Primordial Ooze

When I first mentioned that I got a new Sony HDR-HC3 high definition camcorder, I promised that I would follow up with more information. Well, after a long weekend of shooting and experimenting, I can finally do that. This post is inspired by my friend Pete who reminded me I promised to do this.

UPDATE: So, it's like two months later and I'm finally getting around to finishing this post.

The Short Take

In short, the MacBook seems capable of serving as a hi-definition video editing platform. I was able to capture, edit, and create DVD's from the high-definition footage taken from my Sony HDR-HC3. This news doesn't come without caveats, though. The primary being that you will certainly need massive amounts of high-speed external storage to make the setup useful and fun.

I'll break my experience down into these sections:

• My hardware/software setup
• Storage issues
• Display and work flow issues
• Dealing with interlacing
• DVD authoring
• Internet distribution

The Tools

Here is my rig, from soup to nuts:

• Black MacBook with Intel Core Duo, 1GB RAM and 80GB 5200-rpm SATA drive - $1599
• 500GB Lacie BigDisk Extreme d2 - $320
• Sony HDR-HC3 - $1500
• Dell 24“ wide-screen monitor $750
• Apple Mini-DVI to VGA adapter - $19.99
• Quicktime 7 Pro - $29.99

The 24” monitor is obviously very optional, but any kind of second monitor makes editing easier.

Storage

Regular MiniDV camcorders record in a format known as DV. Hi-definition camcorders record in a format known as HDV. Both are lossy formats, but they are as high-quality as you can practically get out of your camcorder. The cool thing about HDV is that you can use commonly found MiniDV tapes. HDV devices can also play back regular DV tapes, which I'm sad to say was the impetus for my purchase of the Sony HDR-HC3. I could have gone and gotten a $300 cheapo camcorder but I tend to solve problems with a sledgehammer.

My MacBook comes with a 80GB 5400-rpm SATA drive. I didn't shoot a full hour of video, but I believe I shot approximately 50 minutes of HDV at 1080i and the file sizes add up to approximately 20GB. That looks like an hour of HDV will be roughly double DV's 12GB per hour of storage. This is simply not feasible within the constraints of a 80GB drive since I only have 20GB left for my OS, pictures, and other installed applications. However, the drive did seem capable of the sustained transfer.

To solve this problem (with a sledgehammer). I went and bought a 500GB Lacie BigDisk Extreme. This is a striped drive (RAID 0) that seemed to meet the vague performance specs that were floating around in my head. I opened the package to find a pretty big unit. The picture makes you think it's just big enough to enclose a 3.5“ hard drive but my guess is that it houses two vertically oriented drives. Now perhaps you can picture the size of the beast.

The advantage of a drive like a Lacie BigDisk is that it's cooled and the disks are managed properly. They power down when not in use and sleep when the computer sleeps. I'll report if this is not the case but the manual says it will happen!

UPDATE: The Lacie disk has been running like a champ for two months. It has a smart power-on feature which kicks in when my computer sleeps, I dismount the volume, or I shut down. In all of these cases, the drive goes into standby and basically shuts down. This limits the wear and tear on the drive. Only time will tell if this ultimately means I'll have reliable storage for 2+ years (which is all I'd ask out of an external drive).

Setup of this disk was brainless. I was interested to see that it was pre-formatted with OS X's HFS+. Windows 2000/XP users can opt to reformat to NTFS or use the included Windows drivers that let XP users read/write HFS+ volumes. Hmmm, wouldn't that be good for Boot Camp users, too? Too bad Microsoft makes it hard/impossible to do the reverse for NTFS.

Even at 500GB, I still won't be able to store many MiniDV tapes on the drive. More than likely I'll keep some of the best clips at full-resolution and encode the others at a reduced size and more aggressive encoding like H.264. If I store 960x540, this should still be more than enough raw data to make a crystal-clear DVD at 720x480.

Display and work flow issues

Playback of the files isn't always smooth but I'm bearing with it since 7 out of 10 files do play back flawlessly. The occasional stutters don't seem to affect the final products such as a streamed video or a DVD.

Dealing with interlacing

The Sony HC3 records 1080i, which is an interlaced format. This is very visible on my LCD display but looks AMAZING on my HDTV via the camera's component out since my HDTV is a CRT and naturally de-interlaces the video. On the LCD, the interlacing takes the form of noise that resembles horizontal lines around fast-moving elements of the movie. Quicktime allows me to automatically de-interlace this or view only a single field to eliminate the problem. However, you lose a bit of sharpness when this is done. Simply old down the Apple key + J, select the video track, and click on either ”single field“ or ”de-interlace“ in the ”visual settings“ tab.

Getting rid of the interlacing even at lower resolutions should be easy, but it took a while before I was able to get all of the settings right. I've been using the iPOD setting in QuickTime to write files for distribution since it ”just works“ and yields good quality files.

iMovie HD

My biggest gripe with this pre-installed application is that it rips all of the video into your iMovie file. If you want to use the same clip in a different project, the entire clip is copied. This can chew up your hard drive like crazy.

I understand why Apple did it. Most people don't create multiple projects using the same clips. To share files would likely yield to all kinds of relinking logic that would drive most novice users absolutely insane. So, I feel Apple took the simpler route and just made the program easy to use... ignoring file space efficiency.

For me, I want a library of clips available on my drive so I can make montages and stuff like that. For now, that just doesn't seem possible but perhaps I can experiment with file system symbolic links. Perhaps I can work around the limitation that way. Even if I do find a workflow that uses symbolic links, it sounds like a lot of work.

If you're able to accept this kind of limitation, though, you get a lot of power in iMovie HD and it's built into OS X. Combine that with iDVD and you can basically make DVD's with almost no effort.

In my recent trip to Florida, I brought a few blank DVD's since I suspected I'd want to burn a few DVD's for my family. As it turns out, I was able to burn 3-4 disc with photo and HD footage of the weekend as it happened. It was easy, fast, and my family was really amazed.

It just works.

Performance

There are two metrics of performance for me.

First, can I save the HD footage to my drive without dropping frames. Yes, I was able to save video either to the internal 5400rpm 80GB drive and to my Lacie external disk.

Second, I am able to convert captured footage to iPod or DVD format in a reasonable time period. Ripping video takes time and it takes a lot of time on my MacBook. If I'm rendering a 2-minute clip, no big deal. If I want to rip our trip to the Bronx Zoo, I basically need to go to bed and let the MacBook work all night.

The Intel Code Duo chip found in my MacBook is still just a mobile chip and has some serious speed limitations for this kind of intensive processing. I suspect that video conversion would be 2-5x faster on a new Mac Pro with the ”woodcrest“ chips or the just-announced MacBook Pro's with Intel Core 2 Duo chipset.

Still, I rarely have very long clips that I work with so everything I do is within my tolerance levels.

Conclusion

I could write all night long about how well all of this stuff works. In short, HD on a MacBook is a reality. If you have a MacBook Pro, especially one of the newer ones with Intel Core 2 Duo, then you'll have an even better experience particularly when it comes to converting videos to iPod format, H.264 720p high-quality QuickTime files, and DVD burning.

My advice is to stopp mucking around with video on a PC. When it's time to upograde to a new machine, get a damn Mac and be happier for it. If you really miss your Windows apps, get Parallels, install Boot Camp, or wait for VMWare's workstation for the Mac (due soon).

There is really no other way to go, but that's just me and my opinions speaking.