What software are people using to capture HDV?

[getlostdave]

As far as I know the choice is of the following packages:

iMoveHD
Adobe Premmier Pro 1.5
Sony Vegas 6
Ulead Media studeo pro
Canopus edius NX
Pinacle LE 6

So, what are people curently using to capture/edit HDV?


Dave

[Richard Payne]

Edius 3.31 Has batch capture from the 3.3 release but version 3 works. - NX or SP only needed for HD Component Out
Pinnacle Liquid Edition 6.1 (Has to be .1)
Adobe Premiere 1.5.1 (Has to be 1.5.1 not just 1.5)
Adobe Premiere 1.5.1 with CineForm Aspect HD 3 (for Real time Effects)
Sony Vegas 6

Avid Xpress Pro HD does not yet support HDV but it won't be long.

[DAVE M]

Final Cut Pro (5) does HDV as well

[Mad_mardy]

aah yes these programs support HD but who is actually using it properly ie not just tinkering but actually using it.
i know for a fact i won't go near HD for at least two years yet

[Richard Payne]

We have sold 19 Edius NX and SP HDV Editing systems to government, police, media professionals and creative individuals. I know from talking to these people that the systems are being used in anger.

We have also sold many Liquid Edition 6.1 Xeon based system to people who want a HDV solution.

It is early days, but people are adopting a HDV workflow for a variety of reasons, fundimentally quality and resolution.

[cstv]

I'm not yet blessed with an HDV camcorder to test it with, but i'm told that if all you want to do is capture and play back an HDV stream then VideoLan (http://www.videolan.org/) (which is FREE!) will do it...

The main use i can think of for this would be recording on location. Find a laptop with a hard drive that can handle the datarate and you've got a "portable" HDV hard disk recorder/player. It's also worth noting that VideoLan will transcode and stream the input over a network, or transcode and dump it to a file if you want. Certainly sounds like something worth playing with, especially when you consider how cheap it is... ;)

mark.

[bcrabtree]

Mark,

VLC, as myself (and others) have said hereabouts before, is an amazing bit of software - the more so since it's free - but until I read your posting I hadn't realised that it can control the Sony FX-1.

Unfortunately, the interface is kind of dangerous since it's powerful enough to erase the contents of an HDV tape even when the Sony is in VCR mode!

When I clicked on the program's red record button - while the camcorder was in VCR mode - it erased, rather than doing what I expected and recording to hard disk.

Happily this was an unimportant test tape but it just goes to re-inforce the warning that we all need to bear in mind - that no important tape should be put into a camcorder, even for capture, unless the record/lock tab is in the lock position.

On the plus side - if the camcorder is in Camera mode, the program gives you the ability to start/stop shooting via FireWire, which isn't a common ability (though whether this is actually terribly useful when the camcorder comes with an IR handset I'm not so sure).

Oh, and you can also monitor the tape's content using the program, too - though playback here was pretty pixellated, perhaps because I'd not made some necessary changes to the settings (though all these look highly complex, to me) or simply because the system I'm using (either the CPU or the graphics card) isn't up to the job with this software.

It's late and I've only spent 20-30 mins playing and haven't yet discovered how to use the program to capture from the Sony but if this isn't more obvious when I'm wider awake some time in the next few days, I'll have a rummage on the program's site and support forums to see if there is any explanation - then try to report back here.

Bob C

[cstv]

indeed, Bob, i only realised that it could work with hdv when i was trawling through VLC's forums a few days ago. And yes, that record button doesn't give much warning... similarly to Scenalyzer Live. If you don't know what you're doing it's quite easy to accidentally record over your footage! Record-inhibit tab's are there for a reason though :D

The thread i saw was talking about problems with recording the HDV stream when using the latest official release. The soloution is in the nightly builds (http://vthr.via.ecp.fr/~videolan/) which have a LOT more functions (including activex plugin) and some bug fixes but aren't fully tested. this (http://vthr.via.ecp.fr/~videolan/build/win32/vlc-win32-last.zip) is the latest nightly build for windows. You'll need to have installed VLC from the official installer (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) and then copy the contents of the nightly build zip over where you installed VLC to in the first place - default c:\program files\videolan\vlc\

To view video from a source open VLC and select "File / Open Capture Device" from the menus. Under "Video Device Name" click "refresh list" and then select the desired source from the drop-down. Don't worry about audio, it should work in the same way as DV and take the audio from the same device. Click OK.

To record from that device tick the "stream output" box and click "settings". Tick the "File" box (and "play locally" if you want a preview) then choose an output file. You should be able to leave everything else as it is since the HDV stream is an MPEG TS anyway, but if that doesn't work tick the "dump raw input" box. Click Ok, click Ok again, and you're away!

