HD vs DV editing

murphy wrote on 10/23/2006, 10:54 AM
I have an opportunity to shoot and edit some footage using a Sony HD Z1.

It will be shot in front of a greenscreen keyed in V7 and ultimatly encoded to flv using Flash 8 professional

This is new to me as I currently only use V5 editing footage shot on my vx2000.

I plan to capture directly from the camera via fw to a hard drive using V7 to capture and edit.
In researching on the forum I found some posts concerning audio drop outs'
I'm hoping you can help me with my concerns.

Have you had issues with audio drop outs?
Is editing HD in Vegas any different then editing DV?
All things being equal will I get a better key?

Have you used the workflow HDCam - hard drive - V7 - flash
Really appreciate any suggestions you may have.

Murph .

Comments

riredale wrote on 10/23/2006, 1:10 PM
What's the final resolution of the Flash? If substantially less than DV, there's no advantage I can see in going with HDV.

Run-of-the-mill miniDV tapes will occasionally have a dropout. With HDV, a dropout will show up as a 1/2 second freeze of the video and the audio muted. In a qualitative test I did myself last spring, I found 1 out of 10 generic TDK miniDV tapes had a single dropout. I discovered this by pre-striping the tape in HDV and capturing it with HDVSplit, which monitors dropouts. The cheap tapes were $2 in an 8-pack from Costco. I understand that the $15 Sony HDV/miniDV tapes are substantially better in this category.

Editing HDV can either be nearly the same process as DV (if you have a dual-processor PC) or substantially the same (if you have an old system). With an older system, the idea is to buy GearShift, which makes it very easy to build proxy DV files from the m2t (HDV) clips imported into the PC. Do all your work on the proxies, then hit a button and GearShift will automatically load all the original m2t clips in place of the proxies. Do a final render, and you're done--OR--just use the DV proxies for your Flash8 encode.

If there's a chance you wil want/need the increased resolution and/or aspect ratio of HDV, go for it.
murphy wrote on 10/23/2006, 1:42 PM
Thanks very much for your response riredale .

I will intall the GearShift program and appreciate your info on the drop out issue but don't plan on going to tape.

Can I capture direct to a hard drive with V7?

I'll only have the camera for about an hour and won't be able to do much testing ahead of time.
rmack350 wrote on 10/23/2006, 3:24 PM
Are you saying you want to go straight to hard drive while shooting? Maybe Vegas capture utility can take the stream live from the camera. I don't know this but it's something to get answered. Otherwise, you may need to look at Serious Magic software. http://www.seriousmagic.com/products/dvrack/index.cfm

It's 800 bucks. Maybe their 10 day trial is fully functional.

If you don't need to go straight to disk then the I think the gist of the audio dropout discussion was that you can't use the first and last seconds of an HDV file. So make sure you have a little pre and post roll.

Other people will soon come along to set my BS straight... :-)

Rob Mack

riredale wrote on 10/23/2006, 5:45 PM
No BS, but you can probably save the $800 and just do the live-to-disk capture with HDVSplit. I'm pretty sure I tried this last spring when I first got my FX1 and it worked great. A suggestion--go both ways, just to be safe.

EDIT:

By that I mean to record to tape and to disk simultaneously. Also, dropouts can happen anywhere on the tape. There is a different issue regarding Vegas7 and how it handles the very beginning of a clip, but that can be eliminated by never using the first few frames.
Serena wrote on 10/23/2006, 10:47 PM
>>don't plan on going to tape

The Z1 records on tape, which I presume you know. The observations about drop-out was directed to that. You can simultaneously record to hard drive using DVrack; probably also with other software mentioned.
V7 of course captures to hard-drive.
PeterWright wrote on 10/24/2006, 2:11 AM
Yes, you can capture straight to HD with Vegas. Unfortunately - there's nothing to tell you it's working whilst you're actually capturing, so it's an exercise in trust .....

I also trialled DV Rack HD at a Corporate presentation shoot a month ago - laptop on table next to camera - the weak point of this idea is the pathetic design of the 4 pin firewire port, both in general and specifically on the side of the camera - even with a fairly "static" presentation, you still need to pan and tilt, and sure enough the firewire link broke for a second, and DV Rack and the camera (Z1) took more than 5 minutes to re-establish contact. I was glad I was also going to tape!

The other annoying thing was that when I changed the tape after an hour, I thought that DV Rack would continue recording uninterrupted, and it "sort of did" till I pressed record on the camera to start the new tape, and DV Rack stopped for a moment before starting a new clip - which at the wrong moment could be enough to ruin a recording.

I'm hoping the new on-camera HD devices such as the Sony DR60 will improve on this - as the device will move WITH the camera, which the laptop doesn't. I know DV Rack also has video and audio monitoring, but I'm used to doing this with the camera ....

Are there such things as 12 inch firewire cables?
murphy wrote on 10/24/2006, 3:19 PM
Thanks very much for all your input.

Because it looks like DV Rack 2.0 and GearShift have fully funtional trials and HDVSplit is freeware I'm going to have all three programs ready(and a tape for a backup) when I shoot. I'm a belt and suspenders kinda guy....
Really appreciate sharing your expeiences on this.

Murph

farss wrote on 10/24/2006, 3:32 PM
Don't know about 12 inch firewire cables but the ones Sony make and sell are way more flexible than the average fare. Pretty expensive too but for what you want well worth it.

Bob.