I have never shot in HDV. Never been asked for the format but now I am going to give it a try. I was reading about Smetvids tool for HDV. This codec only applies when I fuse the timeline? If I export as an Mpeg4 it does not apply?

Also if I want to upload to youtube what is the best export to use for HD Is it Mpeg4?

Thanks Mike

Liquid 7.2 will edit HDV (which is MPEG2 at 25Mbps) out of the box, provided your PC is powerful enough. IIRC, Smetvid's extra codecs allow the bits that need to be rendered (transitions, colour correction, anything with an effect) to be processed at a higher bit-rate and therefore a higher quality. When you are ready to output (fuse or whatever) these sections are converted back to HDV standard - or are converted with all the other parts to your target output.

(AFAIK, it is not possible for AL to output MPEG4 - is it?)

 For YouTube, I convert an HDV time-line to DivX 720P, which seems a good compromise between file size, image quality and render time. You can see some examples on my Steam Age Pictures YouTube pages.

 

Yes, Liquid can export to mp4 format.

Some of those (Smet's) formats take very large amounts of disk space and may require better harddrive I/O performance than some machines are capable of. AL's preset HDV timelines should suffice for all but broadcast and color keying work.

more so if modest cameras are acquiring the media. 

 

and Liquid has uncompressed YUV as an option if you need to key the material although HDV is a very good source for keying anyway. I would start with the Liquid presets and see how they work out before changing anything. Liquid is one of the best HDV editing programs around.

I posted this about 2 1/2 months ago so I have been playing around with different formats. Your right Lew the liquid presets work very well. Steamage by playing around I find that to upload HD to youtube I find 1440x1080i Mp2 audio@ 41.1Khz works the best. Here's a 25 second video I did as a test. But using the Dvd Compatible Mpeg2 SD works almost the same it hard to tell the difference and HD causes streaming problems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stlIVujnCCg

This clip was recorded in SD and uploaded in SD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXvlZcwb1Gg

Mike