Question About HDV Vs AVCHD In Final Cut

[phildavies79]

Hi there,

New to the forum and could do with a point in the right direction after a weekend of unsuccessful research...

I'm in the market for a couple of new camcorders and my decision to stick with miniDV or go with SD cards will be based largely on how the footage is treated in FC (which I'm new to).

I'm tempted by SD cards/AVCHD for quicker uploading times compared to tape/HDV. But is the forced transcoding with a Prores codec going to negate this?

I've seen mention that it's best to transcode HDV anyway to cut down on render times. Our videos have no special effects and not a great deal of motion (basically over the shoulder filming of an illustrator or plasterer for example). We shoot and capture about an hour of HD footage, edited down to 20-30 mins before rendering. Would an HDV transcode be neccessary?

Lastly, most of our stuff is for the Web initially but could be used for TV broadcast at some point. I was thinking I could use the Prores (LT) or intermediate codec for Web but would I have to literally re-capture and re-edit each video from scratch if I wanted to use the Prores (HQ) for TV purposes?

Many thanks,

Phil.

 

[martinX]

I'm in the market for a couple of new camcorders and my decision to stick with miniDV or go with SD cards will be based largely on how the footage is treated in FC (which I'm new to).

Given what is happening with FCP X, you're probably better off staying clear of tape-based camcorders.

 

[cgbier]

Why? A rudimentary support for HDV capture still exists.
I rarely have used AVCHD, but apart from the faster ingest, there's no difference in editing. AVCHD is transcoded to either AIC or ProRes in any way.

With your rather motionless footage, you should do fine quality-wise with AVCHD. But think about getting a load of drives to back up your footage (already built into tape).