How do you get the footage into the computer?
This depends on the filming format. HDV can be transferred down a FireWire, like DV. Panasonic P2 cards can be plugged directly into a PCMCIA socket if your PC has one, and Sony XDCam cameras are seen as network devices.
All essentially copy the footage as if it was a normal computer file from the camera to the PC.
You could also record through an analogue component connection if you have a capture card with this. HD footage through component is excellent quality, just like SD captured through component, but it is noticeably softer than using footage input through digital means (like a FireWire). Generally you would only use component capture if you cannot use a digital means - for example if using Premiere and Panasonic P2 and you don’t have an Matrox Axio, instead you have an AJA or Black Magic card, then you could record the component output from the camera into the PC for editing. You will lose a bit of quality during the capture although not much.
As some cameras now have HDMI out you could record footage into the computer using one of the Black Magic cards with an HDMI input. This will be better than component and nearly as good as the original. We say nearly simply because the HDMI out on the camera is always full HD and you would probably film in a format that is actually 1440 x 1080 pixels, so some scaling would be going on somewhere. Again the advantage is that you can immediately edit some footage that you may not be able to edit any other way (the new AVCHD format is a good example of this).
How much space does it take up?
When the footage is on the PC it will generally take up more space than standard definition DV footage - although this is not necessarily the case. 1 hour of HDV footage actually takes up 13GB just like one hour of DV footage. It manages this because HDV is saved as MPEG - just like footage on a DVD - so each frame is made up of bits of frames rather than individual frames, as with DV. This makes it harder, but not impossible to edit.
You can also capture footage into other formats which are easier to edit. Grass Valley HQ footage takes about 50GB per hour and is easier to use which means better performance and more realtime effects. You can even capture into uncompressed formats. Uncompressed 8bit 1080i will use about 400GB hard drive space - which is a lot compared to the 13GB used by DV. 720P uncompressed will take up 169GB per hour for 25 fps and around 330GB for an hour of 720P @ 50 fps. A single hard drive is not fast enough to cope with uncompressed HD - the minimum we have found is 2 x 500GB SATA drives striped together. These2 drives would store about 2½ hours uncompressed HD footage.
Of course, being uncompressed means you avoid any possible compression artefacts that can be introduced using a compressed format.
There are even two formats of uncompressed - 8 bit and 10 bit. As they name suggest 10 bit has more information and therefore gives better quality - and is particularly useful when it comes to high end compositing. However, don’t get too carried away wanting to do everything at 10bit uncompressed for maximum quality as you may not notice the difference for normal work - plus an hour of 10 bit 1080i will take up 500GB storage space!
In reality most people are happy using HDV footage either natively or compressed single frame format like Grass Valley HQ.
The Matrox Axio LE uses Premiere Pro 2 and can edit 1080i at 8 bit uncompressed quality; the AJA and Black Magic cards can edit with Premiere at 8 bit or 10 bit.
Why do some programs “transcode” the footage into a new format for editing, What does that mean?
HDV is saved as an MPEG file, where each frame is composed of bits of other frames. It is quite hard to edit, as the computer has to do a lot of work just to find one individual frame. So some manufacturers instead “transcode” the footage into a different format for editing. This makes for more responsive editing and lets you have more layers of realtime effects.
Grass Valley have their own format - the Grass Valley HQ codec - video is changed, as you capture, into the Grass Valley codec.
Black Magic have a motion JPEG format, and as you capture through component or HDMI it is saved in this format. Avid have what they call their DNX codec, although this is really designed to rendering and Avid expect you to edit native files (you cannot transcode into DNX when capturing).
Matrox use MPEG I frame - basically a version of MPEG where each frame is saved as a whole frame. It only does this if you capture through analogue connections. If you capture HDV then the footage stays as HDV -although Matrox have done such a good job that editing HDV in a Matrox system feels just like editing DV.
There is also a plug-in from Cineform, called Propect HD, which transcode footage on capture into CineForm’s “intermediate” format, which is similar to Grass Valley’ HQ format.
Once the files are captured you edit in your editing application, adding effects etc. You don’t get output down the FireWire when editing which does raise the question of how do you see your video properly (see later).
If editing HDV then you have to remake your entire edit back into an MPEG transport stream, before this then gets recorded to camera. All this extra work is different to editing DV - where you can record the results, with effects, directly from the timeline. Grass Valley have a device, the ADVCHDM1, that can take HD-SDI and turn it live into HDV - so with a system that can do lots of realtime effects to HD-SDI this would give you real time HDV output - this costs £4,500 + VAT.
Transcoded footage will take about 40-50GB per hour where as native MPEG files take up about 13GB per hour, about the same as DV footage. It also means you are not changing the footage and possibly introducing noise and artefacts which are not there on the original. Now in truth we have never seen problems with transcoded footage, and the benefits in terms of editing are worth the possibility of artefacts. Some experts claim that editing and rendering the transcoded files is actually less likely to produce artefacts than editing the original MPEG2.
The downside of editing native files is that you are making the PC work harder - so you need a better machine and you cannot achieve much in realtime. A dual Xeon or dual core machine, working with MPEG footage, will typically manage a cross dissolve but not manage a picture in picture on top of it, whereas transcoded footage will manage up to 5 layers of flying clips, colour correction, slow motion etc.
