HDV to Cineform to MP4 to Flash

dlion wrote on 8/25/2009, 2:48 PM

I've been trying to find a workflow that would allow me to take HDV footage and migrate it to "HD for the Web."

I've used the Cineform codev to render 1440x1080 "masters," but found few acceptable solutions to get that Cineform into FLV. It turns out, with help from solo video journalist Cliff Etzel, that mp4 is a better choice, and it can be encoded right in Vegas using Main Concept mp4. You could probably even skip the Cineform step and render direct to mp4, but I already had it so what the hell?

See the steps and tools I used at:

http://www.wacru.wa-music.com/HDV4Web.htm

Please excuse the shaky zoom at the beginning, Camtasia had a hard time keeping up - the film itself is smoother.

Comments

winrockpost wrote on 8/25/2009, 5:03 PM

just render your hdv to mp4 and call it a day

JohnnyRoy wrote on 8/26/2009, 4:19 AM

Thanks for sharing that procedure. The title is a little misleading though... you never actually rendered to Flash, you just played the MP4 back in a compatible player... or did I miss something? In the end it as still an MP4 file (although with the moov atom adjusted for download).

~jr

dlion wrote on 8/26/2009, 6:50 AM

yes, it's mp4, but played with the flash player progressively. otherwise, you'd need quicktime to play it, and i hate the quicktime player and the baggage of having it load at bootup.

you could encode directly to mp4 in vegas (hdv>mp4, skipping the cineform step that i had already done). you then save a lengthy render in flash (that took 4 hours in a test) and the quality is as good or better than what the flash cs3 on2 codec gave me.

you could also use the standard flash player, but i kinda like the jw, you see it a lot on the web too.

thanks, johnnyroy.