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When I went to see the new MediaStudio Pro 7 at the Ulead booth at NAB, I quickly realized that Ulead had progressed further than anyone else in making HDV editing no more complex than DV editing.
All other shipping HDV solutions for Mac and PC force editors to capture HDV in a utility separate from the NLE. There are two disadvantages to capture not integrated into the NLE. First, you have to deal with software from two vendors. If something doesn't work, you'll have trouble with support.
The major problem involves pre-pre-edit, pre-edit, and post-edit batch capture. We'll look at the first one first. Assume you logged your source tapes based on timecode. Now you want to enter these timecodes into a Capture Decision List. This requires two capabilities: a capture log function and the ability to get accurate timecode from the playback device.
Unfortunately, none of the capture utilities I have reviewed obtain timecode from JVC HDV devices. Without timecode, batch capture is impossible. For this reason, no Capture Decision List facility is built into the KDDI, CineForm, or Apple utilities.
Next, let's look at pre-edit batch capture. What happens when you've captured clips using an external utility and imported them into your NLE - and your media disk crashes? You cannot quickly recapture hundreds of source HDV clips. Even if every clip had timecode, there is no way to move bin data back to an external utility.
Looking at post-edit batch capture, we also encounter a problem: When a separate capture utility is employed, we cannot batch-recapture material used in the final project timeline.
Many post-edit functions - such as moving a project from one NLE to another, and batch-recapturing HDV from a timeline that holds proxy clips - require integrated project batch-recapture. Ulead promises this when you install its HDV...