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  1. I was recording a few things a couple days ago just to test out this camera and it worked great. But the problem is that when I tried capturing the video using Vegas 6, it captured the video at a 1440 x 1080 aspect ratio. Doesn't the camera record at a 1920 x 1080 aspect ratio or am I missing something here?
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    Is the version of Vegas you have capable of doing HDV??
    Is your computer capable of doing HDV??
    Make no assumptions when doing HDV....
    Not to be an A--H----....but this aspect ratio is cra=......
    HDV is usually 16X9......
    What else do you need to know??????????
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  3. Is the version of Vegas you have capable of doing HDV??
    Vegas 6 is capable of doing HDV.

    Is your computer capable of doing HDV??
    If by that you mean that my computer is capable of handling and editing HDV content, then yes it is.

    Not to be an A--H----....but this aspect ratio is cra=......
    Are you talking about the 1440 x 1080 aspect ratio? Because that's what I'm getting when I capture from a camera that I once thought would capture video at full HD.

    The question is can this camera capture in a 1920 x 1080 aspect ratio instead of the 1440 x 1080 that I'm getting? Or is it just like that?
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  4. Member Soopafresh's Avatar
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    1920x1080 only though the HDMI port. You'd need a Black Magic Intensity card installed in a PC or Mac to capture at full res http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/. 1440x1080 is the marketing ploy truth in most HDV, because the MPEG2 footage plays back at 16x9 aspect ratio, effectively giving you 1920x1080 when the squashed 1440x1080 frame is displayed on your monitor or HDTV.

    I know I didn't answer your question completely, but I don't know Vegas well enough to tell you what you'd need to change to compensate for this.
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  5. So that Intensity product is basically a capture card that comes with the components I need to capture my video at full 1920 x 1080 HD video I want?
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  6. Member Soopafresh's Avatar
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    Yes, but you'll be tethered to your computer during filming.

    There are "true" 1920x1080 HDV cameras out there, although I doubt there are more than one or two models. 1440x1080 isn't that bad by any means. And it looks amazing when processed and encoded to 720x480 NTSC 16x9.
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  7. Yeah, the quality of 1440 x 1080 isn't bad at all (I'm actually pretty satisfied with it) but I think I'm leaning towards getting that capture card. The colors are a lot more vibrant when previewing the video on the camera but become less so when it is transported to my computer after being compressed in a smaller aspect ratio. I guess I'll work with what I have in the meantime until I'm able to get one of those capture cards. The HV20 has a HDMI port and I think I want to put it to good use.
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  8. Member racer-x's Avatar
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    1440 x 1080 is anamorphic 16:9 HDV, just as 720 x 480 is anamorphic 16:9 NTSC DV. All HDV cameras that record to tape use 1440 x 1080, it's the standard. When it is played back, it will be stretched back to 1920 x 1080. You cpold do as Soopafresh sugests with the Black Magic Intensity card, but your camera will need to be tetherd to your PC. You'll also need to capture to decent codec like Cineform or Lagaryth, which will produce very large file sizes. That may be fine in a studio, but a major hassle in the field.
    Got my retirement plans all set. Looks like I only have to work another 5 years after I die........
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  9. aBigMeanie aedipuss's Avatar
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    just to note the 1920x1080 that is output from the cam is the 1440x1080 tape being played back. there is no difference. any noted color issues are from the TV/monitor playback equipment's different settings. re-capturing it is just going to reduce the quality.
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  10. Just to clarify, would do you mean when you say that my camera will be tethered to my PC? I don't know if I'm getting that part correctly. Do you mean that I'm going to have to capture while I'm shooting with the HDMI cable connected to my computer? Pretty much a live capture I suppose?
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  11. Just to clarify this, the HV20 and HV10 and any other HDV camcorders are 1440x1080i. They DO NOT RECORD at 1920x1080. The cmos censor captures at 1920x1080 but it is recorded to tape at 1440x1080. Capturing it to your computer via firewire is a raw transfer of data. There is not color loss because the computer is not actually encoding during the capture. There is a JVC camera that does 1920x1080 but not HDV. The HDV Standard does not support anything higher than 1440x1080. Pinnacle Studio and Liquid 7 both handle these timelines. The footage looks great in HD or SD though.
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  12. What if I, instead of filming around my PC, just use an external HDD with a HDMI port? Are there any out there? I've never seen any. Or would you still need that Black Magic Intensity card?
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  13. Member zoobie's Avatar
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    I see where you're going because I've been there myself.
    HDMI is uncompressed and @ 5gb/s, makes the file size impractical for anything except industry.
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  14. Member edDV's Avatar
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    To help put all this in perspective.

