Posted by William Davis on 09/06/05 19:34

In article <4fhTe.29373$YC1.14385@fe08.lga>,
TonyP <arpierre@hooptonline.net> wrote:

>
> I have not worked in HDV, so can't speak on it. You can go to the LE
> forums where there are people that have ACTUALLY used it. The system
> requirements are high, very high.
> http://tinyurl.com/8wct9 and search for HDV (or similiar topic) and see
> what comes up. Also, this link will explain what Edition can do within
> the HDV format and what the system requirements are. It is a .pdf (Adobe
> Acrobat) file http://tinyurl.com/dk3vn
>

Well, I am working with HDV so I can.

The idea that "system requirements are high, very high", just isn't true.

I'm happily editing HDV footage on my Dual G4 Mac with Final Cut Pro HD.
This is three-year-old dual 1-gig machine. NOT anywhere close to "state
of the art."

The central truth about HDV that escapes people who haven't worked with
it is that compressed HDV data files are often SMALLER than
corresponding standard def DV files.

That's right, SMALLER.

As a test for one of my articles, I took the same 10 sec scene shot with
a Sony 1080i HDV camera and a DV camera, and when the clips were
digitized, the HDV clip was actually SMALLER than the SD clip.

That means the data rates your computer will need to deal with are no
larger with HDV than they are with DV.

(Yes, your computer and the software it's running will need to parse the
HDV data stream and that may require computing horsepower beyond what
you're used to... but the data rate itself isn't really much different -
so it's not like you need a flamethrower system to do the job.)

The "magic" of HDV is that the compression is HUGELY more efficient than
standard DV compression.

Therefore the data stream isn't any more difficult to deal with than SD.

FWIW.

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