HD editing - Simple things to know?

[Pqtrick]

For those who may be aquinted with me, I have changed my user name.

Why? Well, I have a new computer which by living in France has a AZWERTY keyboard. Therefore, my usual sign on has changed from 'PaddyW' to 'Pqtrick' because for those who may not know, some of the letters are in a different position notably the 'a' which is 'q'. There are others things which take a bit of getting use to.

The question I want to pose is regarding HD. A topic I know little about.

I am directing a project with the club I belong to here in France. I don't have a HD camera but as it is a club project, I have the option of shooting in HD. I am doing the editing or 'montage' as it is known.

I use Premier CS3 with Windows 7 on my new computer, oh I can't say that, it is an 'ordinateur', it has 8GB of RAM and 1 tera of disc dur. Other than needing a device to input the video [presumably via a fire-wire?] In simple terms is there anything else I should really need to know about? Other than twiddiling with the settings. Or, is it wiser to originate on HD and then edit in standard DV? It would be projected in HD they seem to have deep pockets out here.

I ask this, because most of the other members cope with Macs with Final Cut Pro.

Going back to the usage of the AZWERTY keyboard, has any other of our members had a similar. What does Willy have to cope with?

Trying to input text for passwords have been a bit of a trial, I can use a QWERTY keyboard as well but it defaults back mid stream at times and a dual spell checker get confused as well. What fun!

Patrick Woodcock 69100 France

[Michael Slowe]

I have sympathy with your key board problem, one of the worst things about using foreign hotel computers is the time it takes to work it all out.

On the HD question, there isn't any difference editing HD from any other codec. I have been doing it for years now. Of course your edit software has to be capable of handling it but I imagine that all the main systems do this by now. Premiere Pro certainly does. What you do need is drives with the speed and capacity for the job and HD is very demanding in that respect. Full HD by the way can't go down firewire, it has to be HDSDI unless you are thinking of HDV (not quite HD) in that case firewire is fine. Even if eventually the project is going out in SD this generally looks better if it was originally shot in HD but you say that the club will be showing it in HD. Does that mean they have an HDCAM deck (very much doubt it) or will it be going on to Blu-Ray disc? There again, you may mean HDV which is very much easier to play on tape. These higher resolution codecs are becoming the norm in the professional field and with the spread of HD capable televisions non commercial film makers are following suit. No difference in method but the kit needs to be carefully considered.

[Dave Watterson]

Hi Paddy. Your Franglais is improving!

This question poses lots of problems because "HD" is loosely applied to various different video systems. Can you find out from your club mates what they mean by it? Michael mentioned HDV and HD. Lots of people use AVCHD - and they work at different resolutions.

Underneath all the other issues is the compression system used. If I have understood correctly (always a big IF) HD uses quite large "Groups Of Frames". Each Group starts with a full image, but the subsequent frames within the group only show what has changed. In a talking head picture there will be only tiny changes. In a James Bond chase there will be lots of changes!

In order to edit sensibly every Group of Frames has to be reconstituted so that each frame is shown complete. That means the uncompressed file is much, much bigger than the file from the camera. (At the end of the editing the finished version will have to be re-compressed, though the "Groups of Frames" will be different.) That handling requires a lot of computer power.

Dave

[ned c]

I shoot two versions of HD; HDV which is 1440x1080 pixels at 60i, I am in the USA; so assume you will shoot 50i or 50p. this is on tape in a Canon XH A1. I also shoot 1920x1080 at 60i 17 mpbs with a Panasonic sdhc100 camera recording AVCHD to SDHC cards. I have two edit systems; Mac based FCP and FXE both of which convert AVCHD to Apple Intermediate Codec which increases the file size 6 to10 times but eases the load on the processors. I also have Vegas Platinum Studio on a PC which handles 'native' avchd without a transcode, needs lots of computer horsepower. Both work satisfactorily. I can create Standard and Blu Ray DVDs on both computers on standard DVDs with a time limit around 30 minutes. As Dave says HDV and AVCHD use GOPs (Groups of pictures), usally 1/2 second long that require 'restoeration' within the software driven by as powerful a computer and as much RAM as you can afford. IN practice all this happens quite seamlessly and once clips are loaded all is as uaual.

