FCP Native HDV editing: the good, the bad and the ugly

[Stephen L. Noe]

Originally Posted by Steve Mullen

Perhaps the problem stems from the fact that Avid does reuse renders and the fact that from the days of Hi8 and DV there was an obsession with bumping to something better.

I'll kill if I read one more time about the "fragile" nature of HDV. It's data in a file and no more fragile than your income tax data files. It gets decoded once in FCP. The uncompressed result of ANY FX is recompressed once during export to HDV, DVD, DV, HDCAM, DVCPRO HD, etc. There is one decompress and one compress.

If you waste the money to go to uncompressed there will be -- one decompress and one compress.

And, if I remember right -- FCP decodes HDV to 4:4:4 not 4:2:2. And, you can ask for all computations to be done in 16-bit (or maybe that's Liquid) or FPP. Then the bit-depth is ONLY determined by the export codec. So choose a 10-bit codec.

You're working with alot of NLE's I see. Liquid works 422 8bit and renders subpixel 16 bit depth in the YUV space. There is no re-render unless the timeline is fused to a codec or fused to export. So you can load effect upon effect on the HDV and you are still working with the original source code to get only to second generation. This is a superior way to handle the data. I had the same conversation with David Newman (cineform) on the Cow last year and the subject was compression and recompression and recompression and how Cineforms codec handles recompresses. It's true their codec handles recompresses very well but with the Native way of cutting you're not recompressing over and over, instead your FX are calculated off the source material no matter how much FX and CC is done to the material. Add to that the uncompression and subpixel processes and you'll soon see that native editing using an uncompressed timeline is an excellent workflow.

Nate has written (a few months ago) about working in FCP the same way we work in Liquid. Cutting the timeline on MP@HL for the smooth workflow and then changing the codec to uncompressed for final output. This is the smoothest workflow and gives excellent, predictable results as Andy eludes to in the original post. It seems FCP users can now benefit from the same workflow as Liquid 7.1 with 24p. I'm sure there will be some hiccups like we had back on Liquid 6.1 with 24fps HDV. I'd be surprised to see Apple & FCP get the workflow right, right out of the gate.

Right now is the time to get geared up for 720p60 and 1080p60. We (AL 7.1 users) are already working in 60p native workflows for Sony and JVC. I can tell you that the 60p workflow for 720p and 1080p is already set in Liquid including the DVD workflow. I hope it's working in the FCP release for Mac users as well. Fun Times!

[Daniel Weber]

Originally Posted by Nigel Cooper

Daniel, what you say makes sense, but I would not do it. Working in DVCPROHD is only any good if you are importing DVCPROHD footage to start with. So why convert from one heavily compressed codec to a different format, but still a compressed codec? You'd be better off leaving the DVCPROHD part out of it and either bumping to an uncompressed 8-bit (not 10-bit as that is a bit twitchy and is far from perfect right now) timeline and going from there, or go from HDV straight to Compressor

I have had real bad luck going right to compressor from HDV. I think that the issue is that I am working with interlaced footage. I find that if I convert to a progressive format, it works better.