Future of HD(V) Editing with ATI-EXPRESS PCI-X card

[Les Dit]

Righttttt...
So what does that have to do with my concern of you suggesting we capture the video from the JVC cam in ANALOG ????

Analog is bad.
The company where my film scanner is used has a full Avid HD edit suite that is used all the time to work on HD. It always comes in as digital video on HD tapes.
Nobody in Hollywood uses analog if they don't have to.

Question #1 : Tell me again why you think capturing ANALOG from the JVC is good or better that capturing from it's firewire port?

-Les

[Sanjin Jukic]

Les,

I see but what you mean but Darren Kelly did conversion via AJA A/D HD10 converter and than feed FCP with HD uncompressed files via AJA KONA HD card. I repeating again this process. Digital MPEG-TS must be converted in HD standard uncompress 10 or 8 bit files and it is matter of software perfection. Heuris should be good option.

I am not pro-analog or contra-digital. I am simply about getting highest picture, analog or digital does not matter, it is about quality for basic files and after that you can start to work on your movie...

S

[Les Dit]

Ok, got it.

So you agree that you can get the same quality by just using the firewire transfer, and editing with good software and software decoders/encoders.

I make it very simple:
1> Capture with JVC provided HD capture utility to harddrive.
2> Edit m2t clips directly with Sony Vegas.
3> Output render 4 to 7 Mbit Media9 WMV files from Vegas, so I can put 80 min on one DVD-R at HD resolution. Playable on modern PC's.

Three steps total. No messy multi format conversions.
It's easy. Like it should be.
-Les

[Sanjin Jukic]

Les,

You are really Lucky Loss Vegas Guy, but that is not HD quality WMP HD is Microsoft HD dump, it is a fake HD same as Pixlet on Mac, THEY ARE BOTH COMPRESSIONS. By the way on doing steps, Mac has the same 3. 1. Heuris XtractorHDV mpg capture, 2. directly to drop in FCP for editing and 3. various compressions in fake HD to play in QT longer than 80 min on DVD. But it is not a real DVD neither HD. What does mean "modern PC"? PC architecture is outdated, get a Mac Man...

REAL HD IS ABOUT UNCOMPRESSED 10 BIT FILES IN 1920x1080 PERIOD

After that you can convert in what you want mpeg2-1, wmp, qt or whatever...

I just have got Logic Pro 6 on my door and must stop it now...

Sanjin

[Les Dit]

I use Media9 for my final output only.
It looks very good, especially at the 7 megabit rate.
It is the best DISTRIBUTION format at the moment, and it supports 5.1 sound as well.I have film scanned over 20 30 min. 35mm films for an organization, and they were all encoded in Media9 format for distribution. They are very happy with the quality.
Digital theater projection in public theaters are all using compressed formats, you know that, right?
Besides, the Mpeg2 that the JVC uses to hold the HD on DV tapes is *very* outdated antique stuff. Bad compression technology for sure!!! *It* is the major destructor of image quality on HDV footage! ( but it can be done real time, so it's in there.... )

------------
Question 1: What do you suggest as an alternative to send a HD movie out on, to friends?
------------

Years ago I was a Mac Fanatic, but switched over to PC because they were cheaper, and they have over 90% market share.
Plenty of other reasons too, I won't start that here.
If I bring over a movie to a friends house on DVD-R in media 9, there is a good chance they can play it.
It's about the numbers!

So if compressed HD is not good for you, stay away from the HDV cameras at all costs!
They use 1990's technology on that tape!

-Les

[Heath McKnight]

Les,

I don't want to start a PC vs. Mac debate here. Also, many home users don't have Windows XP Pro which, since I last checked a couple of months ago, is the only way to view Windows Media 9/HD files. But that may have changed, and I'll research it. I'm sure you know better.

If you want to talk tape issues with HDV and mini-DV, that's a debate probably better suited for the HD10/HD1 thread.

Thanks,

heath

[Heath McKnight]

Sanjin,

Your posts are a bit confusing here, as well. LOSS VEGAS??? Are you talking about Vegas Video?

Darren talks about capturing via FIREWIRE through the HD10 into his Apple with the Kona HD card. I've spoken with AJA's engineers about this, and their quite proud that their Kona HD card can handle HDV very well. It's uncompressed, of course.