hope this helps

ned c

[billyfromConsett]

When shooting everything now, I shoot and edit in HDV with Adobe CS4. Not sure how it would behave if I added some 1920x1080 AVCHD clips - it should allow them. After editing I export to an HDV file on an external hard drive and also to a tape, for archiving and showing at the club.
AVCHD are put into the computer with a USB link to the camcorder or media card, at least on the ones I've seen. You can make a standard DVD from these edits.

[Michael Slowe]

As I'm now shooting and editing in full 1920 X 1080 HD I suppose I should exhibit the films in HD which means Blu-Ray discs presumably. Although the better Blu-Ray players upscale SD DVD's very well it seems silly not to take advantage of the full HD quality. I am now embarking on a suite upgrade and hope to get a stand alone Blu-Ray burner because I understand that Compressor will encode Blu-Ray through a variant of the H264 codec and Toast 10 will now burn BD, any light to shed on this anyone?

[Geoff Addis]

Michael,

Toast Titanium Pro will allow you to burn Bluray compatible disks on standard DVDs on the normal DVD drive fitted in the Mac; up to between 30-40 minutes duration is possible on a single layer disk. I see no reason why you shouldn't burn to an external Bluray drive and LG seems to be the make that is most favoured - I have an LG drive in my PC and it has been most relliable.

I would highly recommend that you consider incorporating the Matrox MX02 mini with MAX technology into your FCP system as this will considerably increase the speed at which you transcode your completed sequence in FCP to the H264 format for Bluray; conversion is done in a little under real time as opposed to may times real time if using the Compressor codec. You simply export your time line as a QT movie using the sequence settings then iimport that into Compressor and use the Matrox H264 settings that are found in the normal setting list. (MPEG2 files may also be used on Bluray, but H264 is a better and more efficient codec that allows you to get longer times on the disk)

I have found FCP to be very dependent upon time consuming rendering in order to see full frame rate, full quality renditions of many filters and transitions in 1920 x 1080 HD and I now do most of my editing using Edius. Edius is a Windows program, but it may be run via Boot Camp on the same machine. In Edius, most FX and transitions play at full quality from the time line without the need to render and more FX may be applied to the clip before rendeing is necessary than in FCP. Typically rendering is much faster, up to 8x has been experienced with the same clips, transitions and FX on the same machine. The finished Edius timeline may be exported in a QT format for transition to FCP if necessary, but you can also burm a Bluray directly from the Edius timeline.

Hope this helps the decision making process ...

Geoff

[Michael Slowe]

Geoff, I know all about the Matrox Max, and I had a long talk with them last week at the Production Show. My people at NMR don't reckon on them at all as they've had a lot of drive failures with their kit. The only advantage with the Max is the speed. The quality is the same as Compressor and H264 and I'm not bothered about the time taken in the encoding. BitVice takes five times the timeline to downscale and encode to SD and I sometimes let it happen overnight.

I'm not editing on Final Cut, I've been on Media 100 and Mac for twelve years now and it's great. Boris (of Boris Red, FX etc etc) has owned it since saving it from a previous buyer and the updates have been spectacular these last three years. I think it's better than FCP and far far easier to use and faster. Final Cut has got where it is today because Apple have the clout to push it. I think Tom edits with Edius and he does a great job with it and his DVD's using their encoder are brilliant

Geoff, why wouldn't you burn Blu-Ray to BD discs? I know they cost more but how many do we use? Anyway, you have been very helpful in agreeing that H264 is the way to go with BD and that's what I'll do. Mind you, Blu-Ray is not exactly setting the commercial world on fire and may well be by passed but that's another matter altogether.

