HDVSplit vs. capturing in Avid

[Sean Worsell]

I wonder what I'm losing by capturing with HDVSplit and dragging those files into Avid, rather than capturing with Avid directly. I find HDVSplit is simpler and gives me fewer errors on capturing. But it captures a single M2T file, whereas Avid separates the file into an MXF video file and an OMF audio file. Any of you brilliant Avid engineers know if I'm losing quality or something by going through HDVSplit rather than directly capturing with Avid?

Am I losing a generation with another transcode (dragging the HDVSplit files into Avid)?

[David Parks]

Sean,

The quality would be the same for both. Your camera records m2t to tape.
Your capture program (in this case HDVSplit) is capturing but not changing that m2t. Then you would import that m2t file into an HDV 720p or 1080i project. Then Avid would use MXF as a wrapper and in DNXHD 110 etc.

If you captured straight into Avid you are taking the recorded m2t and the same thing, m2t to DNXHD.

So nothing gained or lost in either approach.

Cheers.

[Sean Worsell]

Thanks David.

I presume there's no advantage in terms of bit depth when capturing via Avid either. It's all 8 bit no matter what when you're dealing with HDV via firewire?

[Vito DeFilippo]

Will time code be preserved if you somehow lose your footage and need to recapture with HDVSplit? That would be a dealbreaker for me....