working with HDV and DVCAM in same film?

About to embarke on cutting the Camden Crawl (check it out) shot with HDV and DVCAM. How do I cut with both formats (same Timline?) on (possibly) new G5 w/FCP 5 (THE LATEST) .. no Blackmagic/aja card, just what is already there, can it be done? Will an HDV timeline render DVCAM footage as usable in the same timeline? Thanks..Phil UK

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When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Phil,

You can put theoretically put DVCam footage (which is in fact simply DV) into an FCP5 HDV timeline, but:

1. The frame sizes are completely different. HDV is 1440x1080 (assuming you shot 1080), DVCam is 720x576 (assuming PAL here) or 1024x576 if you shot DVCam in 16:9. The DV footage can't be increased in size to match HDV without substantial quality loss. And, rendering will take a verrrryyyy long time.

2. That means you either have to downconvert the HDV footage to DV and edit in DV, or upres the DVCam footage to HDV (or have a post house do it for you) and edit in HDV.

3. I would seriously recommend thinking about editing in DVCProHD. Much less render-intensive than HDV. That would mean converting everything to DVCProHD, which is something your machine can be doing over the weekend.

Whatever you decide, definetly run a few tests with a minute or two of your footage first to get the general idea.

If you stay in HDV or DVCProHD, how are you going to monitor? You do need something along the lines of a Blackmagic HD card, an HD Link and a 23" Cinema Display or Dell 23 for that. Desktop won't give you anything close to proper colors, luminance and contrast, just a basic working envrironment.

hth,
Clay

"2. That means you either have to downconvert the HDV footage to DV and edit in DV, or upres the DVCam footage to HDV (or have a post house do it for you) and edit in HDV."

I'm in a similar situation. I have HDV footage that i've downcoverted to work in a DV sequence. It's unfortuante that we have to intercut HDV with DV.

The only way is to go down to the DV sequence. The DV would look horrible in a HDV sequence. I assume this is correct.

I'm now in the process of trying to figure out the best way to downconvert the HDV footage. I tried exporting the 1080i60 sequence as a DV NTSC quicktime and there is such a tremendous loss of quality it let me here to ask for help.

There is such a quality loss there must be a better way, or something I don't know about HDV.

Thanks!