HDV transcoding

When recording to tape from FCE (using HDV that has been transcoded to AIC) FCE creates an HDV conversion to output to HDV tape.
The question is:
Is the file created in this process permanent or just buffered somewhere until the Print to Tape is concluded?
Al

Thanks Tom,
I surmised as much.
Depending on the length of the Sequence, a considerable amount of free space would be required on the system drive?
Al

Similar Messages

HDV transcode to DV

I am trying to get setup for editing HDV. I will need to capture HDV onto my Mac and transcode it into a DV NTSC movie and an DVDPRO HD movie for editing in Final Cut Pro 5. Does Lumiere HD do a better job of this than FCP5 and Compressor? Is Compressor good enough for the task? How about the product HDVxDV?
When you transcode from HDV to DV does it just crops off the edges?
G5 Dual 2Ghz Mac OS X (10.3.9)

I would edit the HDV in FCP 5 native and skip Lumiere and HDVxDV all together. Both of those programs are great if you cannot edit HDV natively. Once you are done with the cut in FCP 5 export the HDV to a DV quicktime file.
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Which Imports Faster HDV or AVCHD in FCE and iMovie?

I'm planning on getting my first HD camcorder and I'm leaning towards the HV-20 or HG-10. I'm leaning towards the HV-20 HDV. Tapes are cheap and a good archive medium and I'm leery of small hard drives being robust. Do AVCHD camcorders use similar drives as the iPod?
I've read AVCHD takes some time to import. Does HDV import faster to AIC?
Does FCE 4 import faster than iMovie 8 for both formats?
Thanks for any advice.
Kelvin

Import speed depends on your computer, but I think the the AVCHD and the HDV transcoding is about the same. It's all being done by QuickTime. AVCHD transfer gives you more options in terms of selecting clips and portions of clip, which is more difficult to do manually off tape. But, as you said, tape is cheap and a good archive medium.

Mixing DVC Pro HD and HDV

Hello, all. I've been reading these discussions for over 3 years now, and I've always found the answers to my questions without posting. Until now.
I'm working on a what was supposed to be a project shot solely on DVC Pro HD.
Sequence settings reflect that. Now coming down to the wire and the client has decided to add a bit of b-roll just shot on HDV using a Sony HVR Z1U.
I'll be capturing via Firewire.
But what is the best way to mix these two formats in the sequence? Should I capture the HDV natively? As AIC? I've not worked with HDV at all before, and I'm not sure what to expect, though what I've read hasn't been encouraging.
Final delivery of the video will be on DVD.
Thanks for any help on this.

If you don't have too much of the HDV, transcode it to DVCPRO HD would probably be easiest.

16:9 and not 16:9

Something to do with how quicktime works is confusing me, may you explain it please? A few months ago I was using QT 7.1.x. When I exported a file with QT conversion from FCP from a 16:9 sequence, and made sure i selected my desired frame size and that I wanted the DV-SD project to be 16:9 the resulting file would play back in 16:9 in QT...now, with QT7.2 the resulting files are stretched back into 4:3, just like would happen in QT6. This also happens with HDV, but not HD projects... Funny thing is, when I re-import these files back into FCP, the Anamorphic box is not checked...I am assuming this as something to do with weather or not anamorphic pixels are being forced on or not.
When i try to export the same sequence in 16:9 through compressor, I try to make my own customized file to play back a full resolution Photo-JPEG codec video file, ie 720x576 in 16:9. Two observations: 1) when I go into the dimensions tab, and type in 720h and 576w, and change the pixel display aspect ratio to PAL 601 Anamorphic, the resulting file is still stretched by quicktime. When change the display aspect ratio, the file is changed to 720x405...this file plays in widescreen, presumably, because thats what the file's pixel resolution is. I would have thought however, that changing the pixel display aspect ratio to PAL 601 Anamorphic would have forced QT to play the resulting file in 16:9.
And finally, I find that the only way to get a full vertical resolution file for this sequence is to use either FCPs QT conversion or Compressor to make a 1024x576 resolution file. I know that a 16:9 dvd is 720x576 pixels stretched anamorphically, so why can i not force compressor or QT Conversion to do the same now to allow me to play a full resolution, 16:9 file in Qt on my desktop?
These are just some points that are confusing me, and as a student editor any help in understanding them would be good, if you have a little spare time to answer them. Is there anything up with my system?

