Here I mentioned the upgrade of my system to one of the new octomacs that came out last month. The thing is blazingly fast. Lightning. It’s incredible. But, to sum up the issue, it wouldn’t read any of DNxHD footage, this was a result of the lastest QT updates (the only thing I could figure out) so I re-transcoded.

I compared 3 different codecs: Blackmagic 8-bit uncompressed, Photo-JPEG, and Apple 8-bit uncompressed. Each codec looked amazing…for transocded HDV. Every one of them naturally, looked better than the DNxHD footage. So after comparing the same frame on each codec, I settled on Photo-JPEG. Pretty old school I know. But, the uncompressed codecs just left huge file sizes and Blackmagic’s codec pixelated the hell out of the highlights and the Apple codec had mushy shadows. If anyone has a better codec than Photo-JPEG, let me know (that’s free).

So my current HDV/Sony HVR-Z7U workflow is thus:

Shoot 1080i at 59.94

Transcode via MPEG Streamclip to 1440×1080i Photo-JPEG (you have to specify 59.94 otherwise it will default to 29.97)

Edit in Premier as normal.

Then I can go back and forth between Premiere and AE without having to render until final output. Pretty sweet…for HDV. I think however, I’ll be losing the Blackmagic card in lieux of the Matrox MXO. I discovered I can’t use to it to color correct as I wanted…only after researching for a monitor today :/ Ugh. It’s brand new though so it’ll resell well I think.

Tags: dnxhd, hdv, Photo-JPEG, print, tech, tools, video, workflow

I mentioned in this post that I got a brand new machine and my HDD went out on the laptop. Being both new, fresh installs, these both came witho OSX and updated everything including Quicktime. While I’ve been updating fairly regularly (when I have to) I’ve never had any issues regarding Premier.

That is until now.

I haven’t had a chance to watch my 8 cores of power attack an HD render so I loaded up some of my DNxHD transcoded clips this afternoon only to discover that it crashed my box every single time. I had the same reaction on the Macbook Pro. How annoying.

I tested the clips out in QT, AE, and Bridge and they all played back just fine. In fact, they even played back in the little preview window in my media bin in Premier. But The moment I dropped them into the timeline or the source monitor, everything crashed.

In an effort to narrow down the issue, I transcoded a couple clips using a few different codecs and they all played back in Premier without crashing the system. So I took the original DNxHD transcoded clips to the one computer that was no affected by new updates and the clips played back just fine. Naturally, I copied down all the settings and versions of software etc. and compared them between the iMac and my other two machines. They were different. While everything else was the same, I was running Quicktime 7.5.5 on the iMac and QT 7.6 on the other two. I know that this is an issue with FCP users, but hadn’t heard about it with Premier users.

So I’ll be honest. I don’t know how to rollback a QT installation on a Mac. I really don’t care to learn (knowing I’ll have to in the future). And Since I have a much stouter machine, faster hard drives and greater throughput, I opted for a different codec.

After comparing several uncompressed and compressed codecs, I decided on the very non-glamours Photo-JPEG. Yes, it uses compression, but it looks just as good as my uncompressed codecs, plays back without a hitch, I have a preset for it and looks damn tasty (I think I already said that though). It does take up more space than DNxHD and runs at a higher bandwidth, but again, my system now can handle it and I’ll take the trade.

So my adjusted workflow now looks like this:
Pull in .M2T files from Compact Flash
Transcode to Photo-JPEG, deinterlaced and unscaled in 1440×1080
Open with Premier project setting (under my Blackmagic presets): 1440×1080/1.33/29.97/JPEG

We’ll see how that works this week. If you are considering an HDV format for something remotely professional, read this, and hopefully spend the extra bucks and get a camera that records to something else (P2, XDCAM, DVCPRO-HD etc.). If not, well, I’ve laid out a couple options on this blog that work just fine for non-broadcast work.

Tags: dnxhd, hdv, tech, tools, video, workflow

As with most of my life, I run into issues. I found when attempting to transcode some 24p footage to DNxHD 36. The final picture quality of my transcodes were horrible. After digging around researching, I discovered the following:

Avid Whitepapers on Sony Cameras

HDV/Avid Discussion on .M2T files

In addition, DVFilm Maker openly admits, that the Sony cameras have a crappy 24p. To which they recommend shooting at 60 and converting to 24p. That could simply be them trying to sell more software, but it appears that thought is supported in the Avid community.

You’re probably like, “dude, you use Premier, not Media Composer.” And you’re right, BUT I am using their codecs. For a quality/bandwidth compromise, they can’t be beat. So, I’ll stick with either 59.94 in 1080i or 30p (29.97) in 1080i. Avid codecs support both settings on a Sony HDV camera.

If I’m missing something, let me know. Right now, I’d recommend if you want to work with Premier on a Mac, stay away from HDV.

Tags: dnxhd, hdv, key post, premiere, tools, video, workflow