Hdvtraining.com

Yes. HDV is compliant with the ITU BT.709 standard, while SD is compliant with the more strict ITU BT.601 standard. There are several sites on the web that very clearly explain the somewhat difficult concept of ITU BT.709 and how it differs from what you may currently be familiar with. The HDTV standard is ITU BT.709 regardless of where you live in the world.

Austin posted his tests (440 MB) comparing the 1 year old HDV HV20 vs the 6 months old AVCHD HG10 and brand new AVCHD HF10. The new HF10 can record full 1080p at its highest quality mode at 17 mbps, compared to just 1440

HDV in 1080i format is the same bitrate (25Mbps) as DV is. However, depending on the system, you may experience slowdown on the system, depending on whether you’re editing Transport Streams or with an intermediary codec such as the Cineform Connect HD codec. As mentioned above, HDV editing experiences can be just about the same as editing DV. A reasonably fast computer can manage the bitstream without any trouble.

The Transport Streams/TS files from the camera are MPEG data, containing I, B, and P frames. The nature of the long GOP (group of pictures) format causes generational loss during the encoding/decoding, not to mention that it’s very hard on the processor and very slow.

Of course you can. With the Cineform ConnectHD codec, you will have the 29.97 or 24p with 3:2 pulldown that you are already used to. It will edit quickly and easily. There is a lot of speculation about this, but the truth is, with an upper end processor and a fair amount of RAM, you should notice little difference between editing HDV and DV. And depending on the application you’re using, you may not need the additional RAM.

If you attempt to do very fast pans with HDV, due to the way the frames are generated with MPEG and GOP, you may see motion artifacts. However, this is not nearly the issue as it’s often painted to be. It’s a good idea to rent, borrow, or download images from a website to see for yourself, how HDV works with fast motion.

Maybe. You can monitor HDV one of two ways. You can view it on a computer monitor that is at least 1900 x 1200, or you can use an external HD television monitor. If you want to use an external monitor, you’ll need to use an HD card similar to the MyHD card from MIT systems, or something similar. Since HD will be viewed on plasma and LCD screens in the future, you’ll want to view on a monitor similar to what the footage will be viewed on so that color correction, etc are accurate.

You can view HDV in your NLE application on a lower resolution computer monitor, and likely be reasonably accurate, but for critical video, “reasonably accurate” just isn’t good enough.

HDV is captured in exactly the same method as you capture DV. Using a capture application like the ones offered by Cineform, you’ll capture media, and either conform it to the intermediary on the fly, or conform it to the intermediary later. Because HDV also has timecode embedded in the file, Batch Capturing and previewing scenes for capture should stay the same. A free capture application is available here.