I read a very interesting article about capturing the HDV footage from my Canon XH-A1 directly into Final Cut Pro 6.0.3 using Pro-Res at Moviola.

There are many pro’s for capturing using ProRes vs. HDV, but the one that stood out the most in mind from this article is that you are capturing in 10-bit 4:2:2 color space.

As soon as you select Pro-Res (or Pro-Res HQ) from the audio/video settings and you begin the capture process (CMD+8), you will notice that the normal HDV capture window is not there. It’s a simple dialog box that asks you for the clip name. It then begins to capture automatically. You’ll probably need to monitor the footage directly from the camera’s monitor since I notice a lag of up to 13%.

The only thing that this article failed to mentioned (or I missed it) is that the size is huge. I captured a short clip (around 45 seconds) and in Pro-Res HQ, the file size was 685MB versus 80MB for regular HDV. So I think you have to consider if the gain in quality is worth the extra file size.

I still need to do further testing, specifically with green screen material, to see if the quality increase helps me pull better keys.

Anyhow, I invite you to experiment and comment on your findings!