Massive HDV Batch Capture

This is a huge batch capture I'm doing right now. I shot a travelogue/documentary as a one-person crew. I'm doing all the post production as well. I edited in OfflineRT. The footage is all 720p30 HDV. I'm finally in the onlining stage.

As the thousands of clips are loading, this is the first time I'm seeing most of it in high definition. It's a big relief and pleasure after having worked in 320x240 30% quality Photo JPEG all this time.

All the tapes you see are part of this project. The documentary shows a trip through Turkey.

The organization which hired me will sell the DVD. I'm keeping an HDV master, a D-VHS master and of course I'll make an HD-DVD of it as well.

My two biggest challenges in this project were:
1. Getting a good variety of shots wherever the tour group went - there wasn't much time at most of the stops.
2. Audio - it's very difficult as a one-person crew to handle audio. I didn't make huge audio mistakes but I know what I have to do to improve.

Otherwise, the physical demands weren't that bad. I worked for 11 days straight with no breaks, working 10-14 hours each day, running around with my camera and tripod getting shots.




Many people have misgivings about the JVC HD10 concerning the fact that it's a single-chip camera. There is also lots of doubt out there about its low light performance and chroma noise. However, most of what I shot is outdoors in natural light, and slowing down the shutter to 1/30 gives makes for good indoor light performance. The proof is in the shots. I'll post H.264 sample clips soon.

edit: I've set up my DP G5 and PowerBook as a cluster to distribute the processing load for Compressor transcoding.

gangst said:

Good luck, hope all goes well. Are you going to keep the documentary just for yourself or enter in a film fetivaal/send to TV?

PS. Nice set up.

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Thank you for the well wishes and compliments.

The documentary will be for sale on DVD through the organization that hired me. It'll probably take another month or two for that because the board needs to review the evaluation copy I made and suggest changes. Then I'll have to make the changes, submit the final copy and then the group will get the DVDs replicated (manufactured) somewhere. It's most likely going to be a double-layer, pressed (not burned) DVD-9. Failing that it'll be a two-disc set.

I'll enter it in film festivals and also try to sell it to TV. I'll need to re-edit to fit the PBS total running time guidelines, and for overseas markets I might have to (somehow) do a PAL conversion. Hopefully the PAL conversion will be problem-free, if Apple's "optical flow" technology in Compressor / DVDSP / Shake is what it sounds like.

Espnetboy3 said:

Could you explain to me how to work in offline media to save storage space. After I shoot my dv tape I usually import the whole tape or log shots and batch capture them. What do I set up to make them offline to save space? I you fcp4.5

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Sure. To save disk space, capture all your clips in OfflineRT mode. If you're not capturing entire tapes, make sure to add a few seconds at the head and tail of each shot. Label all your tapes and name all your reels the same as the tape labels. That way when you go back for the online, you won't have to guess.

When you're done with the offline edit, highlight the sequence(s) you want to online in FCP's browser. Command-click / right click and select "Media Manager." What you want to do here is make a new project in a different format. Use the check boxes and drop down menus to reflect the settings you need. In my case, I selected HDV 720p, and made FCP cut down my media to only the clips in the sequence (so that I only have to capture what I'm actually using, and not the entire tapes).

This guide by Andrew Balis on Ken Stone's Final Cut Pro site is way better and more thorough.

abrooks said:

Sounds like a hard job you got going there, keep is updated dude, I'm going to dip my feet in the HDV water later this year.

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Yup, it hasn't been easy. But if I get a similar project again it won't be as difficult. HDV is just as easy as DV, but the images you work with are way more beautiful and satisfying (just my opinion).

LethalWolfe said:

Rod, have you used FCP 5 for all of this or FCP HD w/a third party app to transcode the HDV signal?

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I used FCP HD and no third party apps -- although I bought LumiereHD which has been useless to me except for one Nattress filter, reduce chroma noise, and I use MPEG Streamclip for HDV transcodes.

I connected the HD10 to a GRD70 MiniDV camcorder by RCA and S-Video. The GRD70 was hooked up to the Mac with FireWire. I did a "capture now" as OfflineRT. The whole time I had the timecode display on, so I effectively made an OfflineRT window dub. I changed the timecode on each of the OfflineRT reels/files by using FCP's Modify Timecode command.

LethalWolfe said:

Also, about NTSC -> PAL. Have you tried Graeme Nattress's filters/plugins? One of them is a standards converter.

From what I've read "optical flow" should be called ungodly slow. Like taking 4hr30min to turn a 1min NTSC clip into PAL on a dual 2ghz G5.

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I haven't tried Nattress's standards converter. I read his site about it and it looks like the right tool for the job. Thank you for the heads up about Optical Flow. I don't want to spend a few weeks on this 720p30 - PAL conversion.

Lacero said:

I would have captured HDV first, then used Media Manager to create OfflineRT files for editing, since you only run the tapes once. I guess you did it to save on HD space.

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Me too, if this project started before FCP 5 came out. But even in that case I'd probably want to save the disk space, so your guess is correct. I guess I need/want another terabyte or two.

some clips from the project

Here are some clips from the project:

http://homepage.mac.com/tvwriter/.Movies/45seconds-Turkey.mov

Please let me know if it loads for you. Thanks.

I know there's chroma noise in a few of the shots and some of them are overexposed, but overall I think it looks decent. Also bear in mind the extremely low bitrate at which it's encoded (2.6 Mb/s H.264) - there's absolutely no artifacting in the full size file (19.85 Mb/s HDV).

DeSnousa said:

Great job, very vibrant and colorful clips. Well edited to. Congratulations on landing the job and i hope this works out well for you.

P.S my computer could only average out about 8fps can you also add next time a lower quality version thanks.

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Thank you. I'm uploading a smaller version but iDisk syncing is taking a super long time. I'll post the URL a little later.

smaller version

I've uploaded a smaller version, as DeSnousa requested. I suppose there are others out there who also want to see this at its full framerate (although not its full resolution).

http://homepage.mac.com/tvwriter/.Movies/45seconds-Turkey-small.mov