Can I capture all the footage as DV, edit it and then replace it with full quality HDV?
Yes you can on most systems, but this is not ideal. For a start the pixel aspect ratio is slightly different between DV and HDV which may cause a slight problem, but the main one is that we have noticed that the focus is more critical with HDV footage than DV and that you can only properly judge this on an HD screen. So a shot may look fine at standard definition but not so hot on HD. So ideally, capture and edit at HD is our advice.
Where do I see the video when I am editing?
Unlike DV, with HDV you will not see the video back through the FireWire when editing, or even through most older capture cards like the Matrox RT.X100 or Grass Valley Storm. Most devices like this are standard definition only. So to see the video you will have to get new hardware.
There are three options:
1) The best option is to use Specialist Hardware. The Matrox RT.X2 or Axio LE give a real-time component HD output while you are working in Premiere or After Effects. The RT.X2 also has DVI output and the Axio has HD SDI output.Grass Valley HDSPARK orHDSTORM give an excellent HD component or HDMI preview out of EDIUS.
We also have cards from Black Magic that add component, HDMI or HD-SDI to certain systems depending on which card is used.
2) Without hardware you could play the footage full screen on a monitor connected to your PC graphic card. As some graphic cards have an HD component output this does give reasonable quality, but is harder to set up and never looks as good as the original footage. With these systems the original quality is maintained, it’s just the graphic card display that is not as good as proper video hardware. Adobe Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas and Avid Media Composer and Liquid have specific software options for this kind of playback.
3) The third is to use the specialist hardware to output at standard definition - so you can at least see the results on a proper video monitor rather than on a PC screen. The colour range and contrast of a PC screen is always different to a proper video monitor, and therefore makes changing colour balance or judging exposure difficult. Avid’s Mojo and Avid Liquid’s Pro box can both output a standard definition picture from an HD timeline. Grass Valley HDSTORM can do this too, but as it can also output a proper HD signal you would always use that in preference!
Can I take my footage into other programs, like After Effects?
This does depend a bit on the program. Many will not accept HD MPEG files - After Effects 7 will accept them but AE6 did not. If using transcoded footage it is a lot more likely as the codec is available as a standard video item, rather than something new like HD MPEG.
Apart from this, is editing HDV like editing DV?
Yes, but the pictures are better. More pixels means more work for your PC so a good computer is required, but apart from that it’s like DV, but better. More pixels also means better definition for effects like chromakey.
Many manufactures are recommending Multiple processor computers. Is it really necessary?
Necessary - no. Highly desirable yes. With HDV you have a lot more pixels to throw around so that means a lot more work and a dual Xeon or Opteron will do this better than a single Pentium. I certainly would not want to use any system lower than a 3.4Ghz Pentium 4 for HDV.
You can also use a dual core processor which is essentially two processors in one. These are not quite as fast as Xeons, but are considerably cheaper. The ultimate performance currently comes from dual, dual core AMD Opteron processors, which are typically 30% faster than dual core Pentium 4 systems.
Can you mix DV, HDV, Panasonic and XDCam footage in the same timeline?
This depends on your editing program. Most will allow you to mix the footage, but how it plays back depends on the software - for example if you put DV on an HDV timeline then it will have to up-scale (or enlarge in plain English) the footage to fit the HDV frame. Likewise put HDV on a DV timeline and you will need to downscale it, or crop it to fit. Some programs do this better than others.
How do you record back to tape?
When you have finished editing, the computer will re-encode your timeline into a completely new file, remaking not just the sections with effects but possibly even sections with no effects. This will take more time and take up more space than with DV editing. This has to happen because of the way that HDV is made of bits of frames rather than whole frames. The process will take somewhere between two minutes and five minutes per minute of footage depending on the software or hardware.
Can you get extra hardware to speed up the encoding?
Grass Valley produce some realtime HDV encoding units, one from HDMI and one from HD-SDI. If you attach these to an editing system that has either of these outputs then whatever the system can play in realtime will be encoded to HDV in realtime. To read more about these devices click here.
If I film on HDV and make a standard definition DVD, will it look better than if I filmed on SD in the first place?
Probably not, is the slightly disappointing answer - but this is missing the point. Some MPEG 2 compressors find it hard to scale and handle the extra detail in the higher definition pictures and this off sets the higher resolution initial advantage. Remember you can crop or zoom into an HDV clip to choose a different part of the frame, and this can be a real advantage.
Record to tape or DVD
Blu-ray players and writers have finally arrived - at the procedure for making a Blu-ray disc is really no different to making a DVD. To read our guide to making Blu-ray discsclick here.
Sony HDR-HC3
Canon HV10 HD Camcorder
Sony HDR-SR1 HDD Hard Disk HD Camcorder
Sony HVR-A1
Sony HDR-FX7
Sony HDR-FX1
Canon XH-A1 HDV Camcorder
Sony HVR-V1
Sony HVR-Z1
JVC GY-HD-100/101
JVC GY-HD200 and GY-HD201
Sony XDCAM HD F350 and F330