HDV6 is Mac only. HELP!

[Songbird21]

I just got a job as a wedding video editor. The only problem is half the files are in a Mac propritary format called HDV6. Are there any programs out there that can convert this into a windows friendly format? If I don't convert these files I'll lose my job. Please help!

[CodeZTM]

Usually, when pressed with an odd format, I usually always just throw it to Handbrake or MediaCoder as a last resort.

[LantisEscudo]

It looks like ffmpeg supports transcoding HDV6. I usually use the command-line version, which you can grab here.

The command line I'd use would be

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ffmpeg.exe -i <file to convert> -vcodec huffyuv -acodec pcm_s16le output.avi

That should give you a HuffYUV AVI with WAV audio.

[Songbird21]

It looks like ffmpeg supports transcoding HDV6. I usually use the command-line version, which you can grab here.

The command line I'd use would be

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ffmpeg.exe -i <file to convert> -vcodec huffyuv -acodec pcm_s16le output.avi

That should give you a HuffYUV AVI with WAV audio.

Is that an AVISynth script?

[NeoQuixotic]

It's a command line argument for ffmpeg. You create a .bat file with those commands in them and run the .bat file. I tested it with a hdv8 MOV clip I had and it worked great. (hdv8 is 1080p30, while hdv6 is 1080p24 I believe, either way it should work.) There is an issue with the way it handles audio steams though, more on this later.

There is an easy way to make HDV .mov files play nicely in Windows. It's called Calibrated{Q} XD Decode, but it costs $150. You can download a trial with a watermark to ensure it works. If you can't afford it, then read on. Now everything past here is from my own experimenting the past few hours. If the information is incorrect someone please correct me. I sure hope there is a better way than what I've found so far.

I found that converting it to a large loss-less file seemed unnecessary. But if using loss-less you could save space by resizing it to 720p with:

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ffmpeg.exe -i <file to convert> -vcodec huffyuv -s hd720 -acodec pcm_s16le output.avi

Of course this depends on the end result needed from who you are working for. If it is just intended for DVD, resizing to 720p or even 480p is fine. However, if they want to make a Blu-ray or HD web encode, they probably want it edited in it's native 1080p (actually 1440x1080) resolution.

You could also save space by just remuxing the MPEG-2 HDV stream into a different container.

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ffmpeg.exe -i <file to convert> -vcodec copy -an output.m2t

This remuxes it from MOV to an M2T with no audio (there is a reason for this.)

However, it only grabs 1 audio steam by default and can't mix mono streams into stereo. My clip has 2 audio channels, but in 2 separate mono streams. So if you have stereo audio in 2 mono streams that you need to use it gets a bit more complicated. There is a variant of ffmpeg called ffmbc (FFMedia Broadcast). Windows builds can be found here. It has the ability to map and mix audio channels. I ended up using this command:

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ffmbc -i <file to convert> -map_audio_channel 0:1:0:0:1:0 -map_audio_channel 0:2:0:0:1:1 -vcodec copy -acodec mp2 -ab 384k HDV.m2t

Now this compresses the audio to what is technically compliant for a HDV file to contain. Also because ffmpeg/ffmbc won't mux MPEG-2 and PCM in a M2T.

Ideally I would like to keep the audio untouched. The audio was already compressed on the HDV tape and converted to PCM when imported on the Mac. So there is no need to re-compress it. You can export the audio separately as a wav with this:

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ffmbc -i <file to convert> -map_audio_channel 0:1:0:0:0:0 -map_audio_channel 0:2:0:0:0:1 -acodec pcm_s16le output.wav

This way you import the video as M2T and the audio as WAV and pair/group them in your editor. Or you can mux them together into something technically not compliant, but it seems to work in Vegas and Premiere.

Since ffmpeg/ffmbc does not want to mux MPEG-2 and PCM we will use something that will do it. A program called tsMuxeR is able to do the job. First we need to make an elementary MPEG-2 stream and the WAV file.

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ffmbc -i <file to convert> -vcodec copy -an video.m2v
ffmbc -i <file to convert> -map_audio_channel 0:1:0:0:0:0 -map_audio_channel 0:2:0:0:0:1 -acodec pcm_s16le audio.wav

Open up tsMuxeR GUI and add the two streams and select M2TS muxing. Once muxed it should play nice with Vegas and Premiere (not sure about other NLEs/media players.)

Once again I'm sure this is not the optimal way of doing it, but it's what I found so far searching around.

[mirkosp]

That's great NeoQuixotic, but I think Songbird needs help with OS X, so I fear all your effort was in vain... >_>;

[BasharOfTheAges]

That's great NeoQuixotic, but I think Songbird needs help with OS X, so I fear all your effort was in vain.. >_>;

No, she's a Windows user that was given a Mac proprietary file type to work with. Re-read the 1st post.

[mirkosp]

That's great NeoQuixotic, but I think Songbird needs help with OS X, so I fear all your effort was in vain.. >_>;

No, she's a Windows user that was given a Mac proprietary file type to work with. Re-read the 1st post.

Gah, my fault. Sorry. Should have known better than that.

[Songbird21]

It's a command line argument for ffmpeg. You create a .bat file with those commands in them and run the .bat file. I tested it with a hdv8 MOV clip I had and it worked great. (hdv8 is 1080p30, while hdv6 is 1080p24 I believe, either way it should work.) There is an issue with the way it handles audio steams though, more on this later.

I'm very confused. I went to the ffmpeg site but all the download links I can get to work have multiple files that I can only assume I would hafta combine somehow. Isn't there a complete file you can just download and install? I am very greatful for the help by the way.

[BasharOfTheAges]

It's a command line argument for ffmpeg. You create a .bat file with those commands in them and run the .bat file. I tested it with a hdv8 MOV clip I had and it worked great. (hdv8 is 1080p30, while hdv6 is 1080p24 I believe, either way it should work.) There is an issue with the way it handles audio steams though, more on this later.

I'm very confused. I went to the ffmpeg site but all the download links I can get to work have multiple files that I can only assume I would hafta combine somehow. Isn't there a complete file you can just download and install? I am very greatful for the help by the way.

It doesn't have a GUI. It's a command line executable. Remember back to the days of DOS?