To buy or not the buy?

[Joe Thatcher]

Hello everyone,

I've been doing alot of research on the canon xl-h1 and still can't find all the answers I'm looking for so I need some help. I'm currently useing an xl1s filming outdoor wildlife videos. I capture & edit my footage with adobe pro 1.5, audition 1.5 and affter effects 6.5. Then encode with canopus pro encoder 2 and finaly I use adobe encore 1.5 for the authoring of my master dvd. Which is then sent out to a replicator to get copied for distribution. For those who are still reading my question is this. Can I do the same thing (edit, encode, authorize and replicate for distribution) with the hd footage shot from the h1 with my current set up stated above. If not what changes whould I have to make in order to accomplish this if at all possible. Any adivise or help would be much appreciated. Thanks

[Dave F. Nelson]

Originally Posted by Joe Thatcher

Hello everyone,

I've been doing alot of research on the canon xl-h1 and still can't find all the answers I'm looking for so I need some help. I'm currently useing an xl1s filming outdoor wildlife videos. I capture & edit my footage with adobe pro 1.5, audition 1.5 and affter effects 6.5. Then encode with canopus pro encoder 2 and finaly I use adobe encore 1.5 for the authoring of my master dvd. Which is then sent out to a replicator to get copied for distribution. For those who are still reading my question is this. Can I do the same thing (edit, encode, authorize and replicate for distribution) with the hd footage shot from the h1 with my current set up stated above. If not what changes whould I have to make in order to accomplish this if at all possible. Any adivise or help would be much appreciated. Thanks

You can do almost exactly the same thing with the H1 however a few changes will be necessary.

I am assuming that you plan to continue to output to SD DVD but want to futureproof your content by mastering in HD. I am also assuming that you want the 24p film look in your productions. If the film look is not necessary, the same workflow still works except that you would shoot in 30F or 60i.

You should upgrade to Adobe PPro 2.0 and After Effects 7. If you didn't upgrade and planned to master in HD on 1.5 you would have to purchase Cineform's Aspect HD which is $500.00 just to get started. This is the route I chose but this workflow is no longer necessary when using PPro 2, at least for SD output because PPro2 can edit HDV natively. And the most recent update to PPro 2.0 supports Canon's 1080 24F and 30F modes. You will like Adobe Bridge and the other enhancements to Premiere.

If you want the film look for your DVD productions, shoot in 24F, and use Premiere's 24p timeline (Cineform Aspect HD edits in 24p also). Let PPro 2 add the 3:2 pulldown and output to DVD in SD 480i. This will give your DVD's that nice 24p cadence when played back on SD DVD players (just like the big studios).

Adobe's new media encoder has been upgraded significantly and you may not need or want to encode with canopus pro any longer. I found that Adobe's older encoder had problems, especially with titling, and reds bloomed and smeared badly in things like the FBI warning page. The new encoder is very clean.

It's also worth noting that Adobe PPro 2.0 writes to DVD directly so there is little need for Encore any more, unless you want to take advantage of some of it's advanced features. My guess is that Adobe PPro 2.0 included DVD authoring because Apple includes it in their FCP product, and Adobe plans to compete head to head with Apple's FCP on the new Apple/Intel platforms with the next release of their video production products.

I prefer Ulead's DVD Workshop so I didn't use Encore much. The next release of PPro 2.0 and Encore will support HD DVD and Blu-ray so this is a fuzzy area. I plan to upgrade to Ulead's DVD Workshop when they offer HD support because I prefer their product and they will be out sooner. I plan to release on both HD DVD and Blu-ray before Christmas.

Ulead also has a cheapie product that will create DVDs with HD files such as M2T and WMV right now and outputs to SD DVDs. They will be offering a free upgrade with support for HD DVD and Blu-ray drives as soon as these guys (Sony and the rest) get their act together and finalize the copy protection scheme for the burners. That's what's holding the whole thing up right now.

It's my guess that HD DVD will be the winner since much of the support is falling to HD DVD. Toshiba's HD DVD player is getting rave reviews while Samsung's Blu-ray drive is getting panned. And Toshiba's HD DVD is the DVD Forum's official replacement for DVD and is half the price ($500) of Samsung's Blu-ray player ($1,000). Sony is taking advance orders for their Blu-ray player for $1,000 for delivery in late October.

The price favors the HD DVD product right out of the gates. Paramount, one of the Blu-ray holdouts, just announced support for HD DVD a few weeks ago. Netflix even rents HD DVDs for those buying the Toshiba player. Netflix also rents Blu-ray titles for the Samsung player but there are not nearly as many titles. HD DVD has the head start on titles and much better pricing.

I don't think I have to remind anyone that cunsumers are price concious. Price will be the deciding factor, even over quality in the Hi-Def DVD wars. Just take a look at the Hummers in Walmart's parking lot. I don't have a Hummer, but I shop at Walmart. I shop price and quality. I pay more if I need to. That's why I bought the H1, even though Walmart doesn't sell them (I know, I know). Best Buy and Walmart are 50 yards apart where I live in Southern California, so I go to Best Buy to check out the consumer HD stuff, and then walk to Walmart and buy, if they have the same product. I heard that Walmart is negotiating on pricing and is ready to import and sell the Toshiba HD DVD player.

I don't really care who wins the war. I just want it to end soon so I can start making money with HD titles.

But I digress, and this discussion is for another board...

Adobe Premier 2.0 captures in it's own .MPG format rather than using .M2T files which is ok if you plan to stick with Premiere. It also writes 60i .M2T files back to tape but can not currently write files back to the tape in Canon's proprietary 24F or 30F formats.

You can also use Cineform's Aspect HD which creates intermediate files to speed up the edit process with less degradation than HDV. I do this but it costs more and is probably not necessary if you plan to output to SD DVDs. If money is an issue you could wait to upgrade to this workflow until you want to output to HD DVD or Blu-ray since you have the original tapes as backups.

If you have any other questions, let me know. I hope I can help.

--Dave

[Joe Thatcher]

Thanks for the help Dave. I'll probably upgrade to ppro 2 first and barrow some hd footage from a friend and play with it to see how I like it before making the switch to hd. also give my replicator a call and see if they offer hd dvd replications at a resonable price. Thanks again.