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[This article has been updated. See boldface type below.] Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 has the ability to handle HDV footage natively, and we're going to take a look at how that compares to the standard DV workflow. For this review, Adobe furnished one of its Adobe OpenHD Certified Solutions, a Dell Precision Workstation 670 loaded with Adobe Creative Suite Production Studio software. For its Certified Solutions program, Adobe partnered with companies such as Dell, Matrox, Intel, NVidia, AMD, Ciprico and HP to ensure that whatever hardware you get will work seamlessly with Adobe software. Let's take the certified configuration out for spin and see how it performs.
Our Adobe OpenHD Certified Solution test machine is one of the lower-cost setups: a Dell Precision Workstation 670 with 3GB of RAM, dual 3.6GHz Xeon processors, an NVidia Quadro FX 3450 dual-DVI graphics card with 256MB of memory, a 160GB system disk and a 500GB drive for the video, both running at 7200RPM. The system arrived complete with a 19-inch Dell 1907FP monitor and the excellent LogicKeyboard with keycaps specifically configured for Adobe Premiere Pro. The total cost as tested was $4395, plus the cost of Adobe Creative Suite Production Studio Standard at $799, bringing the total to $5,194 for a high-definition workstation. I would recommend adding at least one 19-inch Dell 1907FP monitor (additional $309) to this configuration, and in a best-case scenario, two 30-inch Dell monitors at $2199 each (they will work with the NVIDIA Quadro FX 3450 graphics card).
We decided to follow the traditional DV workflow with one key difference: instead of the DV deck to input our footage, we substituted a Sony HVR-M10U HDV deck, a fairly standard piece of equipment that costs just north of $2000. Even though the M10U deck is not on the certified list of Adobe hardware, we figured that since it shares transport controls with the Sony Z1U camcorder (which is on that list), all would work well.
Wrong. The HVR-M10U appeared to be incompatible with Adobe Premiere Pro. When we plugged it in, nothing happened -- we were able to use the transport controls in the capture window, but no video would move from the deck to the computer. After a call to Adobe's tech support, we were told that the M10U is not on the certified list of HDV players that would work with Adobe Premiere Pro and FireWire ports. [Update: we found out later that the Adobe support technician was in error and the HVR-M10U is indeed compatible with Premiere Pro 2.0, even though it's not on the "certified list." Here's how to configure it.] For that, we would need to use the Sony Z1U, the only Sony HDV playback device of any kind on the list.
Undaunted, we continued setting up the workstation and monitors (we added another 24-inch display to the setup, because we find it hard to edit video on a single monitor), and connected the Sony Z1U HDV camcorder to the FireWire port in the back of the workstation. We knew we were halfway there as we noticed that the Z1U was immediately recognized. Launching Adobe Premiere Pro, even without further configuration, the Z1U was recognized. Even though there was no mention of this particular camcorder on the list of presets, machine control, logging ins and outs and capturing worked flawlessly, exactly as it does with DV.
Just about the only difference between this workflow and that of DV was the inability to monitor effects previews on an external monitor. Unlike DV, which you can output via S-video to an external monitor which has been looped through the computer as you're previewing your effects, this isn't possible with HDV -- there's just not enough processing power to handle such an arrangement. So, using a computer and FireWire without benefit of acceleration cards such those by AJA or Blackmagic Design, viewing the video on a computer monitor will have to do.
But that's not so bad -- using two flat panel displays, there was enough screen real estate to view a pixel-for-pixel frame of the video in one of the monitors and still have enough left over for all the Premiere Pro panels. But purists won't like the inability to do accurate color correction, because computer monitors don't show you the same thing that will be seen on TV sets at home. That's why companies like Matrox, AJA, Blackmagic Design, and Bluefish have come to the rescue with options for viewing this output on HD monitors.
Next, it was time to take the variety of footage that we captured and put it on the timeline for the supreme test: would the workflow be as user-friendly as DV? Scrubbing through the footage, placing it on the timeline and trimming clips felt exactly like it does with DV. Previewing was very smooth with a variety of effects, and there was only slight, barely noticeable degradation when Premiere Pro was near its limits of being able to continue to preview these effects in real time.
We started stacking up effects to see how far we could go before Premiere Pro was unable to play back a reasonable preview. Starting with a cross dissolve with a text key over it, the previews played back perfectly. We continued adding layers, until we got up to seven layers of picture-in-picture effects and they were all still playing back smoothly. This is the kind of workflow that makes it easy to get your job done.
There's a catch to this, though. If you want to mix HDV footage with other types of footage on the same timeline, you'll either need to up-rez the standard definition footage to that of HDV or down-rez the HDV to standard definition resolutions. Here's another area where hardware cards such as Blackmagic, AJA and especially Matrox with its highly-regarded Axio (which is one I've personally reviewed) can do some of this heavy lifting for you. Of course, if you have a dual 3.6GHz Xeon PC, your previews will play back in real time, but you may not be as lucky if you're editing with a notebook.
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