Moving to HD

TravelJunkie wrote on 3/6/2006, 5:06 AM
I'm considering taking the plunge into HD, and would appreciate any advice on workflow for capture and editing using VMS Platinum.

Am I right in thinking that VMS capture will not split HD clips based on date/time? (If not, how do users manage their raw footage?)

Finally, if I render an HD edit to MPEG2 and burn to a DVD, will there be ANY improvement compared to SD material (or do I need to wait for BluRay or HD-DVD...)?

Thank in anticipation!

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 3/6/2006, 9:10 AM
TravelJunkie,
there is a serious and significant difference in output quality when shooting HDV to SD delivery. It's immediately visible to anyone. You're effectively shooting (SD) the same quality as 50K cams shoot when you convert the HDV to SD for output, except you're avoiding colorspace changes/transcode.
VMS doesn't always catch the scene detection. There are third party tools such as HDV Split, or use the CineForm tool itself, which does offer scene detection and conversion to CineForm codec.
Pal wrote on 3/6/2006, 11:02 AM
First I want to thank Douglas for spending his valuable time with us here and sharing his extensive expertise! Thank you also for the VMS titling program and the two other programs (masking and lights) I discovered when I went to get that one!

TravelJunkie: "Finally, if I render an HD edit to MPEG2 and burn to a DVD, will there be ANY improvement compared to SD material (or do I need to wait for BluRay or HD-DVD...)?"

As Douglas said the difference between HDV and SD is extreme but... I just got the HC1 and the SD output of it compared to the SD output of my old Sony digital 8 camcorder is impressive. So I would say it also depends a lot on the quality of your current old SD camcorder. Also if you capture to HDV, switch to an intermediate and edit before you downres to SD, any post zooming that you do will be much better because of the much higher resolution of the HDV. Of course you can edit back to tape and watch it with your camcorder and/or save it until BluRay or HD-DVD do come out. Probably the biggest thing for serious editing in HDV is the huge amount of hard disk space it requires to switch to the intermediate codec.

The HDV Split program is a free download.
Hope that helps a little bit for you.