This Forum is for: Apple Final Cut Pro
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FROM: mikejaz
DATE: Oct. 26, 2009 4:48 pm gmt
SUBJECT: HDV edit system setup
HDV is a file format allowing one to capture HiDef images onto a miniDV size tape. From what I know, via practical experience with a few HDV-originated projects and much community-based learning (seminars, bulletin boards, etc), HDV is an "acquisition" format, i.e., you shoot in HDV, and transcode upon transfer into FCP. Most folks I know shooting HDV transcode into Apple ProRes for edit and "mastering" (that is, keeping a final full-res copy of the output), and then transcode again for distribution - in your case, since you've selected Blu-Ray, you'd be compressing to h.264 (I believe, as I'm not on the Blu-Ray bandwagon yet). I've only rarely output back to HDV, and then it was mostly a compatibility issue - I needed to send the final to a posthaus in Germany which was PC-based, and he couldn't deal with any of the Apple codecs I'd use to send him QT files...so I ended up doing the conform back to HDV (a 15:1 time process on a dual 2gig G5 with 4 gigs of RAM and OS10.4.11...) and outputting a tape for him.
Generally, for monitoring of the HD signal through your edit system, you'll need some sort of output card or unit - I'm looking at the aja Systems iO express, which I believe takes a firewire (ieee 1394) output from your computer and transcodes it to HDSDI, which you can then plug into any HD monitor you choose. I'm sure Matrox and Black Magic and others make cards/units for this purpose as well, I'm just starting my research here...
You don't need any sort of device to play HDV in to the computer...with FCP 6 and beyond, there's a seperate sort of capture utility to input HDV into your system. As far as config, you'll likely be buying Snow Leopard (10.6.x), which as is Apple's style now is a memory hog...6-10 gigabytes of RAM is pretty much de rigeur now...buy as much processor power as you can afford, as my experience is that today's screaming blue meanie machine is tomorrow's doorstop...
Personally, I like eSATA systems for media drives, as there are many affordable tower systems out there which allow you to set up various RAID configurations via their hardware, as well as replace drives easily if/when you want to expand your storage capacity. I have a 4-bay Other World Computing unit configured with 4-500 gig drives in a RAID5 configuration - this gives me adequate speed to play back HD files, as well as complete security should a drive fail. The unit has "port multiplication", which means that the unit connects to the SATA card with one cable. I'm running DVCPro HD 60p files off of it night and day with nary a whimper. Of course, you could also just RAID a couple of internal drives together if you need to be conscious of cost (RAID 0 gives you more speed than a standard drive, though I'm not sure 2 RAIDed drives are fast enough for all forms of HD...perhaps for Apple ProRes they are...)
...and one last thing...Blu-Ray authoring is fairly limited on Apple machines as of today, and is accomplished not in DVDSP, but via the new "Share" feature in FCP. I have yet to experience this, and am a bit skeptical (or do you say sceptical?) of this new workflow. Then again, I admit to being a bit of a Luddite, too, and like to wait until things recede from the "bleeding edge" to implement changes to my workflow.
Hope this helps.
CURRENT THREAD: Read whole thread
- HDV edit system setup by stephenpick at Oct. 26, 2009 3:40 pm gmt
- Re: HDV edit system setup by mikejaz at Oct. 26, 2009 4:48 pm gmt (Rec'd 1)
- Re: HDV edit system setup by stephenpick at Nov. 05, 2009 11:19 am gmt
- Re: HDV edit system setup by mikejaz at Nov. 05, 2009 3:56 pm gmt
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