Editing HD Videos
Editing your HD Videos
Making high definition videos is the new trend, the colors, the appereance, it looks great!. However many new consumers seem dumbfounded on the issue of editing high definition footage. Editing HD Video is pretty similar to the same basic video editing techniques that you use to edit your videos, but there is one catch, the format that HD video comes in is sometimes not recognizable by video editing programs. Before we start, did you know that HD Video has been around since the 1980s? but only recently did consumers begin purchasing HDTV systems and HD production software. Full HD has set standards of resolution, frame rate, and aspect ratio. These can be seen below.
Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Interlaced frames: 25 (50i), 29.97 (59.94i), 30 (60i)
Progressive frames: 23.976, 24, 29.97, 30
Recording formats for HD
Today there are four main HD recording formats that you should be aware of, this relates back to the capturing phase of HD video and video editing which we will discuss a bit later. I am going to try to keep this as simple and as short as possible so here they are.
HDCAM. - The Sony HDCAM format supports 1080 resolutions at frame rates of 24p, 25p, 50i, and 60i. HDCAM stores the video at 1440 x 1080, which is a 33 percent reduction horizontally from 1920. It also uses a unique color sampling of 17:6:6, which means that HDCAM has only half the color detail of other HD formats. HDCAM is 4.4:1 compressed and is 8-bit, but supports 10-bit input and output.
D5-HD. - The Panasonic D5-HD format uses the D5 tape shell. Unlike HDCAM, D5-HD can do 720/60p, 1080/24p, 1080/60i, and even 1080/30p. D5-HD compresses at 4:1 in 8-bit mode and 5:1 in 10-bit mode, and supports 8 channels of audio.
DVCPRO-HD. - This Panasonic HD format, sometimes called D7-HD, is based on the same tape shell used for DVCAM and DVCPRO. D7-HD does 720/60p and 1080/60i, with 1080/24p in development. It uses 6.7:1 compression, and supports 10-bit input and output per channel. DVCPRO-HD supports 8 channels of audio.
HDV. - This format is one of a number of emerging formats that are being used in lower-cost cameras. HDV was introduced with JVC’s groundbreaking professional consumer (prosumer) HD camera, the JY-HD10, which records highly compressed MPEG-2 on a mini DV tape. This is the most common format that is going to be used, you are most likely going to be recording in this.
Note >> When you are capturing video make sure to pick the corresponding HD video format
Okay, we got all that out of the way now we just need to cover one more small topic before we can jump right in and start editing out HD footage and that is the amount of space HD video takes up on your computer. Below are the storage requirments compressed and uncompressed HD video footage.
Compressed formats Data rate (mbps) GB Per hour of Video
720 x 480 DV 4:1:1 25 11
720 x 480 DV50 4:2:2 50 22
HD-DVCPRO 100 44
Uncompressed 10-bit formats
720 x 486 4:2:0 210 92
1280 x 720/24p 4:2:0 332 146
1280 x 720/60p 4:2:0 818 364
1920 x 1080/24p 4:2:0 746 328
1920 x 1080/60i 4:2:0 932 410
I bet by now you are begging for me to get to the point of the actual video editing, but nevertheless I believe it’s always good to have some extra knowledge about a subject, in this case HD video. Until recently many consumer video editing software applications were not able to support HD video editing, capturing, importing or anything along those lines. So that is the first step to editing HD video find a software that DOES support HD video capturing or importing etc. Here are a few programs that I recommend that are user friendly and support hd video editing.
Pinnacle Studio 11
Sony Vegas 8
Apple iMovie 08
Nero Vision 4
Cyberlink power director 6
Before you start capturing or editing HD video you should make sure your computer is up to speed, your disks are defragmented and all that, because otherwise you will experience some severe lag and frame drops when capturing.
Storing HD Video Onto Your Computer
A question that many newbies have when it comes to HD video editing or video editing in general is how do I retrieve the video off my camera. Something to note if you haven’t purchased a camera yet, make sure to buy minidv or hdd if you buy cameras that record onto disk you are going to have a much harder time getting footage off the camera.
Okay, so lets say you are using a minidv or a hdd camera which as far as I know is what all HD cameras record too, you should have your camcorder plugged into your computer and IF it has any software, install it. Then you want to open up your video editing program, for example sony vegas and go to file > import and find your camera and import your hdd files. That is for cameras that record on to their hard drive. If you are capturing video (which I recommend) it is also very simple, just plug in your camera via usb or firewire and in your editing program, it should be under file select capture and pick what kind of HD video you are going to be capturing (mentioned above), pick your destination and press the capture button. Your video will start capturing and saving to your computer from your minidv tape. You can then just import that video into your editing program and edit it from there.
I think I covered most there is about HD video editing and formatting, if I forgot something feel free to contact me or leave a comment.