Also, thanks for the links to HD knowledge, but I sense you feel we don't know as much. Many of us, including Les, deal with HD every day, or at least HDV. I've had the HD10 since last July, and I'm learning a lot, but I also know much.

Just clarify your points more, so we can understand them better.

Thanks,

heath

[Les Dit]

Heath,
You can play Media 9 on Macs too!
You have to encode on PC, however.
It's not just XP pro.

FYI
-Les

[Paul St. Denis]

I just tried a presentation that I encoded in WM9 and distributed on CD on a dual 2GHz G5 and it stutters. The same CD plays fine on a 3Ghz pentium. I have examples of DivX, 3ivX that I encoded of the same presentation that play fine on the G5. This seems to suggest that either WM9 is more processor intensive than DivX, or then Media Player 9 is not optimized on OS X.
Doom9.org has a codec comparison in which DivX wins out over WM9.

http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/codecs-203-1.htm

I think doom9 is a great resource, although a quality comparison will be subjective in this case. Their reputation is as a site about DVD ripping, but it contains content in other areas as well, AVIsynth for example.

WM9 has the advantage of near ubiquity, you can't be sure that people have DivX, 3ivx.

[Heath McKnight]

<<<-- Originally posted by Les Dit : Heath,
You can play Media 9 on Macs too!
You have to encode on PC, however.
It's not just XP pro.

FYI
-Les -->>>

Les,

Thanks for clarifying. Last time I checked, you couldn't play it on anything BUT XP Pro!

Anyone figure out how to watch T3 Extreme HD version on a Mac?

heath

[Craig Jones]

Getting back to the first silly point of this thread, PCI Express and PCI-X are absolutely not the same thing. PCI-X is a logical extension of PCI while PCI Express is entirely new. What ATI is developing to has nothing to do with what is integrated in G5 systems today. Quote all the Apple propaganda you like but it's all irrelevant.

It should also be mentioned that both PCI and PCI Express are products of Intel and come from PC's as does AGP. Steve Jobs has no trouble lifting PC technology for use in macs. Where do you think hypertransport, PCI, PCI-X, AGP and USB come from? Take away those things and IBM's processor and you have a box full of fans. Cool looking box, though.

Faster busses and video cards will contribute nothing to improving the HDV editing experience, mac or pc. Neither will a Rube Goldberg approach of redigitizing HDV video though the component outputs of the camera. Good way to spend big money though.

[Les Dit]

Thanks for the clarification Craig. The visual of an empty box full of fans gave me a good laugh!

Paul, I tried Divx 5.02 on some 720P footage, and had some problem playing it back. What bitrate did you use for the 1280 x 720 30fps frames? I'd like to revisit it, with the N pass encoding that Divx has.BTW, the video card does seem to make a difference on playback. My 4X AGP stuttered, and my 8X AGP does not. Same mx440 chip on both cards.
I liked the bitrate tuning that Divx has. Media9 needs more control over the encoder, it does not have enough 'knobs'.
Doom9 tends to be a Divx clique, were they critiquing it at HD resolutions? They tend to be focused on ripping DVD's, for the most part.
-Les

[Paul St. Denis]

Hi Les,

I don't recall the bitrate for DivX...
I used DivX with the lowest compression/highest quality only to get a project from the Mac to the PC so I could encode it into WM9 (I know the re-encode is not a great idea, but I couldn't transfer 30 minutes of uncompressed over the network). The evaluation software has since expired so I haven't tried it again. I tried 3ivX after seeing Frederic Haubrich's commercial http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...highlight=3ivx, but I only used it on a small clip to try it out.

Pehaps the DivX played back without a problem for me on the Mac because I didn't overly compress it?

The doom9 report was not about HD, but I assumed that compression quality would carry over to HD.

Getting back somewhat to the thread topic, here is and article about analog capture cards from LAFCUG
http://www.lafcpug.org/feature_capture_card.html

[Ken Hodson]

To coment on the origional point of the post: We are dealing with HDV format here, not HD. The PCI express cards will not offer us any great advantages for editing this format, including AspectHD codec. Our video systems handle these formats just fine.
Yes these new video cards may be helpful for true HD multi track, but as Les tried so nicely to explain, there are currently no advantage to exporting uncompressed out of this cam via analog out to digital SDI as the compression has already been applied. For speed, usability, and quality Cineforms codec can't be beat. And you do not need PCI-Express to use it.
Ken