That the resulting files are not seen by FCP as anamorphic is worrisome.
Unless we know what exactly you're doing (and I mean exact settings) it's hard to guess at what's going wrong. But, what happens if you simply, say, export a reference movie from FCP? You should, unless something is seriously wrong, be able to use the Conform Aperture property of QT Pro to correct the pixel aspect ratio (Clean or Production work for DV material, Production for HDV material).
The Conform Aperture property should also work with standard DV/HDV transcodes - meaning no custom frame size alterations - out of FCP and/or Compressor. It will not work with square-pixel, non-tape formats like Photo JPEG however.
What is your final desired output? DVD? Or are you just hoping to play your QT - using an editing codec like DV/HDV - on your Mac?

Video out to Canon HV20

I am using an Imac 20" Intel with 2G Ram, a 500 GB Lacie External drive for my media and a Canon HV20 Camcorder for material.
I was able to capture my HD footage with no problem to FCE 4.0, edited my footage and created a DVD with IDVD with no problem. Want to delete the media and start a new project. However, I read somewhere that it is a good idea to save your completed sequence back to MiniDV to keep a backup of the highest quality video for use to create HD DVDs in the future.
This is where my problems start. As I said, I have no problem capturing but for whatever reason it will not record back to my camcorder (which based on the info in my Canon manual and a check with Cannon support) I am doing everything right on the camcorder end. Camera gives error when I start the recording process of "Check the HDV/DV input" and I don't see the footage on my camcorder.
I have tried Print to Video and recording via the timeline and neither will work. Spent 2 hours on phone with Technical support yesterday and then even went to the Apple store with some footage, my camera and my firewire cable only to be told that they could only help if I brought that and my computer and my external hard drive (and then they would only try to figure something out for 20 minutes)
I am sure there is some setting that is frustrating the camera but can't figure it out....any help would be appreciated.

Hi,
I had similar trouble and came accross your post. I have since got mine to work (see below).
What is the format of the sequence you are trying to export? Is it 1080i, 720p, or something else?
My workflow involved importing clips from the Canon HV20 using iMovie at the 540p import setting (960 x 540 pixels). I would then edit in FCE 4, and my sequence settings would adjust automatically to my clips, i.e. 540p. When I tried to "print to tape" FCE would begin to export and I would hit OK on the computer screen, but the camera would not start recording.
I did some troubleshooting. What I had to do was create a new sequence 1080i and then copy/paste my edits from the 540p sequence into the 1080i sequence (and correct some incorrect motion on still images, because the resolution of the sequences were different). Now, when I "print to tape" the 1080i sequence, FCE actually does a HDV transcoding step (which takes a while on my iMac) and then the Canon HV20 records the sequence no problem. Of course, when viewed on the Canon HV20 miniDV tape to my HDTV the quality is a bit less than the original because of the down sampling to 540p. But anyway, I have an archived copy of my work. I have also had successfull "print to tape", with the HDV transcoding, using a 720p sequence.
The Lesson Learned: Import at full 1080i, or 720p, and make sure sequences match your import settings. Otherwise, you will end up mucking around with a bunch of conversion issues.
If there is another way to get non-1080i material to print to the HV20?? I'd love to hear about it since I have a couple of other very complicated sequences in 540p. I will be buying a bigger external hard disk to go 100% 1080i in the future. Live and learn.
Hope this helped,
Mace

Render and record, export to tape question?

