Best HDV workflow.

[Jeff Turkali]

Originally Posted by Mike Barber

Here's a brief article on HDV workflow: HDV Workflow Tips | ECG Editorial

Quick summary:

#1) If It’s All HDV, Always Edit Native

I don't get that? The more complex the edit (color, resize, motion), the more issues you have working in HDV and the more reasons to get out of HDV, and get out soon.

[Mike Barber]

Originally Posted by Jeff Turkali

I don't get that? The more complex the edit (color, resize, motion), the more issues you have working in HDV and the more reasons to get out of HDV, and get out soon.

Ah, but did you read the article? He specifically mentions to be sure to set renders to ProRes.

With regards to the whole "ProRes transcode quality drop": I have been experimenting with HDV for the first time myself (with thanks to fellow dvInfo poster Vito DeFilippo) and I have to say -- thus far -- the quality loss from going to ProRes seems to be very insignificant -- and I say that from comparing 1080i footage (HDV source and the ProRes conversion) on a large calibrated HD broadcast monitor.

[Mike Barber]

This one is Editors Guild Magazine - Tech Tips "Taming the HDV Beast: Final Cut Pro 6 and ProRes 422 to the Rescue" by Larry Jordan. It covers much of what has been said here, but also has very useful technical data.

At some point I should think about organizing these into one post for a "stickie" ;-p

[Jeff Turkali]

Originally Posted by Mike Barber

Ah, but did you read the article? He specifically mentions to be sure to set renders to ProRes.

With regards to the whole "ProRes transcode quality drop": I have been experimenting with HDV for the first time myself (with thanks to fellow dvInfo poster Vito DeFilippo) and I have to say -- thus far -- the quality loss from going to ProRes seems to be very insignificant -- and I say that from comparing 1080i footage (HDV source and the ProRes conversion) on a large calibrated HD broadcast monitor.

Yes, I'm sure that the Prores drop in quality is very minimal, I agree, I agree. And the only real drawback is file size which I am fine with HD space provided I do not work on several long form projects at the same time. But I may spring for more HDs like I buy socks and undies, just something that one does every six months or so.

No, I did not read the whole article. Rendering Prores rather than Prores capture I am not that well versed at. Native HDV blows imo, I've seen my movie fall apart. But I will read article, can't hurt thanks!

[William Hohauser]

Originally Posted by Mike Barber

Ah, but did you read the article? He specifically mentions to be sure to set renders to ProRes.

With regards to the whole "ProRes transcode quality drop": I have been experimenting with HDV for the first time myself (with thanks to fellow dvInfo poster Vito DeFilippo) and I have to say -- thus far -- the quality loss from going to ProRes seems to be very insignificant -- and I say that from comparing 1080i footage (HDV source and the ProRes conversion) on a large calibrated HD broadcast monitor.

I have captured concert footage (lots of reflections and details) both native HDV and ProRes. There is (with my equipment at least) a small bit of very fine artifact gain in ProRes but it's not MPEG artifacts and that's the really important point. The artifacts don't increase perceptibly with renders and that's important as well.

[Mike Barber]

Originally Posted by William Hohauser

I have captured concert footage (lots of reflections and details) both native HDV and ProRes. There is (with my equipment at least) a small bit of very fine artifact gain in ProRes but it's not MPEG artifacts and that's the really important point.

Very interesting. Do you have any stills of the same frame in HDV and ProRes that you could post that would demonstrate? The footage I have been looking at is a talking head, which would be very different in terms of lighting, spectral highlights, etc.

[Michael Lafleur]

Originally Posted by Mike Barber

Here's a brief article on HDV workflow: HDV Workflow Tips | ECG Editorial

Quick summary:

#1) If It’s All HDV, Always Edit Native
#2) If It’s A Mixture Of HD and HDV, Convert (to ProRes) ASAP
#3) If You Can, Use Two-System Audio
#4) Know The Limits Of The Format In Advance

Mike (or anyone who knows),

Am I right in assuming that HDV files recorded from my JVC HD100U camera directly onto my DR-HD100 hard drive via firewire are subject to the same low-quality audio characteristics that you are referencing in point #3) when you recommend “If You Can, Use Two-System Audio” in the ECG Editorial article?

I understand that using something such as the Edirol R-4 Pro digital recorder would be highly preferable but I’m curious if there is anyway to take advantage of the DR-HD100’s tapeless recording options to capture better quality audio when shooting in HDV than if I was using mini-DV tapes. My guess is that the HDV format is inherently poorer at capturing audio in order to achieve such good compression and small file sizes, and that it doesn’t matter whether one uses a HD to directly capture HDV footage when filming.

Thanks for any illumination you can provide and the stickie sounds like a great idea.

Go Habs!!

[William Hohauser]

Originally Posted by Mike Barber

Very interesting. Do you have any stills of the same frame in HDV and ProRes that you could post that would demonstrate? The footage I have been looking at is a talking head, which would be very different in terms of lighting, spectral highlights, etc.

