DV authoring flows

[sebif]

Hi,

I have 100s of hours of mini DV content that I need to process. There are two types of outputs I need. (I have both Mac and PC so I could use any software for either platform)

1. Deinterlace and encode everything in H.264. I plan to use Handbrake for that. Are there better solutions?

2. Cut less interesting parts, merge the rest as interlaced and output back to miniDV tapes. What would be a good tool for that? I'm mostly interesting in selecting. merging and outputing back to tape.

Thanks,
sebif

PS: wasn't sure what was the best forum for this so I posted it here.

[edDV]

Is the content from a hand held camcorder or other?

Why h.264? Are you compressing for display on an HDTV or for web distribution?

Cutting can be done many ways. I prefer an NLE like Vegas, Premiere, iMove, Final Cut or several others. Pick one.

If you have a recent Mac, you already have iMovie. I favor the Windows PC for compression flexibility.

My method is:

1. Cut down DV camera tapes in Vegas, Premiere or iMovie. Sometimes I generate descriptive slates for each clip. Usually 20-30% of the source hits the "cutting room floor".

2. Batch resulting unfiltered DV clips, write back to tape and to an external hard drive.

3. Color Correct or filter clips as necessary.

4. Encode corrected clips to 480i DVD MPeg2* (>8Mb/s) for media player or import as a DVD asset.

I only deinterlace and encode to h.264 when needed for web distribution. For this I go back to the first generation DV format clip as source.


* I've experimented with interlace h.264 but I find with DV camcorder source there is little compression advantage for h.264. Storage is cheap. Plus you lose the advantage of DVD publishing.

[hech54]

I agree.....why H264?
MUCH easier to edit while in original DV format....especially if you plan on going back to tape.