HDV is the New DV

CATEGORIES: Columns, May/June 2005 | Rod Harlan | June 05, 2005

On March 1, 2005, Adobe released a free HDV plug-in for Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5. The press release went out to all of the DV sites and magazine outlets, and almost immediately, we started getting emails here at the Digital Video Professionals Association (www.dvpa.com) asking one simple question: "What's HDV?"

Turns out this simple question wasn't so simple to answer. Because Adobe Premiere has millions of installed users, skill levels range from beginning video production students to veteran broadcast engineers. Since I didn't have anything prepared, I ended up giving a brief description to people and then telling them to Google the word so they could research the term for themselves and come to an understanding that was commensurate with their level of expertise. Long story short, that ended up leading to more emails and more confusion for most people, mainly because there's a lot of misinformation out there on the Web about the HDV format. This article is my attempt to clarify what HDV is and is not.

What you need to know

If all you care about is learning what HDV means for casual conversation, here's your one line: HDV is an MPEG-2 compressed high-defi nition video format. Now this isn't the best defi nition in the world for such a complex piece of technology…but it's good enough for parties. In a nutshell, HDV is the new DV.

If you're the kind of person who likes to know how something comes to be so that you can also talk about its history, here's what you need to know: On September 30, 2003, the large multinational companies of Canon Inc., Sharp Corporation, Sony Corporation, and Victor Company of Japan, Limited (JVC) announced that they had come up with the name "HDV" to refer to the specifi cations that realize the recording and playback of high-defi nition video on a DV cassette tape. (The four companies had originally proposed the basic specifi cations for the format in July 2003.) HDV was to be a consumer high-defi nition video format. At present, there are 43 companies supporting the HDV format (including Adobe and Apple), and you can fi nd a complete list of these companies at the offi cial HDV format website, www.hdv-info.org.

For those of you who care about the more techie aspects of a digital video format: HDV is a 19-megabit-per-second MPEG-2 transport stream that records to existing standard DV format digital videocassettes. HDV is a native 16:9 aspect ratio at a resolution of 1280 pixels wide by 720 pixels tall. Supported frame rates are 60i (frames-per-second interlaced), 30p (frames-per-second progressive), 50i, and 25p. And in this case, the term "transport stream" refers to a FireWire cable (IEEE 1394), which is what you hook up between your camera/deck and your computer to transfer your video from one device to another.

Form factor

For now, HDV tapes are in the form factor of the popular Mini-DV shell. You can even use regular DV tapes (instead of expensive HDV branded ones) in your HDV camera, although some people swear you'll experience more drop-outs if you do. However, the DV tape form factor may soon be a thing of the past; at this writing, Panasonic is rumored to be unveiling a Flash media-based HDV camera at the NAB Expo in April (see image below).

The misconception

Many people even believe that HDV footage shot under optimal lighting looks as good as the HD footage shot on a much more expensive HD camera, such as a Panasonic VariCam HD Cinema. I would respectfully disagree and argue that HDV and HD formats are not the same. HDV is a video format that uses the HD line resolution (1080i or 720p) in a highly compressed format, specifically the MPEG-2 transport stream. This creates a compressed data stream that's small enough (roughly 25 Mbps @1080i, 19Mbps@720p) to fit on a standard DV tape. But HDV doesn't store all of the resolution information that full-resolution HD video has to offer. Regular uncompressed HD has a resolution of 1920x1080. A similar HDV spec would only go as high as 1440x1080. That alone is a loss of 480 lines of resolution.

I like to compare regular HD footage to HDV footage the way I used to describe regular uncompressed video to the MPEG compressed footage found on DVDs. An uncompressed video file is very large when compared to the highly compressed MPEG-2 format found on DVDs, even though they can both be the same resolution of 720x480. You'll find a similar relationship between full HD video and HDV video that has been compressed. Does DVD quality video look good? You betcha! And so does HDV footage. But it's not quite as perfect-looking as full uncompressed HD video.

The Premiere conclusion

Which brings us back to the new HDV plug-in for Adobe Premiere Pro. Premiere is now able to handle real-time editing of high-definition video using the same IEEE 1394 (iLink, FireWire) connector natively supported in Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5. This plug-in provides direct HDV format device control and video capture without the need for additional hardware. HDV-format projects in Adobe Premiere Pro can then be delivered for high-defi nition broadcast, film prints, high-defi nition Windows Media files, and high-quality DVDs. Does it look as good as the best quality DV? No. It's better! That's why HDV is the new DV.

iMovie 5 and Final Cut Express HD do capture HDV natively and lay back to tape in the HDV format. Final Cut Pro 4.5 HD does not. You read that correctly. Even though it has the HD letters on the end of its name, Final Cut Pro 4.5 HD does not edit natively in the HDV format. To get around this limitation (until Apple releases an update) you can install either iMovie 5 or Final Cut Express HD onto your same system that has FCP 4.5 HD. Installing either of these applications installs the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC), which decodes the MPEG-2 encoding performed by the HDV camera. You can then capture your footage with either iMovie 5 or Final Cut Express HD. To get the footage to work in FCP 4.5 HD, you would create a custom sequence based on the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) and then import your footage that you had previously captured with one of the other applications. Hopefully, you won't have to use this workaround for very long. I imagine Apple will soon announce an update to FCP 4.5 HD (they may already have by the time you read this).

Rod "Mac Daddy" Harlan is the Executive Director of the Digital Video Professionals Association (www.dvpa.com). The DVPA Online University has more than 40,000 streaming video training fi les for all of the Adobe applications (as well as all Microsoft, Apple, and Macromedia applications). Rod can be reached at rod@dvpa.com.