[Goose74]

Hi chaps

Sorry for the complete noob question but I have just ordered a canon HV10 and currently dont have a firewire port on my PC
I was just going to buy a firewire PCI card and cable but then I noticed that there are two speeds for firewire - 400 and 800.
I looked on the specs for the HV10 and its just says 4 pin firewire standard... Should I get 800 or 400? If I transfer at 400 is that adequate to capture 25mbs HDV at 1440x1080 with no loss? Currently I dont even know how I capture HDV - I think I can use the free sony tool HVsplit?

Any advice welcome (along with shopping tips for a PCI card and or cable!)

[senu]

Originally Posted by Goose74

Hi chaps

Sorry for the complete noob question but I have just ordered a canon HV10 and currently dont have a firewire port on my PC
I was just going to buy a firewire PCI card and cable but then I noticed that there are two speeds for firewire - 400 and 800.
I looked on the specs for the HV10 and its just says 4 pin firewire standard... Should I get 800 or 400? If I transfer at 400 is that adequate to capture 25mbs HDV at 1440x1080 with no loss? Currently I dont even know how I capture HDV - I think I can use the free sony tool HVsplit?

Any advice welcome (along with shopping tips for a PCI card and or cable!)

Just get the cable and and any decent card and let the speeds sort themselves out .
Any of the firewire speeds is fine for video capture even HDV. The 800 is a newer standard fully backwards compatible and not widely used for now.
Your Video editing software will have a capture utility . HDVsplit should work fine as well and no harm trying CapDVHS

I must say Im only extrapolating experience with Sonys FX1 and HC1 and the Canon might behave differently but certainly. Avid liquid 7 and Pinnacle Edition 6.1. The Vegas MS Platinum and full versions 6 & 7 as well as Ulead VS10 plus capture HDV readily. I have read that the latest Adobe Premiere Elements ( ver 3) does too but I have not used it yet

[Goose74]

Ok cheers - so it shouldnt matter if I get just a normal 400mbs card?

Will the capture look any better if I use paid for software like connect HD / Premiere? Am I right in thinking that cineform captures in a different way to AVI? / bigger filesize?

thanks

[MarkE19]

Firewire 400 is fine for what you want to do, and at around £10 for a PCI card that includes a firewire cable its cheap too. If you do want/need to upgrade to FW800 in the future then at least you wont have waisted much money on the FW400 card.

Capture is just a data transfer from tape to PC. As long as the software is at least half decent then the PQ should be good regardless of the program used to get it. Even the free MS Movie Maker 2 program will give you good SD video capture, and I believe the version in Vista will also be able to handle HD.

Mark.

[senu]

Originally Posted by Goose74

Ok cheers - so it shouldn't matter if I get just a normal 400mbs card?

No, unless the 800 is not much different in cost

Will the capture look any better if I use paid for software like connect HD / Premiere?

What you capture will be the same. You are just getting the HDV material to PC one way or another.
With connect HD you can capture directly to the Cineform intermediary codec file, A DV like full HD res file which can be edited like DV. The one which comes with Vegas ( and MS platinum ) requires a rendering step from the captured HDV file

Am I right in thinking that cineform captures in a different way to AVI? / bigger filesize?

Hmm .....Ill leave that for Mark ( Redsox-Mark) to answer.

He is the expert around here

Ok Ill give it a go... for now

Yes it does, Ive only used it a few times ( with Vegas 6.0d) but it uses an intermediary codec to produce a DV like file still keeping HD resolution. this takes time and uses up space but makes HDV easier to edit on more modestly specced PCs. Ive only tried Vegas 7 trial and Im not competent to comment on its HDV performance. There is also the option of using a DV proxy
Have a read
Sony HDV Camcorder (editing software)? Help?

[redsox_mark]

Originally Posted by senu

Hmm .....Ill leave that for Mark ( Redsox-Mark) to answer.

He is the expert around here

Ok Ill give it a go... for now

Yes it does, Ive only used it a few times ( with Vegas 6.0d) but it uses an intermediary codec to produce a DV like file still keeping HD resolution. this takes time and uses up space but makes HDV easier to edit on more modestly specced PCs. Ive only tried Vegas 7 trial and Im not competent to comment on its HDV performance. There is also the option of using a DV proxy
Have a read
Sony HDV Camcorder (editing software)? Help?

Senu you've got it right. The Cineform codec is indeed "DV like" in that it is intra-frame compression only (not a group of frames like MPEG). There are 3 main benefits of such a codec:

1. Easier on the PC to edit
2. Retains its quality over multiple generations of renders
3. More accurate colour correction

Point 1 can be an issue with "modest" PCs. You want to be able to preview your edits in full rate, and many PCs can't keep up. Though with Vegas 7 the performance of editing native HDV is very good. I edit with a 1.6 Mhz Pentium M laptop. With Vegas 6 I generally used either Cineform or a proxy, as otherwise it was too slow. With Vegas 7 I edit the native m2t, and it fine.

