HD Link and hacked GH1 - 720p

[Jeff Harper]

Ok, HD Link works great converting the GH2 footage I shot saturday. but with the GH1 footage that I shot, HD Link converts about 1 minute of video in about three hours, no exaggeration.

I right clicked in the windows folder and noticed in properties/details the bitrate for the clips vary a lot. Is this why things are not moving along? In addition, upon some clips the program will enter a state of "not respondiing", but that will clear up, but then process at the snail's pace I described.

Is there a setting I should change? I have more questions about other issues unrelated I'll post later, but in the meantime anyone have any thoughts?

I have tried with and without keep source aspect ratio checked, same result.

Edit: Also just tried with "remove duplicate frames", which seems to have helped a lot. It still seem slow, but it is a least moving.

[Jeff Harper]

With remove duplicate frames setting checked, the program took off, but is stalled again in mid-conversion of it's second AVCHD clip. It reached about halfway through a 1Gb clip and appears to be doing nothing. I run a i970 overclocked at 3.6GHz and the files are on a four-disc Raid 0 array.

While I fully intend to purchase NeoHD before wedding season, I really want to convert these files before my trial runs out in a day or two, so any help would be deeply appreciated, since I am unable to purchase the program right now!

[Jeff Harper]

Update, the large clip started again and finished, but the program didn't move on to the next clip, it stayed stuck after completion, and showed up as still converting when it was actually finished, then I had to shut down and restart, so now I am doing one clip at a time.

Good news, all clips are converted, but it took all of 12 hours to process 1 hour's worth of footage! About halfway throught the folder, after closing down HD Link and re-starting for each clip, I attempted batch conversion and it finished up just fine.

I strongly suspect the AVCHD files are the culprit of the issues, though I may never know.

[Bob Hart]

My personal preference is to un-tick "split file on scene changes" when doing lists of converts and to send the converts to another folder. I notice from your third screen grab that you have left "split file on scene changes" ticked.

With Sony Z1 HDV files on an older Prospect version, leaving "split file on scene changes" ticked caused unpredictable behaviour and stalled converts when more than a few files were listed.

Sometimes, the HDV captures had glitches in them. These I think cue HDLink to interpret a camera stop-start and to create another file at what it sees as a scene change.

Neo has come a long way since those days but a similar issue might exist as I note you refer to your camera as a "hacked" GH1. I am not knowing enough on this topic so please regard my comments as a guess only.

Another personal preference is to capture first and then do the converts in a separate step. It is less demanding on the computer. I note you are capturing and converting in one step as you have not ticked "capture only the MPEG TS file".

You also converting to SD NTSC 16:9. Is there a special reason for that?

Your current HDLink preference settings make a lot of work for your computer to do during a live capture.

If I my output is to be SD, my personal preference is not to convert to SD but to convert, edit, adjust and add effects to my HDV images in the higher definition CFHD formats like 1280 x 720 or 1440 x 1080 and to export to standard definition. I was using a dual core Pentium computer running at 3.2GHz, SATA 7200rpm drives as separate OS, archive and work drives (not RAID) and 2Gb memory and Premiere Pro 2 when this was going on and getting satisfactory results with HDV origination converted to CFHD.

I hope this helps.

[Jeff Harper]

Bob, thanks for your input. I'm using SCVHD cards, doing no capture, just conversion. Well, actually I shot with an FX1 also, and will be converting it also, but the footage has already been captured with Vegas.

I appreciate your suggestion about the workflow. My workflow was suggested, so as to avoid resizing in Vegas upon final render. I have only tried it on one small project, and haven't made a DVD yet, but I did render an SD avi cineform file to flv for my website, and it turned out VERY nicely. I dont know how to render out of Vegas using it's settings to avoid interlacing artifacts, and I also really like using the converted files for editng, as I do multicamera shoots, and the original files are brutal to work with under those conditions.

Bob, when is it necessary to use the "keep aspect source ratio" feature in HDLink, that mystifies me.

[Bob Hart]

Keeping aspect ratio? This is where I stray into "a little knowledge is dangerous" territory as I am not well-schooled in editing systems.

My understanding is that if you were editing in a project set for 1920 x 1080, if you imported a 1440 x 1080 HDV file which was converted to CFHD 1440 x 1080, the image would appear to be a little vertically stretched. - Something to do with rectangular pixels and square pixels.

I have to defer to the better knowledge of others here.

My understanding is that if I wanted to mix camera sources, say PMW-EX1 with its 1920 x 1080 and Sony Z1 at 1440 x 1080, into a 1920 x 1080 project, I would best to convert my Z1 footage in HDLink to 1920 x 1080 CFHD file and select the "keep aspect ratio" option.

Otherwise in the editing software, the Z1 footage might appear with black edges or stretched sideways or with the top and bottom of the image cut off, depending if I selected "scale to frame size" in the edit software. I might then have to apply a stretch effect to fill the 1920 pixels wide frame. It is apparently desirable for all files imported into a project be in a common filetype and pixel aspect ratio. This apparently reduces the workload on the system.

Again I hope somebody else with the knowing will add their own comments here.

My understanding is that SD is required for encoding to DVD-Video so your suggested workflow seems valid. I think that if you wanted to do any effects or colour grading, that you might be best to do these in the high definition environment but for simple assmbly and editing, that SD is probably best, fastest and most economic on the computer's resources.

Hopefully this is helpful.