Transferring video to PC?

[Doug Meyer]

I just got my HD100U today, but I am still awful naive with this thing.

When I connect it to my firewire port, XP detects a new device but I can't find anything new showing up in the device manager.

Do I need a mac to do this??

[Richard Alvarez]

Doug,

Normally, you use an editing program to capture, store and edit your video. Moviemaker should be in your windows app somewhere. But it won't work with HDV, just DV. Otherwise, you'll have to get a better app.

[Ian E. Pearson]

PC will be fine. Im pretty sure windows will not capture HDV all by itself though. You need to capture in video editing software that supports HDV. I believe theres also some sort of freeware utility that will just capture it, but I forget what its called or where to get it. Anyone know which one I'm talking about?

[Barry Green]

I've captured it using HDV Rack, or Pixela HD Capture. Pixela was the free capture utillity bundled with the HD1 camera.

[David Newman]

There are several PC tools that will capture the HD transport stream from the HD100U, however only a few editing packages can do much with the data (particularly the 24p mode.) Vegas will work, but it works much better using CineForm Connect HD. Aspect HD has also been upgraded for 24p HD100U support under Premeire Pro, so PC support is pretty good. In the 30p HDV mode most editing tools will work as that mode is nearly identical to the signals from the HD1 and HD10 cameras.

[Stephen L. Noe]

You can pick up Pinnacle Studio 10 Plus (click here) which will support your HDV camera natively. It will be out in 2 or 3 weeks (First week of October) and cost about $120 @ best buy. Getting started on a NLE like Studio is a good idea because there is a huge user base for Studio products and a fine forum to help you specifically with Studio editing.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

There is also Sony Vegas Movie Studio that manages HDV now, and is the #1 selling application in the PC Video editing channel for consumers. It's very much a serious app, with internal/external monitoring, keyframing, etc. It's essentially Vegas' professional with scripting taken out, and limited number of tracks.
Sony has HDV down pretty solid, and was the first app to support HDV, giving them a lot of experience in the HDV editing/capturing/output area.

[Guy Barwood]

Actually Liquid Edition 6 was the first NLE to support HDV, not Vegas, and from all accounts I hear Pinnacle Studio is the most popular consumer NLE not Movie Studio. This is why Avid wanted it so much they bought the company...

Studio 10 is based on the Liquid engine now, so it has even more power than before.

[David Newman]

Guy, Technically KDDI had the first NLE that shipped with JVC's HD1, then CineForm introduced Aspect HD for Premiere 6.5 (now Pro.) I was at JVC both NAB 2003, the only NLE software that supported HDV was from KDDI and CineForm. Other completing products appeared months (some years) later on the market.

[Guy Barwood]

Ah, but the HD1 isn't HDV ;-) and cineform isn't native HDV either, its a proprietary codec.

[Stephen L. Noe]

He's got you there David. Might I remind you of the DC-2000 which was years ahead of it's time and how native HDV editing was derrived?

It's all good. I have both Liquid 6 and Premiere. For HDV it's Liquid.

[David Newman]

Guy & Stephen,

The JVC GR-HD1 was the first HDV camera on the market, it compiles with the HDV specification of the similar name "HD1". The newer Sony cameras are HD2 spec'd HDV cameras. The JVC GY-HD100U is again a HD1 spec'd camera.

As for native vs digital intermediate based editing that has nothing with HDV editing and support. CineForm was listed on http://www.hdv-info.org/ in the very early days -- which informally verifies our compliance. Also is it very likely that more HDV sourced material is edited with CineForm technology than other solution as we are shipped as standard elements within Premiere and Vegas (the highest volume PC products for prosumer applications.) Of course we argue the digital intermiate solutions are better than native (see http://www.cineform.com/technology/quality.htm) but editing of video is not about manipulating transport streams, is about creating emotional, educational or entertainment media using images and sound. Whether your shooting HDV, HDCAM or Film, we are damn good at building the tools for content creation. :)

[Stephen L. Noe]

David,
I'm with you in the fact that the content is the goal and quality content can be cut on anything. Let's leave it at that, shall we? There's been some good links posted and Doug Meyer can click and view different options.

[Guy Barwood]

The HDV specifications were developed after the HD1 was released wasn' it? HDV 720p's spec is based on the HD1 but the HD1 never bore the HDV logo (and still doesn't I think).

I wouldn't try to say Liquid supports editing a codec because it can import and convert that codec to another codec for editing. HDV is ONLY HDV and not an intermediatry codec. Your process supports importing HDV streams but it is not editing HDV, unless you are editing the native stream.

Its no different to saying an NLE supports editing uncompressed video because you capture from an uncompressed source into a DV codec and edit in DV. You are editing DV, not uncompressed once the conversion takes place. By the way, I am not making comparisons here of the qualities of the codecs, just the process's in use.

When Liquid captures or imports a HDV stream, the stream remains unchanged, so you are editing the native HDV stream, hence you are editing HDV.

Your product clearly allows for importing HDV but not editing HDV. Its a technicality but it is true non the less.

[David Newman]

We were developing for and editing HDV at the begining (so your semantics aside) the JVC GR-HD1 was the first spec'd HDV camera. The spec existed before we had access to our HD1 unit. Even JVC web site still promotes it as "the world's first consumer HDV camcorder" (see http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?produ...6000&pathId=29)