Hi,
I have finished a ten minute HDV project.
I now want to export to tape. (HDV Sony V1e) When I hit export - tape then hit the render and record box. This then brings up the Export to HDV (transcoding to HDV) box.
The problem I have is that 10 min project trancodes for about ten minutes then just goes back to the render and record dialogue box, without the exporting to tape.
I then tried exporting a smaller chunk (25seconds) and this renders in about three minutes and exports fine!!
So, I think my camera etc is fine.
Why won't my ten min movie render and record?
Sometimes it does give me a low memory warning too. I have set the preference from performance to memory already.
Please help!
thanks
scott

Hi Scott,
I am having this very same problem.
Did you manage to solve it? If so, how??
I've been trying to figure it out for the past 5 days and it's driving me crazy!!!
I exported a 3 minutes sequence and it exported to tape fine. But when I tried to do the entire film - 55 minutes - it began the 'transcoding' then just stopped and went back to the 'render and record' pop up without any error message or anything.
I am trying to get from CS3 to a Sony HDV deck.
Thanks,
Alicia

Apple Intermediate codec

Please help,
Hi everyone. Have litle question.
I film my film with HDV camera, but I capture it in Final Cut as Apple Intermediate codec. HDTV 720p. 1280*720 thought it is good for later to put it on film material. (is it worst quality then HDV?)
Now I need to develop it as tiff for color correction machine, because they don't work with HDTV720p 1280*720format. They need 1920*1080 format. So, I changed it in the sequence. But, then the video has 133.33% scale and not 100%. The question is: Is this fine or it will make the quality bit worst. Should I maybe first print it to tape as HDV and then put it back to computer and put it us 10bit uncompressed format?
I did it already ones, that I worked with the 133.33%. and developed as tiff. But, the color correction man sayd that the film is looking bit unsharp. Which i didn't think. For me it was looking fine. But maybe am wrong.
Did someones had ever the same problem?
Thank you!!!
Otto

As far as I'm aware I don't think the AIC looses resolution.
You would probably get a more knowledgeable answer in the FCP forum.
However, I don't think it's clear cut:
This article talks about why editing native HDV isn't always good
And the UKFCUG emails I've had have mentioned capturing HDV, transcoding to DVCPRO-HD for the edit and then encoding back down at the outputting stage. I don't know what was wrong with editing in HDV, but it was bad enough for the guy to do a 20hour render to DVCPRO-HD
Out of interest what was the article you read?

Sluggish playback with multiple ProRes files

So here is what i currently have, macbook pro 2.4ghz, 6gb RAM, GeForce 8600M GT GPU, 500gb internal HD 140GB free, 2TB GRaid 1TB free via a Sonnet TempoPro Esata card.
Im doing a multi clip edit and i cant even play the footage back, the hard drive sounds like its cant keep up but i thought esata could handle more then that, am i wrong? I have 3 angles 2 originally HDV transcoded to ProRes SD and 7D footage done the same way. Everything 1440x1080. I set it to unlimited RT, Safe, i tried dynamic, low playback settings and everything and it just freezes up. Any help appreciated.

CAMERA MAN 2007 wrote:
anyone?
Probably not. You need to talk to the card and the drive mfrs to figure out how to debug their hardware to work with your software.
ProRes is specifically designed to handle these situations so, umm, you've got to take it back to the start, reset. Make sure you've actually done the conversions properly. Heck, take it down another notch. Not much help but I'm up late and that's all I can think of.
You can try searching the forum for the drive and the card, maybe. See if anyone has ever tried to use them with your machine.
bogiesan

Bitrate for Replication

Hi, if someone could help it would be very much appreciated.
I am making a DVD-9 for replication. When I am burning DVDrs on my machine I generally encode at the standard vbr 6.2 - 7.7 with AIC. This leads to a maximum bit rate, I assume, of around 8
With replication can I, or should I, go higher? I have seen DVD creation in a big studio where the guy was pushing all max data rates up to 9.8 . He was using a PC program.
I remember reading a couple of years ago that Apple's compressor was unreliable and often put spikes above the maximum set. Is this the reason why the 6.2 to 7.7 is suggested?
I notice in this interesting article by Brian Gary on Cinema craft that he sugests a VBR with an average of 6 and a max of 9 (towards the end of the article - it's quite long!)
http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/cinema_craftencoder.html
Anyhow any advice here would be appreciated. I would like the get the best picture I can while being readable on older dvd players. I am also looking at Bitvice but I like Compressor as its downscaling is good.
I'm using footage from a Sony Z1 HDV transcoded to Prores 50i
Thanks
Steve
Message was edited by: Steve Bro
Message was edited by: Steve Bro

Steve Bro wrote:
Thanks Drew
So you'd suggest having a total max bitrate no more than 8.2 for replicated?
As the target market for the disk is 50+ it needs to play on older set top boxes
Compressor can work fine, but you mention 50+ discs, are you duplicating and not replicating? If duplicating definately err lower than higher.
Average of 6, High of 8 (I would usually use 7.5 for discs from computers/duplication depedning on project) and AC3 files should work. Also older players can be more of a PITA...

