Hey there Power Trio Studios! Noobie member here with a big question on how you guys handle capture, edits, and delivery of your HDV projects.
I just saw a bunch of your videos on vimeo, and was absolutely blown away with the HD quality and content of the vids. I can never get my vids to look that good, and I was wondering if my workflow was hindering the final quality. Especially since we both use HV30's and seemingly work through Final Cut Pro.
I too am working on a feature length project with the HV30, and planned on delivering through DVD, which I see is the same plan you guys are doing with your films.
I'd really appreciate any tips you film gurus could share haha, thanks a bunch! ;D
Woah!
Tim Tebow has joined the forums!!! Power Trio Studios must be moving up the popularity charts after all ;D
But in all seriousness, whether you're "The" Tim Tebow or not, thanks for joining our discussion forums! Your membership is greatly appreciated!
In regards to your question, here's a breakdown on how I handle the majority of footage we shoot here at Power Trio Studios:
1) As you've noted, we shoot primarily on a Canon HV30. The settings are usually placed on the HDV 24p frame rate and Cinemode settings within the camera. This allows our footage to get the look of 35mm footage (frame rate wise), and gives a good neutral picture that will make for easier color grading during the editing process.
2) When it comes to capturing, it's extremely crucial you have your Final Cut Pro application adjusted to the right settings. This will save yourself a lot of time in the long run, and can equate to a better resulting project. Since you're using the Canon HV30 like we are here, I suggest you use these settings I already have applied on my editing workstation (granted you don't already have it set this way).
Once in Final Cut Pro, click Audio/Video settings. You'll get a summary dialogue box that pops up, with a series of drop down fields you can adjust. Set your fields to this:
Sequence Preset: Apple ProRes 422 1440x1080 24p 48 kHz
Capture Preset: HDV-Apple ProRes 422
Device Control Preset: HDV Firewire
click "ok", and get to uploading your footage! (you should notice a change in the capturing process, this is a good thing).
Essentially, what this setup allows me to do, is instantly convert my HDV footage to the Apple ProRes 422 format upon capturing. The reason for the conversion, is because HDV an absolute nightmare to work with natively if you plan on adding effects of any kind (transitions, color effects, titles). Most video editors such as FCP also have a hard time rendering HDV footage when you're ready to export. A 5 minute HDV project with effects, could easily sky rocket to a 6 hour rendering time depending on your hardware. That is simply unacceptable.
With Apple ProRes, the format is much easier to work with, and rendering times are much more sane. In earlier versions of Final Cut Studio 2, you had to upload all your footage in HDV, and then export it to Compressor for conversion. With the method I'm suggesting, you can bypass that all together, and simply take your HDV footage to ProRes right at the capturing step. That will easily save you an hour or two of unnecessary waiting.
3) After I've got the ProRes version of my footage ready to go, then comes all the joys of the editing process (including audio work in both Soundtrack Pro and occasionally Logic Studio). I'm sure you've got your own process for that, so I'm at a loss on suggestions to offer for this part.
4). When the video is done to satisfaction, next of course is the exportation process. All of this really depends on where the destination of the video is headed, and what kind of settings they allow videos to be uploaded in.
For Vimeo, here are my compressor settings (in picture format, because wording this is way to confusing):
1. Choose the Quicktime H.264 format from the settings drop-down bar when you first enter Compressor.
2. Click on the Video "settings" button
3. Inside, match these settings
4. Move to the Audio "settings" button, and proceed to match these settings
5. Move on to Frame Controls, and turn them "on" by clicking the gear looking button. Proceed to match these settings
6. Finally, in the Geometry settings, I find these work best for Vimeo upload:
After that, you should be able to ship it out for export. I should note, that this method will take awhile to render at these settings. H.264 does not lend itself well to quick render times, and is one of the cons to using the format. However, it's final quality is really fantastic.
As for DVD, that's very easy. Simply apply one of the preset DVD settings from the Compressor tab (depending on how long your project is 0-90 min or 0-120 min). I tend to choose the "Best" setting of the options they give you, for obvious reasons. Once the video and audio files have been rendered out, just take them into DVD Studio Pro and go from there!
Whew! I think that's about it! Hopefully that made some sense, as I know all this can be very confusing. Feel free to respond with any questions or needs for clarification on something I said.
Cheers!
Tim Tebow has joined the forums!!! Power Trio Studios must be moving up the popularity charts after all ;D 
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