Editing: HDV Cutting Goes Native

With great fanfare, Apple Computer’s CEO Steve Jobs predicted that 2005 would be "the year of HD video editing." That winter day at MacWorld, Jobs was joined on stage at the Moscone Center by Kunitake Ando, president of Sony Electronics, carrying one of Sony’s new HDR-FX1 1080i HDV consumer cameras, retailing for about $3500.

Since then, Sony and JVC, which lobbed the first consumer HD camera into the market two NABs ago, have both raised the stakes with new professional cameras. (See Cameras & Lenses). While some purists might call it "bit-starved HD," there’s a wide range of applications where 720p (JVC) or 1080i (Sony) HDV images captured at 25 Mbps more than fit the bill. To any budget-conscious producer looking to get his feet wet in HD, the availability of sub-$6000 HD cameras and $7000 complete HD production systems (including a single-chip camera) that can deliver content in a myriad of digital formats and resolutions for worldwide distribution is hard to dismiss.

While camera sales have helped to stimulate the market, the HDV post-production workflow is slowing catching up. Among those supporting native editing of HDV are Adobe Systems, Apple, Avid, Canopus Co., Ltd., KDDI R&D Laboratories, Leitch Video, Pinnacle Systems, Sony (Vegas) and Ulead Systems and a variety of HDV-compatible interface components (Miranda Technologies and Sobey Digital, to name but two).

As anyone who has tried to work with it knows, editing HDV’s long-GOP, MPEG-2 compressed images has its limitations. All of the individual video frames are not available to the editor all the time because HDV uses an interframe compression method. Manufacturers have labored since last NAB to work around that.

While a year ago most of these same companies announced support for the HDV format, none were able to "natively" edit material directly from the camera. All had to cross-convert a clip to make it readable by the NLE before work could begin. This year native editing support has arrived and will save editors rendering time, money and, in most cases, image quality.

Pinnacle’s Liquid Edition and Liquid Edition Pro NLEs have been shipping with built-in native support since last fall. This capability will be firmed up even further across the company’s Liquid Edition Broadcast, Liquid Chrome HD and Liquid Blue NLEs later this year to allow users to edit larger-sized HDV files. (HDV clips can be scaled up – compressed less – to include more picture information and still adhere to the miniDV spec.)

Pinnacle is starting to see traction in production studios that are considering HDV for projects. "We’ve been offering native editing of MPEG-2 IBP long-GOP material for many years because we understand how editors like to work," says Andrew Baum, senior product manager for advanced editing products. "We’ve used that experience and really advanced the codec to support HDV. It wasn’t that big a stretch for us, as it is for some companies, to add it."

Apple executives have promised that professional HDV support will be included within a future release of its popular Final Cut Pro HD NLE software. While the company has been quiet about formal NAB announcements, it is expected to show FCP HD software cutting 1080i material captured directly from the camera.

Apple currently suggests using third-party software codecs from companies like Heuris Software to cross-convert HDV files to an AVI (QuickTime) format for editing in Final Cut Pro HD. (At its MacWorld conference, Apple announced Final Cut Express HD, a $299 professional editing software package, and a new version of iMovie, which both support 720p and 1080i HDV video in the 16à—9 aspect ratio.)

Avid’s Charlie Russell, senior product manager for editing products, notes that Sony’s HVR-Z1U has brought HDV into the minds of more pros who may have been skeptical last year. "I think everyone’s intrigued by HDV, with price points that encourage people to experiment with it," he says. "There will be projects where it’s completely appropriate and really adds to the success of a production."

Avid will integrate native long-GOP HDV editing support across its entire NLE product line, from the latest versions of Avid Express Pro HD on up to its Media Composer Adrenaline HD. This includes fast IEEE 1394 data transfer between an HDV camera or deck and an Avid NLE system. The add-on HDV capability will be demoed at NAB and offered to existing Avid users by mid-2005 as an upgrade.

Avid is looking beyond long-GOP editing to include the ability to mix HDV with SD or with much higher quality HD footage (HDCAM and DVCPRO HD) in the same timeline. This feature will also benefit effects and compositing projects. But HDV native editing is not ideal for multi-layered effects processing. To do this, Avid suggests using its existing DNxHD encoding technology, which conserves bandwidth while allowing users to work with mildly compressed HD file sizes.

The latest version of Sony’s Vegas HDV editing software, Vegas 5.0 D, has been optimized for use with the Connect HD software codec from CineForm. A clip is transferred from the Sony camcorder via iLINK transfer, and then converted into an AVI that can be easily edited in Vegas.

Vegas has supported 2048à—2048 resolutions since version 4.0 of the software, according to Dave Chaimson, VP, marketing for Sony Media Software. The CineForm product transcodes but has had to wait for the processing speeds and codecs to catch up. "Before last year, pros needed an affordable way to move and work with that type of content. Now that they have affordable cameras, storage and the ability to edit the captured material, HDV is ready for prime time – and I mean literally," Chaimson says.

At NAB, Vegas 6.0 will be shown with the CineForm codec for native HDV editing built in. "It will be the same high-quality codec, only there will not be the incremental cost of an add-on module. We understand that customers want this process to be seamless and fast," said Chaimson.