Posted by Kill Bill on 03/17/06 18:26

Quasar X wrote:

> I'm making a documentary from 125 hours of 1080i HDV footage.
>
>
> I've only used iMovie 5 HD before.
>
> Barely touched Final Cut Pro 4.5... and FCP is confusing to me compared
> to iMovie HD.

While I like iMovie, and I think it has it's due for small projects..
I'm afraid your going to have to just step up to the plate and go with
FCP (or express) for this kind of project.



> What are the major differences I should be concerned with between
> iMovie, FC Express HD, and FC Pro HD?

Control for one. FCP over iMovie will let you manage the data a lot better.



> My documentary is a very serious project, but I am totally new to Final
> Cut Pro HD.

Any community colleges in your area? They probably have a FCP class.
Or just buy a training DVD.



> I also have limited $$ to buy Harddrives to edit down 125 Hours of HDV
> 1080i footage to 3 hours of documentary.

Correct me if I'm wrong.. but lets say you really do have 125 hours of
HDV footage. You can get 63 minutes of HD footage on a HD miniDV tape.
125 times 60 is 7500 minutes. You have 123 tapes to digitize?

123 tapes at 12.95 each is 1,592.85 worth of tape that you purchased.

So, you bought one and a half thousand dollars worth of video tape, and
there's no money to buy a 500 Gig hard drive?




> Is iMovie HD enough, since it is so easy --- or do I really need to
> learn FC Pro HD? (Also will the FC Express version do instead?)

If your going to learn Express, just go FCP then.


> Also, any recommendations for importing 125 Hours of 1080i HDV footage?

Get a HDV deck, and get used to many many nights of changing tapes in
capturing.


> Should I just downgrade it to regular DV? I heard Apple changes 1 HOUR
> of HDV into almost 50GBs per hour! That means 6.25TBs just for the
> footage itself!

HDV is actually highly compressed MPEG2 video compression at the exact
same bit rate of DV at 3.5 mb/s. Hence the reason why you can use
minidv tapes. Upcompresing it doesn't do anything for the quality.
Whether your working with DV or HDV, the same numbers apply.

-Richard

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