HDV uses the same amount of disk space as DV... 3.5 megabytes per second.

Unfortunately Avid haven't released HDV support yet. They've been demoing it at video shows, but it's still a few weeks away: I've been editing in Liquid Edition, then exporting in Avid's DNxHD codec to finish it off in Avid before outputting to DVD or whatever.

Also, there's no standard for HD DVDs yet... you're right, at the moment current DVDs just aren't big enough to hold an HD movie unless you use something like H264 or Microsoft's WMV HD codec to compress it down a lot.

For sometime now I thought Avid is capable of taking HD contents. Here's the page:

?url? http://www.avid.com/products/xpressprohd/?/url?

According to the asterisk next to the HD, it's only available on PC and not Mac. Is this not true? Or am I confusing my self with HD and HDV again?

Yeah, it can edit DVCPRO HD, or any HD content that's captured in Avid's own DNxHD format, but native HDV support is still in Beta test at the moment.

So at the moment if I purchase the Sony Z1 Pro camera and use Avid to capture in Avid's DNxHD format, I should be fine, correct? By the way what is Avid's DNxHD format? Do I have to buy a hardware from Avid to capture in DNxHD format or just the Avid Xpress Pro HD software will do it?

I think you can only capture DNxHD format with Avid's high-end HD editing hardware. To edit from the Z1 right now you either have to capture in DV mode and edit as DV, or capture from the camera with something like CapDVHS and then convert the captured footage to DNxHD... it's a bit of a pain.

Hopefully it won't be long before they have the full support released, a lot of us are waiting for it and quite a few people say they've seen it demoed.

Okay, another question I have is Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5. Is this program capable of capturing and edit HD or HDV contents?

Yes, there's a plugin you can download:

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/hdv.html

Thank you for the link. So if I want to edit HDV contents then the best route to go now is use Premiere Pro, correct?

It's one of the only routes right now, I'm not sure if it's the best :). I know Liquid Edition can also edit HDV and some versions of Final Cut.

One of the differences is that Edition edits HDV natively (and Avid will too when support is released) whereas Premiere converts it to a different codec when capturing. So that means it takes up more space and capturing is slow (some people have said that Premiere takes about 3x real-time to perform capture and recompression on their system).

Okay, so when Avid finaly does support HDV on Xpress Pro, there should be no conversion/conpression involve, correct? And this will result in faster capturing/editing/rendering/exporting?

Well, I guess things are not always that simple.

Thank you very much for all your responses. I'm sure did learn a lot.

quote:

---

Okay, so when Avid finaly does support HDV on Xpress Pro, there should be no conversion/conpression involve, correct? And this will result in faster capturing/editing/rendering/exporting?

---

Basically. Avid will capture from the camera and save the footage on the hard disk in the original format. If you then render effects they'll be saved in DNxHD format, and eventually you'll have to re-render to HDV format if you want to output to HDV tape.

Either way, it removes one recompression step compared to Premiere... and it's possible that if you do a cuts-only edit you may not need to recompress at all, other than bodging up the cut points in the MPEG-2 stream.

Unfortunately because of the MPEG-2 compression it's all lot more complicated than DV.

Thanks! I'll wait and see when Avid plans to support it.

If your looking for an HD rental, I would like to recommend our rig. I just got done shooting my first feature, were we elected to go HD, and it turned out it was cheaper for us to buy a sony hdcx300k (3 half inch chips) then it was for a 5 week rental of the cine alta. The camera we bought does not capture to tape, it runs directly out to a black magic HD capture card and we stored all the footage on Lacie drives. Not running tape saved us TONS of money, in that we didn't have to off-line in the editing process, didnt have to buy tapes, didnt have to digitize for a week and a half... Anyway, here is the flyer we have with all of the info. There is a link to footage shot on the bottom of the information.

Prometheus Motion Pictures HD Rental Equipment Pricing:

Industry standard package:
1525/day
4575/week
18,300/month

Compare with

Our Package:
550/day
1600/week
6400/month

Details below.....

This package allows one to shoot DVCPRO HD in a truly lossless process. The package includes:

- A high definition Marshall V-RP65-HD 6.5 inch high definition monitor (for true HD camera monitoring),
- Sony HDC-X300 camera block, complete with corresponding Cannon VCL-719BXS 20x Optical zoom lens,
- Dual 2.5 Apple G5 capture system,
- Fluid head professional grade tripod
- Apple 23 inch HD studio monitor

This is a completely digital process, capturing footage directly to hard drives. This process saves both time and money in that one need not rent an HD deck at $700 per day to capture footage, nor buy HD tape stock. The only expense incurred by following this procedure will be the purchase of hard drives. 2 TB of space cost approximately $1600, which will store approximately 37 hours of industry standard DVCPRO HD footage. This process can then be used to natively edit within Final Cut Pro HD without additional hard drive or offline expenses.

This true HD package is comparable to an industry standard rental package costing $4575 per week or $18,300 per month. Consider using the savings generated by electing this package for purchase of a dual 2.7 GHZ G5 editing sweet with all the trimmings, while still coming out thousands ahead.

Screen grabs generated by this package are available upon request.

HD footage demo (very rough cut):

www.prometheusmotionpictures.com/FL_for_hd_demomd.mov

Production insurance is required for rental of this equipment. However, several options may be discussed with Andrew or Jeff.

For more information on this package, please contact Andrew at Andrew?prometheusmotionpictures.com or Jeff at Jeff?prometheusmotionpictures.com

That's a great price.

Where are you located?

=============================================
The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

Thanks, we wanted to pass a price on that we would have jumped at if it had been available. We bought the rig because it turned out to be more expensive to rent the cine alta then it was to flat out buy this. We knew if we bought it, we could use it for a very long time, and help other independents make movies to. We are based in Traverse City, Michigan, but all the gear is stored in pelicans and we have production insurance, so shipping it around the country doesnt really bother me to much. I would have to interview/speak with whoever wanted it, to make sure they were credible (and not abuse the equipment), and all that jazz first, but I'm don't think it's right to limit it to just local use.

I think the setup will work with avid, as every clip is saved as a .mov file. We used final cut HD for everything, but like I said, with the money saved, go out and buy yourself a really nice g5 with final cut hd.

Thanks for the interest. There is clip at the bottom of the flier post where you can see some of the footage.

Andrew
www.prometheusmotionpictures.com