Hello,

Since I switched from CS3 to AVID, I have all my archive in HDVSPlit generated M2T files.

I have been told that it would be better to capture all clips all over again with AVID, because of quality issues. I want to publish a DVD, no broadcasting or any very serious stuff. I wonder if I can do this based on the lower quality m2t files. I was importing some clips in AVID MC and that went smoothly.

-Would this result in a quality comparable or better then with CS3?

-Would it give problems with a large project (half an hour or more)? I switched to AVID because I had major problems with a large project in CS3. I don't want to have the same problems.

-Would it be wise to mix m2t files with AVID generated files?

Thanks,

Rob

Is there no answer to my questions? I was doing an extensive search on the forum, but did not find the required info. If you know of some link I might have missed, please redirect me.

Thanks

Hi Rob,

I think part of why you're not getting much of a response is because not many people are going to have followed a similar workflow.  Not to say yours is incorrect, just that it's not very common.  At any rate, I'll answer the question I know the answer to and hopefully others will chime in on the rest.

butterfly:

Would it give problems with a large project (half an hour or more)? I switched to AVID because I had major problems with a large project in CS3. I don't want to have the same problems.

One of Avid's strengths is media management.  I know people who have kept large projects on their systems for years and not once lost a piece of media.  I've worked for large broadcasters with terrabytes of shared storage across multiple Avid suites, and their media is always available.  In short, whether you recapture all your archive material or just import the m2t files, I wouldn't worry about large project management with Avid.

Hopefully someone who knows something about m2t files will chime in regarding quality issues.

good luck,
Carl

I am a newcomer to Avid, so take that into account.  That said, I was having a lot of problems getting files into MC and then someone directed me to HDVSplit which worked wonderfully.  I have seen that a number of people in this forum use HDVSplit.  The files I work with are typically 60 minutes long.  The imported files seem fine to me.

HD m2t files works well to import into Avid, it is the same type of files as you get when you export HDV-transport stream out of Avid.

My workflow with these files would be to first pick the parts that I want to use and after that do a consolidate-transcode to DNxHD to only get the media I want to use for my work transcoded, this to save disc space.

Your source clips are HDV, so there will be no "better quality" possible than what you get with HDVSplit, because HDVSplit copies the footage from camera to harddrive bit by bit, not touching the data at all. Conversion to other formats won't increase quality even if the other format was less compressed or even 1:1, and re-capturing the clips from camera with media composer is no different.

Transcoding to other formats may however overcome the limitations of long-gop material, e.g. you can't create qt reference files from long-gop clips (you will probably want to do this after editing when you follow the usual "creating a dvd" workflows). But even then it's quicker to only transcode the final sequence instead of all source material.

Many thanks for all recommendations. I am happy with your opinions, because it will save me enormous amount of work.

Still, I wonder why:

1 a professional editor advised me to recapture everything from tape within AVID

2 once I imported the m2t (with HDVSplit generated) files into FCP, the program gave a message that these m2t format files will not giv ethe best quality results. Is that just arrogance of the Apple school?

Of course the professional editor was right - from his point of view. The larger your project is, the more you will benefit from the advanced media management capabilities of MC, e.g. working with low quality clips in first cut and later recapturing only the used parts in high def, etc. For small projects without the need to involve a number of additional tools (where qt reference files would come handy) your approach is as good as the other, especially as the clips have already been captured.

Again from some point of view FCP may be right - of course HDV is highly compressed and doesn't offer optimum quality...   ...compared to the native, uncompressed footage you could have captured via hdmi directly off the camera's chip. But once the footage is on (hdv-) tape there's no way to get more quality then what was stored there. Or maybe FCP complained because you tried to import thin-raster clips into full-hd project, yet again there's nothing you could do different _after_ the film is on tape.

The FCP message means that currently used wrapper (MPEG2 transport stream) is not quite usable for quick work. It's much better to rewrap M2T to QuickTime using the ClipWrap. Especially when the transport stream is damaged the rewrapping is necessary.

PP

Would that increase stabilty of AMC?

How is that done rewrapping? There's nothing about it in AMC HELP.

Each time you fast-import m2t clips into MC the video-data is essentially re-wrapped from MPEG2 container into MXF container, so the re-wrapping happens without anyway. But i doubt that re-wrapping would increase stability, at least not unless the provided container is broken. Only conversion to a short-gop or gopless media format in a MXF container would reduce decoding complexity during editing (and thus reduce system demands, especially when video tracks are stacked high on each other).

Hello macjaeger,

You were mentioning editing in SD and later recapturing the HDV clips. Is there some standard way to do this. I imagine that it would be possible to import m2t clips in AMC and during or after import transform them to SD? And then later AMC would be able to relink the HDV source clips easily. Or must I recapture everything from tape in SD format?

And what about effects and transitions, they must then be recalculated all the way I suppose?

Rob

Actually I wasn't talking about SD when I mentioned "lower quality" clips, I was thinking of different bitrate versions of the same resolution - sorry if I mislead you. MC has a very powerfull media management, you can rather easily re-link clips used in a sequence to other versions of the same shots, allowing you to do a rough cut from highly compressed "preview" clips even in the field on a laptop and later re-capturing the same footage in optimum quality for final cut and rendering at your workstation. The process is described in the manuals much better than I ever could put it in my own words, especially as I don't use that kind of workflow regularily.

You can mix SD and HDV, and you can re-link from SD- to HDV-clips - but I'd rather work with the designated output resolution all the time, it helps keeping things simple, especially when titles or other positioned effects are involved. Of course all effects need to be rendered again after you re-link the clips, but you'd do this anyway in the final steps of your workflow, i guess.

we have SD m2t files which we want to import into avid, is there any way? with HD no problem... but trying to import it into an 25i project gives you the message: "This MPEG2 Format is not supported". Does anyone know how to solve this?

Hi,

What happens if you import into an HD project and then open those bins from within your SD project?

ciao,
Carl