HDV woes continue...need better workflow

Quick background...I have been shooting HDV with the Sony Z1U for 4 years now and have been editing everything in HDV and have been mastering HDV back to tape.

I have MAJOR issues with Compressor and how it compresses HDV footage...I have video captures now to prove it.

The problem is, if I use Compressor on my HDV footage, I get jaggies everywhere. My workaround has been to take my HDV edit master tape, go firewire onto a set top DVD recorder, use MPEG Streamclip to extract the M2V and AC3 files off the DVD, and then I author my final DVD in DVD Studio Pro with menus and all the trimmings.

I have been told in the past that there is no way that my workaround could look better than using Compressor, and until now, I haven't provided any hard proof of my problem.

Here are four captured images off a DVD (using Compressor DVD preset for best quality 120 minutes). One still is from a motion menu, and the other still is from the video with a lower third on it. I created two versions...one done in HDV and the other done in ProRes:

PRORES MENU
PRORES VIDEO
HDV MENU
HDV VIDEO

(please be sure to view at 100%)

Look at how smooth the logo looks on the ProRes, as well as look at anything that makes a 45 degree angle on the video still, such as elbows. Then look at the HDV version and see how jagged it is.

The HDV version is obviously unacceptable for most of my clients' work. I am still using Final Cut Studio 2, and I don't know if this problem is resolved in Final Cut Studio 3...is it?

The underlying problem is HDV...even if I convert it to ProRes, I still get these jaggies. If I capture as ProRes, everything looks fine. When I do my DVD recorder transfer, the video looks virtually identical to the ProRes screen capture (so I didn't do a capture from the DVD recorder).

The problem I have, however, is that using ProRes for say, a wedding (once on DVD is about 2 hours long), is that everything takes longer to do than it would in HDV. If I use a Color Corrector or slow motion, it takes significantly longer to render in ProRes than HDV...up to 4x longer. I have heard from others that this should not be the case, and if it weren't, then the problem for me would be solved. I am typically not given a lot of extra time to finish a project...because of customer's budgets, I am usually editing as fast as I can, and need to deliver a DVD as fast as I can. I can only do so many tasks overnight because I may only get 2 or 3 overnights in a project. It is also significantly faster for me to output an hour long HDV edit to tape, and then to DVD (2 hours total) than it is to use Compressor (may be 4 hours to do).

I have a Mac Pro, 2x3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon, 10GB RAM and am running OSX Tiger, and as I said, Final Cut Studio 2. I have 3-4 FW800 drives connected for my video drives.

I'm also wondering if there is a better workflow for me, where I can maintain my editing/rendering speed while being able to use Compressor to get maximum quality from my video. Maybe I already have the fastest workflow for what I'm doing.

Am I doing something wrong with Compressor? I tried playing with the frame controls and the "best" settings that were there. They made a little difference with HDV, but nowhere near the quality of the ProRes.

Am I doing something wrong with ProRes? If you take a 30 second clip, and put it to slow mo and do a ProRes version as well as an HDV version...which should render faster?

I need help going into the new year and I thank everyone in advance who replies to this (and any future posts) that I may have!


Casey

Dude...your HDV stuff is interpolated incorrectly. It's interlaced (Upper, I believe)

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Yep, my sequence defaults to upper....or are you talking about a setting in Compressor?

Another test I once did with this footage is in Compressor, under the A/V Attributes, selecting top dominance, bottom dominance and then progressive, to see which looked the best.

When I selected top, it was jaggy.
When I selected bottom, it was jaggy and the interlacing was backwards.
When I selected progressive, it was crystal clear on the graphics, but the video looked weird because it was supposed to be interlaced.

The HDV footage in FCP is upper, and the sequence sets itself to the settings of the clip.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

Are you rendering effects and transitions in ProRes, (it's a render setting you choose) or have you captured from HDV into ProRes-- (my recommended-- get everything out of HDV-- ultimately it's crap for editing, even if you did set the fields right).

Andrew Balis at Moviola set up some nice HDV-to-ProRes422 capture presets which I've used successfully on my MacPro, coming from a Sony HDV camera. I recall I got them at KenSone.net.
Someone will correct me on that?