    HDV is 1440x1080 MPeg2 compressed to 25Mb/s. All broadcast 1080 HD recording formats use 1440x1080i (with horizontal resolution squeezed 25% from 1920 to 1440 (e.g. HDCAM and XDCAM) or less to 1280x1080i (e.g. DVCam-HD). This includes everything you see on television. The only exceptions are the HDCAM-SR and various hard drive methods that record "full" 1920x1080. These are usually only used for movies or special effects.

    So is this a bad thing? The pros figured out long ago that the picture quality killers are compression and bit depth. 25% horizontal spatial compression has little effect by comparison and is used in all 16:9 formats including DVD, DV and all ITU-Rec601 derived formats including H.264 and VC-1. BluRay and HD DVD discs that reference to 2Kx1K or 4Kx2K masters do deliver "full" 1920x1080p but only at 25Mb/s vs. 880+Mb/s HDCAM-SR camera master.

    Pro recorders get higher quality by using 10bit depth or more for Y and by compressing less than consumer formats.

    AVCHD uses 7-15 Mb/s (h.264)
    HDV uses 25Mb/s (MPeg2)

    XDCAM-HD uses 19-35Mb/s (8bit MPeg2)
    DVCPro-HD uses 100Mb/s (8bit intraframe compression only)
    HDCAM uses 144Mb/s (8 or 10bit intraframe compression only)

    All these record at 1440x1080 (or 1280x720p*)

    Second issue is sensor resolution. Pro cams use 3 sensors for R, G and B. The HV-20 and other consumer cams use one. Sensors are usually round. 16:9 formats often subsample H to get more sensor coverage and thus more vertical resolution. Each camera designer optimizes the sensor aspect ratio for best picture. 1920x1080 output usually results in lower sampling of H than V. So even if you are running "live" to HDMI out, the horizontal resolution isn't likely to be any higher. The quality improvement comes from bypassing HDV compression. HDMI uncompressed output for an HDV camcorder will be in the 960-1480Mb/s range resulting in files 420-800GB/hr. This requires a 4-10 disc RAID zero to capture just like the big boys. Or you can use MJPeg, Cineform or Lagaryth for real time compression but this requires a big CPU although fewer disks in the RAID.

    Bottom line 1440x1080 is OK and desirable. MPeg compression is the enemy. HDMI caapture would improve motion fidelity (e.g. for sports capture or scientific analysis) but the recorder would be a fast computer with large RAID.


    * DVCPro-HD uses 960x720p with 25% horizontal spatial compression.


    PS: As mentioned above, HDMI out does not necessarily mean 1920x1080 direct output from the sensor. First the sensor may not produce full 1920x1080, the camcorder processor may be upsampling. Second all sensor video is processed before HDMI out. The main issue is whether the HDMI output occurs before or after HDV compression. This will vary camcorder to camcorder. Pro cams are more likely to tap before the compressor. Read reviews to find this out. Tape playback to HDMI will always be HDV compressed.
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  15. So my understanding then is that it's basically impractical for any computer with insufficient space and subpar processing power. And the only other way I can think of to make this process more convenient is with a laptop. Overall, making uncompressed HDV capture a little expensive. Until then I have to work with what I have.

    On another note, what would happen if I used HDMI capturing via Blackmagic Intensity after all footage was already recorded to tape? Not a live capture, but basically transporting video from the tape onto the computer. Would the quality be any better?
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  16. Well definately if your system is subpar.

    I am editing a multi cam HD edit right now. My system is not at all to special, but I probably have more hard drive space than most.

    I am running 5 eide 400 Gig Seagates and 3 400 gig Sata II Seagates in my case with a Duel Core 3.2 ghz processor with 3 gig DDR2 Duel Channel OCZ.

    I edit with Avid Liquid. I am currently editing as we speak a 4 cam shoot advertisement. I will be doing an 8 hour shoot with 3 cameras next week with HD and will be editing the footage a day or so after that. It simply would not be possible without hard drive space.

    I usually utilize a separate drive for each camera footage, then a separate render drive, and a project drive. Not to mention that I only use my system drive for my system only.