Video at 16:9 , why not camera

I have iphone 5, but what i can see is the video recorder uses 16:9 ratio and very good quality and uses this sensor. but when it comes to still camera it uses 4:3. can anyone please tell me why is this? if 16:9 sensor is there why cant still pics use it as well.

That the resulting files are not seen by FCP as anamorphic is worrisome.
Unless we know what exactly you're doing (and I mean exact settings) it's hard to guess at what's going wrong. But, what happens if you simply, say, export a reference movie from FCP? You should, unless something is seriously wrong, be able to use the Conform Aperture property of QT Pro to correct the pixel aspect ratio (Clean or Production work for DV material, Production for HDV material).
The Conform Aperture property should also work with standard DV/HDV transcodes - meaning no custom frame size alterations - out of FCP and/or Compressor. It will not work with square-pixel, non-tape formats like Photo JPEG however.
What is your final desired output? DVD? Or are you just hoping to play your QT - using an editing codec like DV/HDV - on your Mac?

Problems with "Author once" workflow, can't transcode HDV to BD and DVD

Adobe claims that with Encore CS3 you can
"author once, deliver to three formats" -- Blu-ray, DVD and Flash. I have been doing some research and testing, but have not been able to get it to work.
It seems as though Encore is not capable of taking HDV 1080i60 footage and transcoding it for both Blu-ray and DVD. The Blu-ray looks great, but the downconverted transcode for DVD is completely unusable.
Link to screen shot of HDV to DVD transcode. (Note: this is a frame at 100%, so the "comb teeth" really are that big.)
I have seen some pretty pathetic downconversions from HDV to DV resolution, but this is the most creatively useless one I've come across so far.
I have been able to use Dynamic Link to get an almost acceptable "author once" workflow from HDV footage. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a way to get Encore or After Effects to render fields for the DVD transcode, so fast-moving graphic elements and text have jerky/strobing motion.
FYI, I got Dynamic Link working well for non-fast clips by doing the following:
Make sure that "Separate Fields" was set to "Upper" in "Interpret Footage" for the HDV clip.
Set the clip's frame blending mode to "Frame Mix" ("Pixel Motion" works, just take longer).
Enable Frame Blending for the comp.
(Enable Motion Blur for the comp if any layers are using Motion Blur).
If only there were a button to enable field rendering for the comp along with Frame Blending and Motion Blur, as both of those options directly affect how the Dynamic Link renders/transcodes in Encore.
I noticed that without Frame Blending enabled for both the clip and the comp, the motion in the transcode was very jerky, even though the clip had not been time stretched/remapped.
Does anyone know of some way to get the mythical "author once" workflow to work? Perhaps it's only for progressive workflows and not interlaced? Could this be a Mac-related problem (I have not been able to test on Windows)?
I know I can downconvert first, then import into Encore, and that does work fine, but that completely negates the wonderful concept of "author once".
Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.
-Joel Granholm
Details:
Encore CS3 3.0.1.008
After Effects CS3 8.0.1.8
Premiere Pro CS3 3.0.1
Final Cut Studio 2
Mac OS X 10.4.10
Mac Pro 8-core, 8 GB RAM / MacBook Pro 17" 2-core, 4 GB RAM
Shooting/editing in HDV 1080i60
Trying to create:
BD: NTSC, 1440x1080, 29.97i (upper field first), H.264.
DVD: NTSC, 16:9 Aspect Ratio, 29.97i (lower field first), MPEG2