- Loren

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No, I'm not set up for rendering effects and transitions in ProRes...but I'm seeing this problem even on footage that has no effects or transitions.

I do capture everything as HDV. I tried doing a wedding in ProRes (captured and edited), and it took me 4x as long to complete the project, which is unacceptable from a time standpoint. I need a workflow that is at least close to taking the same amount of time as my HDV projects.

I've heard that ProRes is supposed to be faster, but that has not been my experience. Can someone who uses ProRes confirm that it is indeed faster than editing/rendering HDV?

I'll check Ken Stone's site to see what that is about.

Thanks!
Casey

Casey:

I have been using the Sony Z1U also. What you say is crucial for me as well.

Quote
I do capture everything as HDV. I tried doing a wedding in ProRes (captured and edited), and it took me 4x as long to complete the project, which is unacceptable from a time standpoint. I need a workflow that is at least close to taking the same amount of time as my HDV projects.

What you're telling me is that ProRes is too slow for you, even though you have upgraded to a faster and bigger computer. How much did you spend on your system?

I was thinking about "upgrading" my system, but this information that you have provided has convinced me to stick with what I have, namely FCP 5.04 non-Intel. ProRes was the only reason I would have wanted to blow thousands of dollars on another NLE system.

I'm surprised no one has said anything about how you're degrading your movies by going via MPEG2 compression. I was hoping someone would say something. But I like to suggest something. Send me a private message and I'll elaborate more than what I'm going to mention here, because this is a sensitive issue here.

Instead of doing the DVD trip, export an 8-bit uncompressed file of your HDV movies via Compressor. The 8-bit uncompressed is faster than exporting an HDV file also, much faster. The only problem with the 8-bit uncompressed is that instead of ending with a 15 Gig HDV file, for example, you will end up with a 90 Gig file uncompressed. But if you have the disc space and it appears that you do, there is nothing better than an 8-bit uncompressed movie file for DVD production.

Of course, there is also the 10-bit uncompressed for going to higher resolution masters. I have not done this, as I only need standard def DVDs for my work, and I use DVD SP for DVD output.

>Can someone who uses ProRes confirm that it is indeed faster than editing/rendering HDV?

I haven't touched HDV much over the last couple of years, but I've worked with XDCAM EX footage quite a few times, which is quite similar to HDV. And the last time, I was on a MBP (cut XDCAM EX for a day, while the footage was doing an overnight transcode to ProRes). As it's a fairly light system (dual 2.5 Ghz 4 gigs of RAM), it would fare quite well as a performance indicator. The next day I was working on ProRes. Scrubbing was definitely more responsive, and I can scan through interviews at double or triple speed more easily, where on XDCAM EX, FCP will beachball for a couple of seconds before playing and the audio will skip inconsistently when i'm playing at double speed. As far as render times are concerned, my short tests seemed to indicate that ProRes is speedier on renders.

>I'm not set up for rendering effects and transitions in ProRes

There are two things regarding rendering to ProRes.

1- In render controls in FCP, if renders are set to ProRes, that will render effects and transitions to ProRes, but only for preview within FCP. If you export a self contained QT movie with "current settings", everything will render out as HDV. To me, this is the best option during the offline stage, as I can preview my cuts without rendering, and it's useful if you don't have the time or drive space to convert everything to ProRes.

2- If you switch your sequence codec to ProRes, it will render all HDV footage as ProRes. The gotcha with working with long GOP formats, is that the exports will always take longer- HDV will have a fairly long conforming process; while switching the sequence codec to ProRes means everything in the timeline will have to be rendered (decoded from HDV, then rendered to ProRes).

If the footage has already been captured, and FCP is set up properly to capture and edit in ProRes, it should be faster. The only other thing I can think of, is that you are rendering internally in 32 bit floating point (high precision YUV). That is the default setting for a ProRes (and all 10 bit) sequences. That is a lot of numbers to crunch. Switch it to 8 bit precision and render. This option can be found under "video processing" in your sequence settings.