    With that said, my system does an adequate job, though I will be moving to a Core 2 hopefully to help reduce some of the heat that my system creates. I have a lot of fans running across my drives, processor and memory.
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  17. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by seven_deuce offsuit
    So my understanding then is that it's basically impractical for any computer with insufficient space and subpar processing power. And the only other way I can think of to make this process more convenient is with a laptop. Overall, making uncompressed HDV capture a little expensive. Until then I have to work with what I have.
    With Vegas 6 there are at least three ways to set an HDV project.

    1. Uncompressed 1920x1080 4:2:2 (pro production house style)

    In this case the 1440x1080 HDV (13GB/hr) is first decompressed to 8bit or 10bit 1920x1080 4:2:2 (approx 2-3GB per second!) depending on bit depth and number of PCM audio audio channels. This usually stored in an external multi-disk RAID video server and connected to the PC with multiple real time SMPTE 292M "SDI" interfaces through Black Magic or AJA SDI Interface cards. Cuts editing can be accomplished in real time. Transitions, filters and translations are computed non-real time a frame at a time and then previewed in real time.


    Avid Unity Video Server

    Such a system is very productive but also is very expensive to implement ($10,000-$30,000up) but for these people, time is money. A system could be implemented internal to a PC but consider the disk bandwidth for real time editing is 2x SMPTE-292 (~3000Mb/s with PCM audio). Realtime playback requires maybe a 4-8 disk RAID.

    1920x1080 needs 33% more disks compared to 1440x1080.There is really no reason to edit HDV, XDCAM or HDCAM in other than 1440x1080 unless you need to inter cut to a real 1920x1080 film transfer or HDCAM-SR source.

    2. At the other end of the HD options is "Native HDV Editing" that is also supported by Vegas 6d. In this case compressed HDV is transferred over IEEE-1394 to the local capture hard drive*. Vegas works with the native HDV files in a similar way it does with native DV format. Simple cuts editing and preview are done from a database. Processing is only required to achieve real time MPeg2 playback. Playback decompression is done by DirectShow using a combination of CPU and display card hardware assist or HDV is sent to an external hardware HDV codec over IEEE-1394 (e.g. the HDV camcorder) for preview output to a monitor.

    When transitions, effects or filtering are required, new frames are processed (mostly by the CPU) and placed in temp files on the hard disk. Preview playback accesses the original HDV transfer frames or the processed temp frames as specified in the timeline database for smooth preview playback. Export encoding requires the frames to be encoded to the specified output format. If the output format is HDV, only the processed tmp frames need to be rendered.

    "Native HDV Editing" seems ideal in theory but can be problematic in actual use. HDV is moderately sluggish compared to DV format because 12 or 15 frame GOPS must be realtime processed into frames for preview display. This must be done by the CPU on the fly and the CPU has difficulty keeping up particularly for timeline scrubs, frame by frame timeline advance or other timeline productivity actions. These problems and others were addressed by use of a digital intermediate format like Cineform.

    3. The Cineform digital intermediate format addresses three limitations of HDV (MPeg2). While MPeg2 or MPeg4 are near ideal as distribution formats, the long GOPs get in the way for editing. Cineform converts MPeg GOPS into frames for easy access at the timeline. HDV is imported and converted (non-realtime) to a large Cineform digital intermediate temp file which while larger, contains all frames for instant preview access. MPeg is a lossy format when reprocessed or scaled. Cineform uses intraframe fractal compression which still allows single disk storage (no RAID required) but is superior for multi-generation processing and up/down image scaling. So, in summary Cineform advantages are frame access, better multi-generation and better up/down scaling. Export can be to any distribution format.
    http://www.cineform.com/technology/HDVQualityAnalysis051011/HDVQualityAnalysis051011.htm


    Originally Posted by seven_deuce offsuit
    On another note, what would happen if I used HDMI capturing via BlackMagic Intensity after all footage was already recorded to tape? Not a live capture, but basically transporting video from the tape onto the computer. Would the quality be any better?
    There would be no increase in quality. RAID would be required and an uncompressed capture file would grow considerably in size (from 13GB/hr to ~ 420-800GB/hr). If capture was done using realtime MJPeg or Cineform compression, the file would still be ~ 35-80 GB/hr. There might be some advantage to letting the camcorder decode HDV to YCbCr over HDMI for realtime Cineform encoding but I don't recall anyone making this point.


