So… I’ve had a change of heart… HDV has managed to wooo it’s way into my heart. Now, I know you are asking… “how much did you have to drink to get to this point….” my answer, “not enough!” So after starting at PostWorks and watching them begin to capture an HDV tape… I started asking a lot of questions. Here is a summery of my findings:

So you shoot HDV… great, you now have a hard archival copy of your footage (got to love tape). The major question up until now (for me) has been, how do you deal with this less than amazing codec in post. While I have presented the ProRes 4:2:2 option, there is another way which makes things even more brilliant, than before: HD-SDI. Holy smokes why didn’t I know about this before now! I knew of SDI… great way to playback video with minimal quality loss. HD-SDI is that and a bag of chips. The SDI signal carries pure digital audio with it and through the wonders of BlackMagic, can be captured into FCP. Yes, this has probably been around a while, but you have to understand… as I have just learned about it - I’m a kid in the freaking candy shop!

In the past, I have questioned why you would spend an extra $3,000 on a camera with a “jack-pack” which includes HD/SD-SDI… but it is all clear to me now. Here’s the post system setup: One badass MacPro, with one Blackmagic DeckLink HD Extreme card (http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/hd/), your new HDV jack-pack cam…. and… and… oh wait.. THAT’S IT! No more… through the HD-SDI out of the camera, and the HD-SDI in on the DeckLink card, you are able to tell FCP to capture your HDV as full blown 1080i or 720p HD - through hardware, not software. No transcoding to anything once the media is capture… just you and your newly found HD files, loving each other in all the ways a person can love a set of binary.

Now also consider this: Sony also makes a sweet HDV deck that sells for about as much as an HDV camera… however, the deck makes things even nicer. Because you have the DeckLink card, you are able to control the HDV deck video RS-422 controller built into the card! Other bonuses… add a HD-SDI monitor or an HDMI monitor to the system, and you can run your video to it video the DeckLink card. There are many other small upsides to this DeckLink card - visit their site for all of them.

Now why am I all gitty about HDV now? I mean, if you could shoot tapeless and not have to log and capture all that tape, why would you? With the cost of the card, and the camera, you could easily get a HVX200 or a Sony EX-1. Why would you put your self in the HDV world when you could have “much more?” I would go HDV over tapeless HD because I don’t have to archive everything I shoot on to a hard drive and worry about that hard drive dying on me… I start a tape library with a good (am I mean good) logging/cataloging system for the tapes, I find a self, and stash them for the rest of my life! I could go on, and on - but I think I have finally found my answer to this question of, “What do I buy and invest in for a professional home/freelancing system” Answer: HDV.

Additional Links:
My (current) “dream” setup:
The Camera: Canon XH-A1 (or jack-pack XH-G1)
The Deck: Sony HVR-1500
Card: BlackMagic, DeckLink HD Extreme
Approx. Total Cost: $10,000
OR
Approx. Total Cost: $7,500 (no deck - camera with jack-pack)

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I’ve seen it with my own eyes! The PWX-EX1, XDCam from Sony. In a post from last week, I wrote without a lot of hope about the MPEG-2 compression on the camera along with a number of other things. After seeing the camera and a demo with the camera, I’m still not completely sold, but am a lot more interested in seeing it really put to use. A Sony rep. who was at the demo was boasting the EX’s stunning low light capabilities, and I must say, based on what was shown, I am seriously impressed. Here are some other things that might make you think about opening your wallets for the sub-$7,000 camera:

1. Tapeless media sold by Sony and San-Disk. They are calling the media, SxS (spoken, “S by S”). Since it is being made by both companies you can probably count on cheap media. Cheaper than P2 cards that is.
2. The SxS card will slide of so nicely into your slot on the MacBookPro. Take your download speed up to 10x real time. If you have 100 minutes for footage, you can be editing on it in 10 minutes in FCP. You can buy a USB 2 reader which will download in about 3x real time.  The camea is equipped with a SP and a HQ record setting. SP records 1440×1080 @ 60i (the equivalent of HDV) at 25mbs (thats mega-bits). The HQ setting records all formats at 1920×1080 and writes 35mbs. Quite a quality jump.
3. Fujinon Lens. Yes, you read correctly, a serious lens on this camera. A user of the Ex1 at the demo was raving about how much sweeter it is than the HVX200’s lens. And from the looks of it, it does appear that way. Since it is a Fujinon lens, it has a iris ring built into it which will stop turning when its all open or all closed. (AMAZING). As well as a focus ring which will slide forward and back to which between auto and manual focus. This could be turn in to a real nightmare for this camera, I’ll be listening to see what people think.
4. Uncompressed audio recording is a great addition to this package. Unlike some other solid state cameras, this thing gives you 2 uncompressed tracks. I know in my previous post I was doggin on the EX’s audio abilities, and I’m still not loving only two tracks, but I’d rather have two uncompressed than four compressed.
5. Lastly, 1/2″ CMOS chips. Three of them for that matter. And they all record full 1920×1080. Each chip is 2.2 mega pixels and records a full progressive frame.

There are other things to note about this camera, but for now, go and play with it. I could see this camera being a reality in my shop sooner or (more likely) later. Its too bad though that Sony couldn’t match or beat Panasonic’s price point. We’ll see how things unfold in the coming months.

Happy techo-lusting.

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Sean R. Smith
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There is a lot of talk around the interwebs about HDV and Final Cut Pro. Most notably from my readings, the Creative Cow (or The Cow) has thousands of posts relating to this topic. While I’d like to say I have a crack research team that has read all posts on The Cow and has provided me with a summary of them, that’s simply not the case. What I do have though is experience working with HDV natively and mixed with HD footage. HD certainly was around before HDV, but consumers couldn’t afford it. So what happened? The manufactures got SD DV man and HD woman super drunk, got them a hotel room, and nine months later, out popped baby, “HDV.” The story goes on, but basically after HD remarried P2 dude, HDV became “The Half Child.”

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