[Geoff Addis]

Michael,

The only reason that I burnt Bluray to DVD was that the Mac does not have a Bluray burner and I wanted to see how things panned out. Of course the DVDs are cheaper, but BD-Rs are not that expensive - I remember when I was paying £20 for a CDr! As you say, the future for Bluray is questionable, I now also archive on a external hard disk that I connect to the Western Digital TV media interface and have found this to be an excellent and reliable way to do so.

I have a Matrox MX02 mini and have had no problems with it at all, so I can only speak from my experience.

OK on the AVID, that is probably the only major editor that I've had no experience with, FCP drives me crazy and as you say the only reason that it is so popular is because of the marketing hype and clout, particularly getting it in so many schools and media colleges.

Geoff

[daveswan]

On the rare occasions I've edited HDV I've transcoded to DNxHD which is an I-Frame only codec (Available free from Avid) on my Media Composer system. I usualy shoot HD in DVCPro HD.
Dave

[col lamb]

Totally ignore any Matrox product, for every one that works another does not.

Rather than spend good money on hardware coders, spend it on upgrading the PC to 3GHz 4 core i7, 6Gb plus RAM etc.

If you must spend on hardware coders then Grass Valley (Canopus) are by far the best and at the top of the Premier league.

At present Edius Neo 2.5 (booster) is the best "all round" editing software out there, Edius 5 is also way up there in second place. Expect Edius 6 next year and I predict that will be awesome. You can literally throw any native SD, HDV, or AVCHD video format on the same timeline and it handles it.

As a user of Premiere for 15 years it is irksome that Adobe have consistantly failed to deliver cost effective editing of all source material, their recent scaling down of their business will not help us.

There are only two non Canopus transcoders for the PC worth anything, Main Concept and Cineform, forget Main Concept as it is way too expensive but at £70 Cineform is more reasonable, but far better to get Edius Neo 2.5 for £205 or if you are in the market for a new semi-pro grade camcorder then the Panasonic AGHMC41 at £2000 (and 151 at a bit more) comes with Edius Neo free at present.

[Dave Watterson]

Col is a bit hard on Matrox products ... some of us get on fine with them ... I'm using mine at this moment on my editing machine!

But otherwise his clear, decisive suggestions are very helpful. People are struggling to come to terms with HD and there seems to be very little guidance that is not either led by manufacturers with products to sell or reports from users who have tried only one or two of the many, many products and options out there.

Thanks, Col.

Dave

[Geoff Addis]

I have to endorse Col's comments regarding the performance of Edius, but although running mine on an 3Ghz i7 based pc with 6GB RAM, the H264 HD software rendering performance using Edius, Premiere CS4, Vegas or Magix software encoders does not approach that of either the Matrox Mini or the Grass Valley (Edius) Firecoder Blu hardware. The performance of both these cards is similar although the Matrox offers more flexibility in data rates and formats. The Matrox hardware also provides the facility to calibrate the colour performance of an external HDMI or component connected video monitor. Edius also produce hardware to enable a video monitor to be used rather than rely on the shortfall in a computer monitor screen.

To say that Edius Neo, rather than Edius 5, is in the No.1 slot is in my opinion a little biased as E5 can do many things, including Multicam, that Neo cannot. At the moment Neo does have the advantage in respect of native AVCHD performance although we are told that Edius 5.5 due in April will address the AVCHD performance issue and will also be Win 7 compatible.

[tom hardwick]

Yes, Edius 5.5 now pips Neo, but at a cost. As Col Lamb says, you can plonk anything on the timeline and it plays - and you can add DVD content as well, easily.

Another thing. If you've got a 1920 x 1080 Edius timeline (say), two clicks will instantly convert it to DV even if its hours long and the space bar will output it down Firewire in real time. The Canopus encoders on board are using Procoder 3 I understand, and they've been highly regarded for years.

tom.