HD Filming

I am switching to shooting Video in HD. Upon glance, the video is very clear and sharp, the colors too are noticeably deeper, more saturated, and bright.

The difference is very pleasing to the eye.

The draw backs, my older version of Final Cur Pro (2 years) doesn't recognize my camera, however, the iMovie HD does. So I have to use this to capture the video clip. Then I need to transfer it back to Final Cut for compressing to the web, because iM is designed for DVD burning. I could use QuickTime Pro, but why should I when it is embedded into Final Cut?

Now here is the time lag. The video is very big size, 10 Gigs. However, I only have 2.1/2 Gigs of RAM in my G5, so the real time rendering doesn't happen as it did with just straight up DV. I have to render it first, that's 15 minutes. Thereafter, too keep the resolution as best as possible, I am using the new QuicKTime code H.264 with second a pass encoding, in the past it has been done by using Sorensen 3 codecs. I did a one minute practice run, it took me 15 minutes.

I am trying a 7 minute clip and looks like an hour plus. Still running. Good thing I have house chores to do.

I tried this codec when DK first went online, however, at the time, most people couldn't download QuickTime 7 except Mac users, like me. Now QT7 is more common and is the standard for compressing for the web.

This is taking time, over an hour. Maybe I should up my RAM to 6 Gigs and or go back to Sorensen. I will practice with this clip and see what works best.

-xxx's

DK