    * best that this capture drive is separate from the OS drive.
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  18. So would capturing in the Cineform codec via firewire be the best way to obtain the best quality possible, given that you are dealing with single disk storage? I edit as native MPEG-2, render in MPEG-2, and then output it to DVD. The footage is compressed twice for DVD output, on the tape, and then on the application. I'm guessing the minimal amount of compression that is needed for DVD output is 2, whether you capture in Cineform or any other intermediate format. But if Cineform can take on muli-generation processing, the quality of inputted Cineform footage ouputted to MPEG-2 should be better than the footage that was inputted as MPEG-2 and outputted to MPEG-2 right?
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  19. Member edDV's Avatar
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    It would be a stretch with one drive. Cineform transform expands the file to a much larger size (depending on settings). You are trading disk space for ability to heavy edit and filter. MPeg2 is the opposite strategy. If you are into significant edit processing, MPeg2 has regeneration loss and if you apply effects and filters, Vegas will generate large temp files. Neither strategy works smoothly with one drive.
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  20. One drive for any type of video editing is not realistic. You will create a bottlekneck that will drive you insane.

    But with drives so cheap why put yourself through that. 300 gig seagates are $59 and 500 gig seagates are $107.
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  21. I'm going to need one anyway, my drive is almost out of memory (1G of space is making my computer really sluggish). What has better internal HDDs: Seagate or Western Digital?
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  22. They are both good drives. The Seagate comes with a 3-5 year warranty.

    Here is the seagate 500gig Retail box with 16mb cache with free shipping for $106.99

    http://shop4.outpost.com/{WwoFePE+Hiqqxd5HMVrKjg**.node2}/product/4795159;jsessionid=WwoFePE+Hiqqxd5HMVrKjg**.node2? site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
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  23. There's another one with SATA but for an extra $40. Is it worth it?
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  24. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by seven_deuce offsuit
    There's another one with SATA but for an extra $40. Is it worth it?
    Does your computer have a SATA controller on the motherboard? If not you will need a SATA PCI controller card. PATA will be about as fast. Put the capture drive on a separate cable than the OS drive.
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  25. Yes it does. But I'd probably have to stick with WD so I'll have identical drives. It just comes down to whether or not I want RAID 0 for better performance or RAID 1 for mirror protection. But if I'm working on video, I'm going to want RAID 0 right? I'm just a little paranoid about the increased chances of data loss, but then again I've never set up a RAID, so I wouldn't know.
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  26. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by seven_deuce offsuit
    Yes it does. But I'd probably have to stick with WD so I'll have identical drives. It just comes down to whether or not I want RAID 0 for better performance or RAID 1 for mirror protection. But if I'm working on video, I'm going to want RAID 0 right? I'm just a little paranoid about the increased chances of data loss, but then again I've never set up a RAID, so I wouldn't know.
    For HDV neither is required or desired. Set the SATA for "RAID off" in CMOS so two independent drives can be connected. HDV only needs 25Mb/s which is easy for one drive. RAID 1 duplicates the DATA. You alread have the HDV tape for backup.

    Is there something else you are doing that requires RAID?
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  27. I want to use my computer for HDV/DV editing. You mentioned earlier that RAID is required when capturing uncompressed HDV, generally when else is it required?
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  28. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by seven_deuce offsuit
    I want to use my computer for HDV/DV editing. You mentioned earlier that RAID is required when capturing uncompressed HDV, generally when else is it required?
    No that was for uncompressed high definition video over HDMI. HDV is MPeg2 and only 25Mb/s vs. 960-1430Mb/s for uncompressed. See "Native HDV Editing" above.

    RAID zero is also sometimes used by gamers but in a different configuration. RAID 1 is used to instant backup a disk but disk space is reduced to half.
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  29. Alright, I thought I needed to set up a RAID because I remember you and dun4cheap saying that it wouldn't be realistic to edit MPEG-2/Cineform HDV with one drive. The drive I'm using right now is practically out of space, so if I get another one and set it as an independent drive, am I not still editing through one drive?
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  30. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by seven_deuce offsuit
    Alright, I thought I needed to set up a RAID because I remember you and dun4cheap saying that it wouldn't be realistic to edit MPEG-2/Cineform HDV with one drive. The drive I'm using right now is practically out of space, so if I get another one and set it as an independent drive, am I not still editing through one drive?
    Its possible to capture off the HDMI port for live camera work but there is no point for material that has been recorded to HDV tape. Normal IEEE-1394 transfer preserves the same quality that is on tape.

    If Cineform is to be used, normal process is to capture to an HDV to a file to disk , then import the full file to the Vegas timeline, then convert-export to Cineform format. A new large file is created with Cineform coding and that is then used for editing. At the end you can export to any supported format.
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