I decided it's time to upgrade my setup to HD and was initially looking to HDV on account of the dramatically lower cost-of-entry. I started in with a Sony last week and the HDV format takes forever to render typical filters (MB, Nattress, FCP-native, as well as any other significant filter/time adjustment).

For example (using Nattress as it runs Universal on both my systems): on my Mactel 2Ghz it took 16 minutes to render a 30 second clip and on my Dual 2GHz G5 it took just a bit longer. Sticking with the G5 I tried Magic Bullet too and it also seemed to take painfully long - long even considering I was dealing with significantly more image data.

My none-to-short lead-up, to the HVX gang - do you all find your effects render faster? Close to real-time? I would think avoiding the whole HDV GOP bit would accelerate things a good bit more. I know it's kinda hard to quantify ~ but appreciate the input all the same.

it's tough to play clips in real time using the magic bullet filters even on a g5, you can switch your playback settings to skip frames if your processor can't handle it... that's usually what i do. On my powerbook things take years...

Cool - so Cassidy you find on a G5, while not real time, you can render your clips relatively quickly? Really with HDV it's obscene. Reminds of old G3 rendering MiniDV. Pick a filter and walk away for a couple hours while it renders. By the way, as old hat for you to hear I'm sure, your footage is really sick. i mean really really sick.

This is one of the reasons that I'm happy I bought the HVX200.

I used HDV on two other projects and renders took forever. DVCProHD doesn't render as quickly as SD, but it's MUCH quicker than HDV. I have a G5 with dual 2.0, 5.5 GB RAM, and an Nvidia 6800 video card. Some filters actually use the GPU to render in realtime.

Awesome - thanks Sam. That's what I was hoping to hear. Although, my wallet is gonna hate me for the remainder of the year...