Hello Everybody,

I would start working with HD codecs and I should change my actual Camera (Canon XL2).

Which one described in subject you would advice me to buy? And my actual setup could work well with HD files?

Thx a lot & Best Regards 

I personally would go with HDV. I prefer tape over solid state or disc recorders. It is very hard to work with AVCHD material even on a very powerful computer plus Liquid does not directly support this format. Your computer would be marginal at best for working with HD material. Maybe one stream of video. You really should consider a new machine if you are going to get into HD.

I agree with LewS' statement: HDV. However, some cameras offer a hybrid option: HDV plus harddisk or memory recorder. I use the Sony Z5 plus Sony MRC1 CF-card recorder. The tapes I use for long term storage, the CF card for rapid file transfer to the computer.

At this point I'd still go with HDV as well, especialy since those cameras (meaning the smaller ones) still have a very good picture quality and are real cheap meanwhile.

Another thing to consider:  Doesn't Canon offer new AVCHD cameras with a higher datarate than standard AVCHD? For what I've read its a great quality, but not all videosoftware can handle it, cause its a slightly different format or mode, thay have named it differently too. So who knows - one buys that camera, and at the end needs to work with the poor AVCHD format instead of th newer, improved one.  

Am I right with this statement or has anyone heard differently?    

I am using a Sony EX3, which is solid state it uses SxS cards, although I mainly use SDHC cards with an adaptor for cost.

I have been using it with Liquid XE for a 6 months now shooting in 1920x1080i and 1080p, both edit fine, but I do have a powerfull edit station. I just convert the files using Sony Clipbrowser to .mxf, it's fine.

I'm doing the same with the EX1. I work for government and must have the slowest depreciation possible. I'm betting that the EX, for several reasons will outlive any HDV camera presently available. That said, for personal use I might choose HDV. It's economical, it's fully mature and most software and modern computers can do something with it.

I'm renting out a Z7 next week. That has both tape and CF adapter. This is a best-of-both-worlds solution I think. I'll be editing using the CF cards as the source but keeping the tapes for archival.

The only problem right now with tapeless solutions is storing material for archive. Electronic media is a lot more expensive than tape (at least at the moment). and burnable CD/DVD/BluRay doesn't have a high confidence factor for long term storage.

Ive been HDV since it came out and have high respect for the codec, Liquid loves it and so do my clients. Great cost on storage and archival puropoes, it just fits my workflow the best. My two cents worth....

So why is editing in HD such a pain for me.   My Sony HDR-HC1 says is records in HDV format.   Liquid wants to render when on the timeline.   I found that if i fuse to Mpeg2   liquid doesn't want to render.   But then if I place a simple dissolve, it takes time to dissolve. 

 HD has been slow for me.   Should I go back to Raid drives?   Or should I just say my computer needs upgrading since It was built around 2006

 

Help me... I want to feel the love for HD too!

Dspboy,

What timeline preset are you using for editing HDV?

Thanks for Asking...     Now I get it...  

 It was initially   Preset=1080/59.94i         

Now  I just reset to HDV 1080/59.94i(1440 X 1080 16X9)     ... And now there is NO Rendering on the timeline...   YEAH!!!

It only renders when I add FX ...   I guess it happens so fast with simple AVI  that I never notice the rendering unless I pile it on.

3 QUESTIONS: 

1. ARE YOU GUYS EXPERIENCING GOOD RENDERING TIMES WITH HDV WITH THE NEW COMPUTERS AND RAIDS?  

2. Should play back of a 1 minute HDV clip be choppy?

3. Do you use FX on HDV with ease?

Good rendering time is relative. It takes much longer to render HDV than SD, perhaps four times longer. I pretty much work in HDV all the time now and find the render times acceptable.

Is your playback with no FX Choppy?    

Playback of unrendered video (grey slice) is smooth. Most effects need rendering to playback smoothly. Unrendered effects can sometimes be made to playback better by turning off hi resolution inlays. Overall, there is not a huge difference between editing in HDV and SD. You do need a fairly powerful system though. See my profile.

Since I moved most of my HDV work to the Phenom II 940 with the ATI 9850 render pretty much happens with most FX about as fast as the timeline scrubber moves in R/T play.

Things like Mercalli deshaker in its most render intensive settings run at 10fps render. It is possible to watch the work even with yellow slices with smooth playback.

At first I was making a good excuse to build another computer, but then I noticed that LewS computer is not a Quad.  He's rocking with 6MB of cache and a frontside bus of 1600MHz(I think).   I'm just pondering if it may be my set up.   I think it's time to clean up my hard drive space and start Archiving.   Defrag(I'm lazy).   Maybe even go back to a Raid, atleast for rendering. 

 

I'm building a Quad for a friend soon, so I'll be able to see first hand if it's my CPU, or just my laziness.