From DV to HDV

[seven_deuce offsuit]

I'm beginning to make that jump from miniDV to HDV and for the past few days I've been reading reviews on HDV cameras. So far, the Canon HV20 seems to be likely contender in my price range and that was mostly because of its low-light performance and 24p mode recording. Recently, I have read that when shooting in 24p, the camera automatically applies pulldown for the purposes of TV. And although it maybe a little noobish for me to ask, but why is this a bad thing when it comes to editing? My understanding is that it is going to go through pulldown anyways, so why is it efficient to remove pulldown before editing? Another thing, I have using Sony Vegas for editing and capturing and I know it has HDV capture, but when footage is captured from the these HDV cameras that use MPEG-2 compression, do they capture to DV-AVI or MPEG-2? They use miniDV tapes, but I am unsure to what format they are captured to.

I really need to know all the facts before I consider buying.

[pijetro]

I won't comment too much about pulldown..I can only guess that it would be beneficial to have pulldown on the timeline, in order to represent drop timecode....the preferred format for DV editing..
Many people comment that the only reason anybody would stay true 24fps, is for film output..That's almost never the case with ordinary users of NLE's...

Recently, I have read that when shooting in 24p, the camera applies automatically applies pulldown for the purposes of TV. And although it maybe a little noobish for me to ask, but why is this a bad thing when it comes to editing?

Can you link us to those comments??
Again, if pulldown is added for NTSC playback, then this should hold true for an NLE timeline...
But i won't bet my weeks' wages on that comment...

but when footage is captured from the these HDV cameras that use MPEG-2 compression, do they capture to DV-AVI or MPEG-2? They use miniDV tapes, but I am unsure to what format they are captured to.

Actually, footage is simply transferred..Therefore, your staying in native Mpeg2..

Unfortunately, the Mpeg structure is a CPU hog, and not efficient for realtime editing (except on I frames)...And this is usually left to people who have proprietary editing cards..

That's why the wonderful people at Cineform have developed a product that wraps around your capture, and creates an .AVI file. Albeit larger than the Mpeg2 native, it lets you edit more conveniently.
Therefore, you can work with highdef information, as if it was DV-AVI, rather than clunking around in Mpeg2..
I believe Vegas has a stripped down version of this software included in it's capture utility...
Check with Vegas and/or Cineform for complete details....

[seven_deuce offsuit]

Based on what I'm seeing in Vegas, I don't see an option where you can transfer as an AVI source. But what I did find was this:

It talks about converting the HDV footage to an intermediate format for editing and previewing. I'm guessing this would work the same way as transferring the footage as AVI right from the camera. But wouldn't this conversion result in a quality loss since you're converting MPEG-2 to AVI?

And if I did want to change it back to the 24p source (since I did mention earlier, the Canon applies pulldown in 24p mode), couldn't I just apply IVTC during this conversion process so I can edit as a 24p footage?

[pijetro]

Yes, you would have the option in #3 to render the captured video (not the same as rendering a transition per say), and have it conform to the project settings...This though, creates an extra step, as opposed to straight capture and convert....
The quality loss isn't noticable, especially since you source footage is such a low bitrate to begin with...In your case, the HDV actually gets somewhat "Decompressed" into a picture frame...

You'll probably need to go to Camcorderinfo.com, or some Vegas forum for more specific answers....

Good luck!!!

[seven_deuce offsuit]

Ok, I'll just stick with editing the native MPEG-2. But if I were to make a video for DVD, would I have to change the aspect ratio from 1920 x 1080 to 720 x 480 as a final step?

[pijetro]

My friend, there's places to learn about your camera and even more places to learn about your software...

As far as your final DVD output, yes, it needs to be brought down to 720x480...
What some people opt to do (in Premiere anyways), is to bring in an HDV project file, into a DV project file, and do a resize.....

If diskspace is an issue, then you can probably find a way to frameserve, or encode straight off the timeline...

Good luck!!!