Question for those shooting Sony HDV.

I initially decided on the Sony VX2100 setup for it's low light capability, and because HDV was so new at the time, I wanted some issues to get sorted out. Also, the fact that there was no way to edit and watch the HD footage was a big turn off.

But now that it's been out for awhile, I'm starting to get the itch to switch.

So here is my concern.

First, I had a friend send me some RAW Sony HDV footage, that I believe is at 25mbps. The goal was to have it stored on my PC upstairs, and then stream it in High Def over my 100base network to my TV in High Def, using the a Roku Labs Photobridge as my hardware decoder. The photobridge streams my standard def footage just fine, but High Def footage stutters with huge audio drop outs.

A lot of research on the photobridge seems to have revealved that it is a known issue that it can't stream more than 20mbps over standard Windows SMB shares.

So first, how are you capturing and editing your HDV footage? Has anyone used Pinnacle Studio 10+? (that's really all that is in my price range) After capturing RAW HD footage and editing it. Are you able to output to file in various resolution/bit rates? i.e. Can you convert your 25mpbs 1080i footage to say 720p @ 18mbps?

And finally, would anyone be able to provide me with some compressed sample footage at either 1080i or 720p at around 10-18mbps for testing??

Hi Jim,

Send a PM to Wagsy, he is doing lots of test and whatnot. And he would love to send you some clips...that i do know!

Studio 10 just released on monday so not too many people have it yet i don't think

HI guys

I encoded a HDV 70 min 1440/1080i PAL timeline to 1270/ 720p at 8mbps and it looks great, sooooo... much better than normal DVD mpeg2 specs. It took my computer (3gig) over 15 hours to make the 4+ gig wmv file, but it fits on a normal DVD and can be played on any computer with a DVD drive and on the new DVD players that are comming out. It's no use in going any higher than 8mbps as normal computers and laptops will have abit of a problem playing such a high stream and it does not improve the quaity to much. WMV is a nice compression format, they should of used it instead of MPEG2 in the camera's I recond. I suppose microsoft wanted to much money to use it.

For example.

A CBR 8mbps mpeg2 DVD file and a CBR 8mps wmv file is like chalk and cheese. The wmv file is near on like the raw mpeg m2t footage from the camera.

Im using Premiere Pro and aspect HD, along with procoder for the encoding. Procoder is a very good encoder. Better than CCE, TMPEG and Main Concept.

Edius is also a very good NLE and has great slow mo.

Vegas from sony? well you have to load up so much $(*(%*$ to make it work. Update inet framework, then reboot, then update the upgate then reboot etc and then after 1 hour of getting all the updates , the demo would not run on my sytem because my CLOCK!...yes my CLOCK was set wrong. So I left it....

I will make a small 720p file so you guys can have a look at.

Wags

My few posted video clips are all 1080i but in various formats (all above water) You can try them and see if they will stream for you. Converted 720p looks great too but I don't have any uploaded. www.larsdennert.com/hc1