With regards to your example, it looks weird. For the video stills, Grafixjoe mentioned that the interpolation/interlacing is off... Now, the only thing in the still extract that perhaps should be moving (the model's leg in the center), happens not to be interlaced, rather motion blurred. The crummy edges against the blue (high contrast against the color channels), doesn't look like what I would expect, even from HDV. Can you get us a screen shot of your frame controls panel in Compressor set to what you normally use?

For the title graphics, yea, I would expect HDV to resample and produce more jaggedy edges than if the graphics was rendered in ProRes.



www.strypesinpost.com

Filmman,

I have a Mac Pro, 2x3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon, 10GB RAM and am running OSX Tiger, and as I said, Final Cut Studio 2. I have 3-4 FW800 drives connected for my video drives. I don't remember how much it cost...it was years ago.

Strypes,

I de-interlaced all four stills before posting them...I thought that it would make things easier...maybe not. Bottom line...they are captures off DVD and were processed identically.

I did notice than the ProRes sequences default to 10-Bit YUV. Maybe that's why things are slow...I'll have to try it out.

The Frame Controls are here:
They are the default for the 90 min DVD best quality preset. I have messed with these a lot and have run tests...I see a very slight improvement when changing the resize filter and deinterlace, but nothing that gets me anywhere near the quality in the ProRes images. Also, my HDV to DVD recorder images are virtually identical to the ProRes images...so I don't believe it is an HDV format issue...where that level of quality is impossible to get, because I can get it as long as I'm not using Compressor.

My latest test that I will be doing will be regarding converting between HDV and ProRes and seeing if there is any difference if HDV is in the mix at any point.

Thanks!
Casey

Is it a 4:2:2 vs. 4:2:0 issue?

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4:2:2#4:2:2. Especially the examples of 4:2:0.

Maybe this is why I'm seeing positive results with ProRes and not HDV?

Thoughts?

Thanks!

How was HDV slower than ProRes? We capture all of our HDV as ProRes for one show and editing/online couldn't be faster. Rendering takes as long, if not LESS time than HDV. And compressing for DVD takes less time, and looks better.

Another show we offline as DV then I recapture as ProRes. That takes a while only because of recaptures, stock footage, redo moves on stills, resizing things.


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Here's an example of how I'm judging speed:

I take a 30 second clip that was captured as HDV, put an HDV timeline, put a color correction filter on it and put it at 50% speed. Render it out (it has the green render bar on top), and it takes 1 minute to render.

Take the same 30 second clip off the tape, capture it as ProRes, put it on a ProRes timeline, put the color correction filter on it and put it at 50% speed. Render it out, and it takes 3 minutes to render.

Multiply that over the course of an entire wedding day (2 hour edit), and it adds up to take HOURS longer to do in ProRes than HDV.

I am using the HDV and ProRes presets for sequences...I did notice that the ProRes sequence defaulted to rendering in 10-bit YUV mode. I switch that back to 8-bit, and it takes maybe 2 minutes to render.

There's something screwy going on around here! Several people say ProRes is as fast or faster than HDV, but that has been far from my experience.

Thanks!
Casey

Maybe because I'm using FW800 for my video drives (4 chained together) instead of internal?

Okay, I did my HDV conversion test:

I took an HDV video clip, put a CG over it, and exported it as a QuickTime file.

I went into Compressor and converted that file into ProRes and ProRes HQ (for the sake of argument), then I took all three clips and converted them to MPEG2 using DVD Best Quality 90 minutes.

The HDV clip looked lousy, but both ProRes clips looked clean! I had done this type of test years ago, but I think I exported to ProRes using QuickTime conversion or something like that, and I got the same results as HDV, but never bothered to test again until now.

We have an answer...now if only it can prove to be time efficient, then I think I may have something...that is, apart from a reason why editing with HDV is faster than ProRes for me, but not for anyone else.

Casey

Oops...tried this in a real world situation and more than just a 15 second clip.

The HDV to ProRes conversion turned it into progressive scan apparently...even though I'm sure the settings were for interlaced, so the test was not a full success.

Back to the drawing board!

Casey

Id like to know the way you were using 8bit.You mentioned about emailing if someone wants more detail.Id like to find out more about this.
Thanks