Studio Daily: The pros and cons of using HDV

[Steven Dempsey]

Just got this in my email:

http://www.studiodaily.com/main/video/7871.html

[David McGiffert]

Those were fun to watch.
Even highly experienced DP's run into walls
with HDV...
but watching those flash movies makes me feel as though I'm on the
right track to learning what I need to know - a great portion
of which I have learned on this forum.

thanks Steve,


David

[James Hooey]

nice link. Very interesting and it helps to confirm that HDV is a workable format even in the professional world of broadcast television. Particularly interesting to note that it is even more critical to be a proficient camera operator with HDV than HD seeing as the latitude to fix it in post isn't their.

[Jonathan Gentry]

Interesting that they never mention Vegas and promote capture to hard drive instead of tape and the mention of H.264 codec (I think I need to do some reasearch.) I'm thinking alot of what they are recommending is becuase they are doing a master set up for Television. For most of our purposes (DVD or future HD-DVD/Blueray) I'm not sure what they say applies.

-Jonathan

[Ian Henderson]

They also all agreed that it was a much better idea to capture to a better quality (colour space, compression) than HDV - specifically DVCPRO. If I'm usingmy Canon XH-A1 as a deck, going directly into FCP through firewire is that an option, or do I need a capture card to achieve this?

[Marcus Marchesseault]

I don't think they are aware of Vegas and the fact that it can edit m2t files smoothly.

[Ken Diewert]

Very cool to hear the discussion. Interesting to hear how higher end pro's feel about HDV. Funny though how some of them seem oblivious to some issues... "I'm a beta tester for Apple... h.264? haven't heard of it." And the underwater DP, when the others were talking about data rates..."sounds like a foreign language"

Thanks for posting it Steven.

[Peter Jefferson]

i said this before and i'l say it again..
its not what u use.. its how u use it..

[Michael Liebergot]

Originally Posted by Marcus Marchesseault

I don't think they are aware of Vegas and the fact that it can edit m2t files smoothly.

they are probably not aware of Vegas, as most editors in mainstream media use MAC's and Avid or FCP. PC users have used Premiere for years.

Vegas is use dhere and there for commercial projects, but not nearly as much as teh above mentioned.

Also, I think that they were mainly recommending swithing out of the HDV codec to a higher codec, becuase of the additional color space.
Not so much working with Mt2 files on a timeline.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by James Hooey

Particularly interesting to note that it is even more critical to be a proficient camera operator with HDV than HD...

As always note that HDV is a form of HD, so if you want to compare to something else just say "other HD formats."

[Chris Hurd]

Kevin makes a very good point, as HD is a blanket term encompassing all High Definition video formats, of which HDV is one such format. In other words, HDV is HD. Those who attempt to implicate that it is somehow not HD, tend not to last very long on this site. Thanks in advance,

[Jay Kavi]

Originally Posted by Peter Jefferson

i said this before and i'l say it again..
its not what u use.. its how u use it..

Amen Peter! I'm gonna go shoot something!

[Deke Ryland]

How the heck are you a seasoned videographer and part of the Apple Testing team and not know what H.264 is??? I've been in video for about a year now and everyday that term comes up numerous times.

They were all basically saying to transcode their HDV mpeg into a more workable format like DVPRO or Cineform for timeline editing correct?

[James Hooey]

Sorry that my words didn't present what I was trying to say as well as they could. What I should have said was it was interesting to note that they consider it more important to shoot critically in HDV format than other HD formats.

BTW - I thought when the videographer asked "h.264....what's that?" he was actually playing coy and making a joke....