Point 2 only comes into play if you are doing complex edits where you want to do multiple generations. E.g. you want to render out a section, then use that rendered file in another production. With Cineform you can do 10+ generations of renders and not see a difference. With native m2t, you would notice a quality loss after multiple generations. If you are doing just a single generation - e.g. capture, edit, render out - then there is no quality advantage to Cineform.

3. I'm not an expert on this, but if you want to correct the colours in edit, as Cineform has less compressed colour space info, it is more accurate.

[Goose74]

Thanks for the information - I guess I will just have to see how my pc gets on with native hdv - its only P4 2.8ghz with 1gb ram so I may be better with the intermediate route like cineform?

Lots of reading for me I guess since I have never done any video editing - not even DV. Is Premiere very hard to learn?

[redsox_mark]

P4 2.8ghz with 1gb ram should be fine with Vegas 7 and native HDV - you can download a trial and try it. It also includes the Cineform codec, so you can still use that if you want.

Connect HD/Aspect HD (Cineform) just speeds up the process as you can capture directly to Cineform, if you do it within Vegas it's 2 steps.

I've not used Premiere... Senu has used them all so he's a good one to compare...

[senu]

Originally Posted by Goose 74

Lots of reading for me I guess since I have never done any video editing - not even DV. Is Premiere very hard to learn?

Yes it is But learn able it is ( and you dont need a Phd to get there ) .
I have used it and still use its baby sister Elements from time to time. What is not recommended is trying to figure it out without some form of prior familiarisation.. I got a simple tutorial video tape from Smart DV and so much fell into place instantly. The last version I used was Premiere Pro .. It is now on Pro ver 2!

Most products like it have so much power and control over how you achieve results that you get to be competent over time but by the time you get to semi expert levels, there are 2 newer versions.

Im not sure what your aspirations are but Premiere is costly and really not neebee friendly insofar as you can do simple things with it after a short familiarisation. And having such a wide user base there will always be somebody who has been there before you.

The same can probably be said of all the mid range to high end NLE software.
Given the cost of the more budget offerings they may be a more gentle way to get into the world of NLE editing.

Whatever you use, they are books, multimedia self teaching methods, short one day seminars ( inexpensive) Online forums dedicated to specific software and of course forums like this
All the best

[Goose74]

Originally Posted by senu

Yes it is But learn able it is ( and you dont need a Phd to get there ) .
I have used it and still use its baby sister Elements from time to time. What is not recommended is trying to figure it out without some form of prior familiarisation.. I got a simple tutorial video tape from Smart DV and so much fell into place instantly. The last version I used was Premiere Pro .. It is now on Pro ver 2!

Most products like it have so much power and control over how you achieve results that you get to be competent over time but by the time you get to semi expert levels, there are 2 newer versions.

Im not sure what your aspirations are but Premiere is costly and really not neebee friendly insofar as you can do simple things with it after a short familiarisation. And having such a wide user base there will always be somebody who has been there before you.

The same can probably be said of all the mid range to high end NLE software.
Given the cost of the more budget offerings they may be a more gentle way to get into the world of NLE editing.

Whatever you use, they are books, multimedia self teaching methods, short one day seminars ( inexpensive) Online forums dedicated to specific software and of course forums like this
All the best

Thanks Senu - I guess I have limited time and I wonder if I might get a little discouraged trying to learn PP 2 from scratch. - I will have a look at elements since it might be all I need - I will also check out Vegas too since it seems fairly popular.

[senu]

Elements has not supported HDV before The latest Ver 3

The full Sony Vegas does as does Vegas Moviestudio Platinum both 6 and 7 though 7 is better with HDV

Saying that, Editing SD DV is good enough practice

Although HDV looks fantastic, you are limited in output options .. for now
as affordable commomplace Recordable HD DVD or Blu ray are still under wraps and the actual players still quite a novelty

[Goose74]

I was planning to output in hdv 1440x108050i or 25p to store on DVD's for later use as the current plan is to get a 1080p lcd and use that as a monitor with a PC. Would I notice any differene in quality between capturing in hdvsplit/vegas or PP2 / cineform?

[redsox_mark]

The short answer is no difference, unless you are doing multi-generation renders as I described previously.

The longer answer: Both Vegas and PP2 can edit either m2t or with Cineform. So the choice of Vegas vs. PP2 comes down to personal preference and editing features, not quality.

HDVsplit is a free utility you can use with either. Vegas has built in HDV capture (I think PP2 does as well), so you don't need to use this. With Vegas 6 I used HDVsplit as Vegas 6 didn't have scene detection for HDV. Vegas 7 does, so I'm using that rather than HDVsplit.

Then you have a choice of workflow - native m2t, Cineform, or Proxy. If you are doing a single generation render then the quality of your final output will be the same regardless. It's only when you do multiple generations that Cineform retains the quality better.