HDV with Canon XH A1

For my (hobby) purposes I'm using a small JVC DV and edit on V 4.0. I was thinking on upgrading to 7.0 and getting the new HC-7.
However, I do have a few simple questions:
Most of you answring here are using HD thus
a) in what form are you giving your customers your work ? If I understand correctly most dont burn DVDs (yet) because it is not clear which format prevails and most 'customers' dont have such players anyhow - and am I correct that you (re)-export your film after editing into your HD camera and connect this HD camera to your HDTV .
b) Yoyodyne mentioned downconverting from HD to SD . How is that done ?

Thanks for educating me.

Sony HD HC1

>>>>in what form are you giving your customers your work <<<

Almost always on SD DVD PAL wide-screen. Better image quality than shooting SD. Occasionally on hard disk in wmv9 format.

The work flow is to capture and edit in 1080i, save project with clips to hard disk. Render out to DVD Architect widescreen PAL and make DVD. Also render as high def for projection (on same disk as holds the project).

Personally I project from computer hard disk. BluRay on horizon.

Busman-

Re: downconverting from HD to SD- my HC1 camera has the option of either sending the full HDV signal through the Firewire link to the computer (assuming you recorded in HDV instead of SD) or it will downconvert it to SD for you (so the computer only sees SD). I assume this feature is pretty standard on HDV cameras, but don't know.

Also, you can edit/work with HDV in Vegas, and then have Vegas downconvert it for you. I haven't attempted this, so not sure if you set the Project Properties to SD or wait until rendering. I suspect the former.

The advantage to having the camera downconvert is you can work with smaller files. The advantage to downconverting later is that you can zoom/crop the HDV images without loss. I vaguely recall that the HDV color space is a little better than SD, too.

Hopefully someone who has actually done this can throw in some clarifications/corrections/additions to this post.

Brian

>>>>so not sure if you set the Project Properties to SD or wait until rendering. I suspect the former<<<<

No, it's the latter.

Just some opinions based on what I think we "would" do if anyone asked for HD.

If a customer wanted HD on a shiny disk we'd determine what format they were using, either HD-DVD or BD, and then either hire out the authoring or buy the hardware and authoring tool and do it ourselves. Most of our disks have been runs of 700+ so we get the runs done elsewhere.

For projection or computer viewing we'd probably deliver WMV and it would be on CD or plain DVD media. If it was impossible to fit within 4GB then we'd have to look at other options, most likely am external USB or Firewire disk drive for delivery, or conceivably a tape format.

Here in the US I think you are most likely to get calls for HD at either the lowest or highest ends of the business. Churches, weddings, vanity pieces may ask for HD. Broadcast entities may also ask for HD. In the mid-industrial range I'd expect sales departments to be the first to ask for it and these folks would be need a limited number of discs for trade shows and sales presentations. Applications that call for more widespread playback may still default to SD for a quite a while.

There is a good argument to be made for shooting some flavor of HD now if you think the client will want HD sooner or later and if they will want current footage used in future HD programs. There is also the argument that shooting HD can be more flexible even if you are downconverting to SD in the end.

My primary use for footage (at work) is to cull stills from it for the web. I don't edit here, but I use my copy of vegas to get the stills because it's more efficient for me than PPro. Personally, I'd love it if we were shooting in a high def progressive format because everything would be sharper. We still shoot in DV25, many years after we expected to retire it. In our experience technology and demand hasn't marched forward nearly as fast as we thought it would.

As far as HDV goes, it seems like a great transitional format because most, if not all, of these cameras can shoot HDV or DV25 and they can use DV25 tape. If you've got some level of infrastructure for DV25 then HDV is cost effective in the near term. HDV also has the advantage of requiring very little disk throughput, although at the cost of CPU power. This means you don't need much in the way of arrays unless your workflow is to always render *up*.

Obviously if you render to intermediaries or to a less compressed format you'll need more disc space and throughput. I can't really see rendering *back* to HDV any more than I'd want to render *back* to DV25.


Rob Mack

I've shot HDV on an FX1 for over 2 years now.

Still using DVX100A for DV. I've had ONE request for HD (HBO Boxing), and we rented a couple Sony HDV F1X or whatever models. Majority of stuff I work on is still Betacam.

DV : Pana DVX100

Waiting for native DVCPro HD support in Vegas to go with the HVX and upgrade my greenscreen work...