Obviously you can then play about with the transcoding settings, stream it over a network and do all sorts of things with it! What's more, you can do everthing you want with VideoLan on the command line, so you could create a batch file that will launch the programme with all the settings rather than having to select them each time. :)

It's also worth mentioning that you can have multiple instances of VLC, so if you have multiple camcorders, IEEE1934 controllers (rather than just multiple ports) and a fast enough hard drive(s) you could record several streams. It wouldn't be as portable, but could be much more fun than an FS4...

i'd love to know how you get on! i'll be trying it with the JVC as soon as we get our demo unit! :D
mark.

[bcrabtree]

Mark,

Thanks.

I followed all your tips and the recording went fine!

It's very strange, though, to realise that the recording starts when you click the final OK button, and that you don't have to (read - shouldn't) click a record button at any stage.

Also worth pointing out to anyone else who's reading this that you need to start the camcorder playing first - but you can do that using VLC's own separate tape transport controls or the camcorder's own.

I've only captured a few minutes this way but, superficially, all looks well - I turned off the preview to reduce stress and strain on the PC, and this, I think, is probably a good strategy for increasing the likelihood of successful captures.

I'll checking out the footage in various ways, including using VLC to transcode it (though doing that doesn't look very straightforward) and will also bring the footage into some other programs to see how it looks after they've transcoded it to intermediate and DV footage.

Bob

[bcrabtree]

Well, all seems good.

I've used CineForm to create intermediate footage from the M2T file captured with VLC - for use in Vegas 5.0d - and that looks fine on playback and when exported as a widescreen DV AVI. For the best results, though, it was necessary to select the best quality output option.

I've also brought the original M2T into Vegas itself and exported that to a widescreen DV AVI and, at the best quality output setting, that looks good, too - though I'm not saying here that the output results produced by Vegas are any better or different from those from other HDV-compatible programs, because I haven't attempted to make that comparision.

But, the basic conclusion we can draw, I believe, is that raw HDV footage captured from a Sony FX1 using the free VLC program is perfectly good.

What I should now do, I suppose, it use VLC itself to transcode the raw HDV to other formats, but, blimey, that interface ain't friendly.

Mark - any chance of some more hand-holding?


Bob C

[cstv]

***************************
I've just noticed a fatal flaw in this plan in that VLC can't change the pixel aspect ratio. As far as i know widescreen DV has a different aspect ratio to HDV so the transcoded files will not be true SD and therefore not DVD compliant. I've left the isntructions in below anyway.
***************************

i assume you'll want to transcode a file that you've already captured since VLC will only ouput 1 [i[file[/i] at a time. If you want to transcode whilst capturing you'll not be able to save the original TS to hard drive at the same time - slight drawback.

ok, so you've captured your file and it's on your hard drive.
1. Open VLC and select "file / open file" from the menus.
2. Find your file using the "browse" button.
3. Tick the "stream output" box and click "settings".
4. Tick "file" under "output methods" (don't tick "dump raw output" this time) and select and output file to create
5. Choose an "encapsulation method" - for some reason AVI doesn't appear in the list, i don't know why because it's perfectly capable of playing back AVIs... It's probably because VLC is designed for streaming and AVI just isn't.
6. select some transcoding options if you want to. you can leave the data as it is and VLC will do it's best to squeeze it into whatever container format you asked it to, but that won't always work.

Lets say you want your HDV TS transcoded to SD MPEG2 PS.
1 .Select MPEG PS as the "encapsulation method" and tick the "video codec" box.
2. Select mp2v from the drop-down and choose a bitrate.
3. You'll need to tell VLC the "scale" factor you want it to use because it doens't care how many pixels are in the frame and there's nothing on the interface to select SD / HD. IIRC the FX1 records at 1920x1080. 576 / 1080 = 0.533333 so put that in the "scale" box.
4. Tick the "audio codec" box and select a codec from the drop-down. mpga is standard mpeg audio, and if you want ac3 then use a52, it's an open source version of ac3. again, choose a bitrate.
5. click ok, click ok again.

as i said above this is all a bit of a bodge, and not really what VLC is designed for. It is, however, fantastic for streaming video over networks, and can also be triggered remotely via its HTTP interface, but i haven't really played with that yet. I've been playing about with streaming, and on-the-fly encoding for web distribution. VLC will encode to H264 if you've got the codec installed so that may be worth a look, particularly with HD footage.

hope that helps, Bob. and sorry about the minor hijacking there Dave. ;)

mark.

[bcrabtree]

Mark,

Thanks - I'll look at this later in the day or tomorrow.

As for the hijacking of this thread being "minor", well, I'm not sure Dave would agree!

But, what I would say is that Dave and others might like to check out this thread, where I've commented about some recent experiences I've had with Vegas, Liquid Edition and Edius, all running on a PC with a single processor and no HDV-accelerated hardware:

http://forums.dvdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=33251


Bob C

[cstv]

ok, so this (http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=8208&highlight=encapsulation) is why VideoLan doesn't use AVI encapsulation...

it seems they had implimented it in the past, but badly and thus took it out of the software... fair enough.