User Guide

Chapter 1 Working With HDV 15
 HDV editing using Apple Intermediate Codec: This method allows you to capture your
HDV footage using an intermediate, high-quality codec without temporal
compression. Using an I-frame–only codec avoids some of the decoding overhead
required for HDV footage.
The disadvantage of this workflow is that more scratch disk capacity is required for
your footage, and you cannot output HDV to tape without first re-encoding your
entire sequence back to native HDV. If your sequence is long, the re-encoding
process can be time-consuming. For more information, see “HDV Apple Intermediate
Codec Editing Workflow” on page 28.
Native HDV Editing Workflow
The steps for capturing, editing, and outputting HDV in Final Cut Pro are almost
identical to the workflow used for DV, but there are several important differences. The
differences between the HDV and DV workflows are highlighted in the steps below.
Step 1: Connect your HDV camcorder to your computer via FireWire
This step is similar to connecting a DV device via FireWire.
Step 2: Choose an HDV Easy Setup
Choose the HDV Easy Setup that corresponds to your HDV format.
Step 3: Log your footage and capture it to your scratch disk
This step is much like logging and capturing DV and other video formats. The
differences are:
 Some options and controls are different in the Log and Capture window when you
capture HDV. For example, you can resize the window in real time.
 When capturing HDV, scene detection is always enabled. A scene break is embedded
data on tape that indicates where the camcorder was stopped and then started
again. Whenever Final Cut Pro detects a scene break in your incoming HDV footage,
a new media file and corresponding clip are created.
Step 4: Edit your HDV clips into a sequence
Editing HDV is similar to editing other formats in Final Cut Pro. However, there are
some differences:
 You cannot view native MPEG-2 HDV video on an external HDV device connected via
FireWire. As an alternative, you can use the Digital Cinema Desktop Preview option.
Important: The only way to output HDV video to an HDV device via FireWire is to use
the Print to Video command.