I would have to contact the producer first as the project is set for commercial release in the next few months. I would say that talking head shots would work fine, any change in quality would be imperceptible.

[William Hohauser]

Originally Posted by Michael Lafleur

Mike (or anyone who knows),
I’m understand that using something such as the Edirol R-4 Pro digital recorder would be highly preferable but I’m curious if there is anyway to take advantage of the DR-HD100’s tapeless recording options to capture better quality audio when shooting in HDV than if I was using mini-DV tapes. My guess is that the HDV format is inherently poorer at capturing audio in order to achieve such good compression and small file sizes, and that it doesn’t matter whether one uses a HD to directly capture HDV footage when filming.

Thanks for any illumination you can provide and the stickie sounds like a great idea.

Go Habs!!

The digital recording on the DR-HD100 is the encoded output of the firewire port of the camera, exactly what is going to tape. The audio is compressed more than what many professionals find acceptable for their work. Unfortunately there is no way to separate the audio once it is going thru the encoding process, the cameras are not built that way. You have to record the audio before it gets into the camera or use analog output of the camera. The best way is to record audio to a separate audio recorder (DAT, ZOOM recorder, EDIROL, laptop, whatever) but this means more wires and devices to worry about so it's a decision on your part. I find that HDV is usually good for interview voice recording. Music is not great. When possible, I have the audio recorded separately with an output of the digital recorder going to the camera for an editing reference track.

[Errol Wright]

Hi friends,

I know a lot of this has been discussed, but please bear with me, any help or suggestions would be really appreciated. I have only recently thrown in the towel with PC based editing so Macs and FCP are all new to me and really want to set the project up right at the beginning!

I’m about to start a reasonably long edit, 90-120 mins. Most of the footage is HDV with bits and pieces of SD DV etc. I expect to capture at the least - 20 hours of footage (always hard to predict). This is after a paper edit as there is in excess of 160 of tapes...

From what I've read, I can:

1) capture/convert to ProRes (my only hesitation here is disc space, I currently have 3TB internal). I would consider upgrading the space, but in order to backup everything is then doubled, and the expense is probably beyond my finances...

2) Capture as HDV and set the render to ProRes.
This is appealing as is saves space and even in the event that every clip is altered, I still will have saved a vast amount of space, than capturing/converting everything to ProRes. In terms of this will I have problems getting the project into Color once the edit is locked off and rendered to ProRes?

3) Capture as HDV and edit in a ProRes sequence.

Thanks
Errol

[William Hohauser]

If you have a new system, all will work fine. 2 is probably the easiest as it will play the sequence back, on your computer monitors, with having to engage real-time conversion (no low res playback for unrendered clips.) except for transitions and real-time filters. A unrendered ProRes sequence will play HDV back in real-time with various levels of degradation depending on the system you have.

By the way, if your drives have more than 1TB free, you should have enough room for 20 hours of ProRes capture. ProRes capture has less issues compared to direct HDV capture (unexpected clip breaks, missing footage around camera starts). Rendering is faster as well. Remember to take into account how much you intend to filter the footage. A 1 hour ProRes project will need around 50GB if the whole project requires rendering.

The DV footage can be captured as DV and rendered in the sequence.

[Errol Wright]

This may sound really basic, but whereabouts do I change the 'render settings' to ProRes.
As I said, most of this is new to me, but I can't seem to locate anything that resembles what I’m looking for in the Audio/Video settings... Have looked around and tried to find out with no luck... Thanks again

[William Hohauser]

Under Sequence Settings you'll find the render tab. Click on it and change the render codec to ProRes. You will have to re-render any effect you have done already but that's fine.

[Carlos San Roman]

William/Jason,

Thanks so much for the fine and detailed explanation. I can truly say I have a better understanding of Prores and HDV.

My questions is what is your workflow for getting it to SD DVD (not getting enough requests for Blue Ray yet) in the best quality?
Do you send your sequence straight to Compressor out of FCP?
Do you export as QT using Prores then send it to Compressor? As explained in the Ken Stone article.
And what are your settings in both the export process of FCP and in Compressor?

Thanks,

Carlos

[William Hohauser]

OK this is a little tricky and depends on how you set the sequence.

Going directly from the sequence into Compressor works great for frame-based codecs such as DV or ProRes as Compressor will compress each clip from it's native codec directly into MPEG2. The problem with HDV is that it's already a MPEG2 codec and for complicated reasons rendering MPEG to MPEG doesn't always make good results. Transcoding HDV to ProRes makes the re-encoding to MPEG less problematic. That's why it's suggested to export HDV sequence edits to ProRes before making a DVD. In the past I have exported the HDV sequence to DV first and then made the DVD and that worked well enough for me at the time. A ProRes sequence can go directly to Compressor.