 version of cineform)

I can understand that you installed Liquid and then played with it for a couple of hours and then de-installed it. There is a learning curve to climb that doesn't exist with Vegas (as I saw Vegas). With Liquid, you need a couple of things. Some tutorial and some time. Once you get the hang of it, believe me, you'll like it. I've tutored many people on Liquid and it's fun to see eye's light up or read a forum response that someone get's excited becasue they understand how to use it. That brings me great joy as a person.

best,

Well; I wasn't afraid of the (obvious) learning curve. I used to work with Media Studio Pro and Adobe Premiere; so Vegas was some learning curve as well. While I don't doubt Liquid's capabilities, I just figure it suits my workflow less... On the other hand, you are right Stephen, that might be a comment only made if I was experienced with this NLE. It just 'seemed' nothing for me...

On the other hand, you are right Stephen, that might be a comment only made if I was experienced with this NLE.

The offer stands.....

Thanks....

You're coming to Belgium; or I'm coming there? :-)

All,

Thanks for the advice. Although I should have probably asked in the Editing forum, I thought my inquiry was very relevant to the HD100 as well because the camera is nothing without any way to move my footage and I still haven't found many answers.

For the record I'm shooting primarily at HDV-HD24P.

Basically so far I have not found any freeware or afforable software to retrieve video from my camera.

Links or helpful search engine keywords would be nice. A simple search for freeware HDV capture does not turn up anything promising.

Am I just asking too much?? Shouldn't a firewire camera operate like something as simple as a firewire hard drive?

I don't even want to do any editing at this point. I just want to copy raw MPEG footage to the computer, encode it to DIVX, and upload it to my website.

Also, can the HD100 do live capture in Camera mode? I just want to capture directly to PC without tapes. From what I've read so far in the user manual, it has to be in VTR mode to move any footage off-camera. This would make the camera useless as a live video capture device, unless I use the analog component out (in which case I might as well just use a $40 webcam).

Am I screwed or do I need to spend a lot of $$$ ? Any free or cheap solutions out there?

Doug,

Most software doesn't handle the 24p mode yet. For the cheapest PC commerical solution that does, you could use Connect HD ($199) to real-time convert incoming 24p data to AVIs (download the 15-day trial from www.cineform.com -- you could at least use that free period to help create you web content.) For a totally free solution a combination of tools like CapDVHS (capture transport stream), PVAStrumento (to strip transport streams into elementry streams) and VirtaulDubMPEG (to convert those MPEG streams into something else.) You may have frame rate and audio sync issues but with a few tweaks it should be usable.

Doug,
Yes you can use the 101e as a capture device as you shoot. I hooked my camera via firewire into a mac laptop running Final Cut Pro 5 , opened the log and capture window and you can capture or just view here as you shoot. Only thing is there is about a 2 second delay and the quality of picture aint that great.

FYI, Iv'e been shooting 720p/30 so havent run into any of the troubles you are talking about.

Anybody know of an update for FCP yet to make it 24 compatible?

Anybody know of an update for FCP yet to make it 24 compatible?

Believe me, when it's out, this board will be the first to talk about it.