which editing software

[Ratheesh Ravindran]

Hi ,

Can anyone throw some light on some of the editing softwares that can be used for HDV.I will be soon shooting a short fiction on Sony HDR-FX1.The final film will remain only on DVD format.Recently Iam hearing about using Adobe Premier Pro with Cineform software(Prospect HD). Another is FCP 5.Whichever mode I will be shooting,be it 24p or 50i, is it possible to remain with true HD signal till the end without any downconversions.Expecting a reply.

Thanks, Ratheesh Ravindran.

[David Alan]

Greetings Ratheesh Ravindran

 

We just wrapped a music video using the fx1 and used fcp5 and I have to tell you it was an amazing output, there is a slight issue that a lot of ppl are having and that is the print to tape function apparently is buggy, we cant take the final 1080i video out and put it back onto MiniDV tape on the cam for distribution. Other than that, I can only say good things about FCP and the fx1

 

david

YabegoProductions.com

[Lucita Jones]

Hi!

 

This is my first time shooting and editing HDV. My final goal is to obtain a 26 minute short with a film look w/o using Cineframe mode.

 

I 'd like to hear your opinion about the proceedure I have planned to follow:

 

Shoot HDV on mini-DV tapes.

Shoot at 50i as a means of getting a film look through deinterlacing. (Supposing that PAL will offer better color depth and image quality)

Capture the material on DV quality using FCP5.

Edit the film and generate an EDL

Capture the original HD shots according to the EDL

Deinterlace to 25fps using a plugin from FCP5

Slowdown to 24 fps and pitch shift the sound

Transfer to NTSC for distribution in NTSC countries

 

My concern is about editing on DV and then re-capturing on HD through use of an EDL. The reason why I would edit on Dv instead of HD is because of space and time...Is this a valid enough reason? Would this work?

 

Thanks for all your advice

[Matt Sandstrom]

that sounds fine. i'd recommend you use cineframe though. my tests show you lose a tiny bit of sharpness, 100 lines at the most, on stationary frames compared to a "smart deinterlace" but frames in motion actually turn out sharper and with less artifacts since the codec doesn't have to compress the redundant information. whenever people say "cineframe sucks" they're referring to the fake 24p mode, which does suck. cineframe 25 is great.

 

/matt

[Dylan Munro]

Hi ,

Can anyone throw some light on some of the editing softwares that can be used for HDV.I will be soon shooting a short fiction on Sony HDR-FX1.The final film will remain only on DVD format.Recently Iam hearing about using Adobe Premier Pro with Cineform software(Prospect HD). Another is FCP 5.Whichever mode I will be shooting,be it 24p or 50i, is it possible to remain with true HD signal till the end without any downconversions.Expecting a reply.

Thanks, Ratheesh Ravindran.

 

 

I have recently upgrade to Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0. Prior to this I was using 1.5.1 for HDV editing and ended up having to use Cineform to capture and output as Premiere really wasn't handling it. Version 2.0 however has native HDV support and even on a 2.8GHz P4 I find that capturing, editing and outputing HDV is an easy and painless process.

 

I have now edited a few projects both short and feature length using PP 2 and the workflow is great. You can still capture and edit the project in SD and then recapture (I think the term is conform) in HD using all the same transitions and edit points. I've done this for one short project where I had to edit it entirely on a laptop during an 18 hour flight. I was then able to load the Premiere file into a machine with plenty of grunt at my destination, recaptured just the footage needed and I had the finished HD project ready within hours of arriving.

 

Hope this helps.

[Michael Collier]

I did a feature length on the FX1 and ZU1 (dont ask why we switched, crazy story, but the ZU1 at least gave us better audio in the end) we captured to premiere pro 1.5 with cineform, cut the whole thing online with no downconversion (30 hours of footage! dont let someone tell you their a DoP if they are not, and if you let the camera run during set-ups and between takes, your not a DoP)

 

anyway. Premiere handled everything fine. we downconverted that in the computer to uncompressed SD for color correction and final DVD compression. we had a problem with media management (My error, deleted files that were still needed) but we cued the tapes up and let the auto capture blaze through the footage, and replaced everything just fine. We even had a seperate audio tracks that werent deleted, and the video lined up with the audio already there, so no problems there.

 

I would recomend against cineframe 24, it didnt seem to do a good job. Induces stutter and didnt really sell 'film' to me. I dont know, maybe the average viewer would be fooled, but I could definatley tell the stutter cadence was all wrong (4 or 5 deinterlaced frames, then 2 interlaced) though if you visit cineforms website, they advertise a product that they say would remove those extra frames, let you edit normally and add the pulldown later. I dont know how well it works, but its worth checking out.