Ruud,
Gspot showed there was a problem with the file. What it said was of the 130K frames, most were not needed. I went back to the editor and reconstructed the 130K file. Had problems trying to export to M2v. PPro 2.0 would freeze every time, sometimes in a few minutes, sometimes just short of completing, approx 2 hours(this was a 2 pass vbr setup). I experienced problems just trying to make an AVI file for importing into Encore 2.0. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since I first started this journey(over 300 hours). My first shot at elation occurred when I decided to try an m2v at vbr 1 pass instead of 2 pass. It worked. I say this because of late I have successfully made an Avi file, Imported the timeline and in fact satisfactorily made an m2v file (2 pass). The m2v was also brought into Encore 2.0. Though I have 4 HD's, it seems to me that as I am moving toward a successful product, I'm finding that I've located all my assets on one HD. Is this the way to go? I'd like to thank the alert for using Gspot. And I will, always. I believe that if I had used Gspot earlier I would not have been trying to fix the problem using a bad asset.
I've been able to make an iso file, though having trouble making a playable disc.

Transcode to HDV error

In trying to export a half hr show in HDV the transcode step always gets about 3-6 minutes in and crashes. Have disabled anti virus/screen savers/dual monitors etc. Reinstalled system clean and software no luck. Project is on external Seagate drive via sata cable 7200rpm. In the error report I always see ModName: fx-prodad-vitascene.prm I was suspecting third party Vitascene plug-in in for CS3 which I use for a few transitions but all updates,including directX are current. Working with HDV mpeg-2 files.
My System:
Shuttle pc intel core2 duo
WinXP pro SP3
2G RAM
(1) 500G Internal 7200
NVidia GForce 9600GT
CS3 Production Bundle
All Software Updates Current

You have obviously used the ProDAD Vitascene on part of your Timeline. I've heard of very few problems with it, you you might want to do a test without that Effect, just to see what is going on. I use Vitascene a bit, and have had zero issues, but then I am applying it to SD material.
Though it sounds like you have shut down many of the "usual suspects," this ARTICLE might give you a useful tip - or you may already have done everything in it.
Good luck, and let us know how the non-Vitascene version works.
Hunt

Aren't FCPX and Compressor supposed to be able to export Apple ProRes 422 LT? I just bought FCPX and Compressor and there seems to be no way to transcode HDV clips to Apple ProRes422 LT. Before buying I read LACUG tutorial by R Taylor that says it can.

Aren't FCPX and Compressor supposed to be able to export Apple ProRes 422 LT? I just bought FCPX and Compressor and there seems to be no way to transcode HDV clips to Apple ProRes422 LT. Before buying these I read an LACUG tutorial by R Taylor that says it can.

Tom is right. Codecs are shared software system-wide ("Core Video"). If you cannot find the option with any software (such as MPEG Streamclip), you won't find it in Compressor or FCPX either. The Quicktime ProRes codecs is part of the FCP menu > "Download Additional Content" you need to make after install FCPX (or Compressor.) These "pro video" codecs are part of all "ProApp" licenses for video related software from Apple (QT7Pro, Motion, Compressor, Final Cut, etc....) [you can also download them here: http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1396]
Most articles/tutorials you read by "long time" users are apt to assume the reader has been working with pro-video on Macs since the days of disk installs (like they have). In those days, the installation of those codecs wasn't even really an option (well, it was if you did a custom install - but who *didn't* install all available codecs??), it was automatically installed with the main software. Since the "App Store" venue... things have changed somewhat.

Editing in HDV or transcoding to Prores

I've been doing some research on editing HDV and have found that FCP can transcode HDV to ProRes as it imports. I understand that there's no log and capture doing it this way and it takes more time on import, but will the benefits of editing in ProRes outweigh these limitations?
Really what I'm asking is do you edit in HDV or Transcode to ProRes first, and what are the ups and downs of each?

If you need to go back to HDV tape, stay in HDV (although you can output your ProRes sequence to Compressor, convert to HDV, and bring it back, if you need to). If your finishing process doesn't need HDV, and it'll take the ProRes, capture to ProRes.
In my experience, editing HDV requires a lot more rendering for timeline changes. ProRes is much nicer as an editing codec.
Matt

HDV transcoding

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