Edius - Xdcam Issue

[videochris]

I've been using Edius from version 1 right up to the latest version 4.51c. My system is a twin Xeon 3.2 with 2 gig of ram and using the NX PCI card.

I use the Sony PDW-350 camera, and have been transferring the footage to Edius using the FAM mode and XD-Cam select.

I have a issue with Edius handling XDCam footage.

Downconversion (HD to SD)

Shooting in HD mode on the camera, using the CAMERA to downconvert the footage to Edius using I-Link it produces a really crisp SD image.
However, when transferring the footage using FAM and XD-Cam select in Edius, Using Edius to downconvert to SD the picture is inferior to the image produced by the camera in downconvert (inferior - sharpness and definition reduced, chrominance level reduced, and luminance level reduced).

The obvious answer would be to continue to use the camera however, occasionely Edius droppes the link to the camera causing the transfer to stop.
The result of this means that the footage transfer has to be constantly monitored.

I hope this makes sense to somebody who can help.

Cheers

Chris

[Aristotelis]

In many cases the proper way to downconvert is to do the edit within an HD project and then export to SD with procoder 2/3 using the relevant colorspace convert filter...

[RonnieMartin]

give us more detail on how to export project from HD 16x9 to SD 4x3.

Thanks

Ronnie

[Andy]

why not export the native HD edit back to disc (if that is possible in Edius) then create your SD master using the camera's firewire downconvert (or even better SD-SDI from an F70 if you have the option)

[xeberdee]

why not export the native HD edit back to disc (if that is possible in Edius) then create your SD master using the camera's firewire downconvert (or even better SD-SDI from an F70 if you have the option)

There's nothing native about Edius I believe. The more processing you do on the file in software, the more noise it will produce, so a conversion from the native XDCAM long gop into the canopus codec for processing (which I believe happens) and then an export back to XDCAM HD via the file output will always look worse than the camera doing a straight downconversion from the native codec over firewire.

Can somebody from Grass Valley confirm if I understand this correctly?

[Andy]

the monitoring in Edius is certainly via a realtime conversion of the raw XDCAM HD data, but my understanding is that an export looks at and processes the raw data directly, so doesn't pass through an intermediate codec unless the data has been processed in some way ... in which case the calculations would be handled in an uncompressed data state
whats more, with segment encoding, any unprocessed segments of data would be exported exactly as the original

... just my guess

[SRsupport]

There's nothing native about Edius I believe. The more processing you do on the file in software, the more noise it will produce, so a conversion from the native XDCAM long gop into the canopus codec for processing (which I believe happens) and then an export back to XDCAM HD via the file output will always look worse than the camera doing a straight downconversion from the native codec over firewire.

Can somebody from Grass Valley confirm if I understand this correctly?

If I am not wrong XDCAM HD is edited in its native format. You don't capture XDcam you import it.

[pjsssss]

I am not 100% sure, but my understandig s the same as Steve's. XDCAM is imported. Files are viewed via proxy during scrubbing but the native file is shown when scrubbing stops. I would expect export to be the same.

[GrassValley_BH]

XDCAM footage is processed natively, just as all other clips are in EDIUS.
Unless you explicitly convert footage to Canopus HQ during a capture (applies only to HDV), it remains a strict decode, process, display chain and the footage is decoded from its native source.

[Rusty]

So for XDCam newbies like me, this begs the question of native XDCam files and if my PC can handle them.

Is there a source for them? I'm particularly interested in 1080p. I'd also like to know if the files are stored in multiple formats, as they are in the Sony HVRDR60, or (because the EX1 only shoots HD) are they down-converted by Edius.

Will Edius Pro open these files or do I need Broadcast?

Rusty

[GrassValley_BH]

You need EDIUS Broadcast for XDCAM anything.

As for compression complexity (how "difficult" it is to handle), it's somewhere between HDV and DVCPRO HD.

If you have a modern 2+ core system , you should be good.

[STORMDAVE]

The 35mbps setting (They call it HQ??) should be a bit easier than 25mbps XDCAM HD/HDV on a system