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HDV in FCP-> AE-> Magic Bullet (or DVFIlm Maker, etc)-> 29.97p 640×360 file
Guys,
I’m sorry about the cross post but I’m stuck:
I need to make a 640×480 29.97 progressive video file for a film festival our short film HeadHunting, Inc. got into.
I have a nice HDV timeline in Final Cut Pro and have exported it in lots of different sizes and formats. Now, I notice when I output it scaled to 640 x 360 (with the idea that I’ll then drop that output onto a 640×480 sequence later to give me the letterboxing and the aspect ratio this festival requires) that I do not see any interlacing anymore.
Clearly, it’s scaling it down SO MUCH that the interlacing appears to be gone… but is this a true progressive file and not interlaced?
I ask because the festival wants progressive scan, not interlaced.
Now, one thing (better quality?) I’ve tried is outputting my fullres HDV timeline into AIC and HDV 1080i then opening it in After Effects and applying magic bullet to make it 29.97p… (with the idea that I’ll scale it down to 640×360 at the After Effects render stage) but I’m worried about that because the render time is 21 HOURS. And my deadline is Monday morning. So I could only try this once.
So I figure, if I output from FCP at 640 wide already then the process time in Magic Bullet would be relatively livable. Except when I try that, as I said, the output doesn’t appear to be interlaced. Magic Bullet certainly doesn’t know what to do with it, either.
Another thing I’ve played with is DVFilm Maker. But that appears to only do a fast deinterlace, and doesn’t make 29.97p.
I know I could make 23.976 files from both Magic Bullet and DVMaker, but my DP absolutely hates the motion judder we get when the camera moves.
Any thoughts? Tips?
Thanks!
Pat
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8 Replies
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There seems to be some confusion here. What media are you going to deliver the piece on? DV, HDV, Film, Disc? I could be wrong (as always) but if you have a frame rate of 29.97 your going to have interlaced. Rates like 30p or 24p or 25p are progressive, but if your being asked for 29.97 that is going to be interlaced. With the added info of 640×480 I can say it’s not Film, HDV or even DV.
I would ask what medium and format the festival wants the piece delivered on if HDV is not acceptable then the fastest way would be to record back out to HDV (deck/camera) then capture in the format needed. If you have firewire in/out only and you can’t deliver a dv tape then capture dv down convert with letterbox and reformat to the required delivery format (make sure you have a recored devise for that format i.e. Betacam deck, VHS deck, D5 whatever it is)
TonyTony
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Hi TonyTony,
They want a digital file- Quicktime 640×480, preferably progressive. Framerate they don’t care about. My DP does, though- I did a test with Magic Bullet and another test with DVFilm Maker and she absolutely HATED the weird stutter that the fillm got.
An update:
Since I wrote my first post this morning I’ve tried something else:Take my original HDV project in Final Cut Pro and output it as 640×360, uncompressed 8 bit.
Import that into After Effects and put it in a comp that’s 640×480 (giving me my letterbox).
Render with “field rendering” turned OFF (it had this off by default, interestingly enough).
It has about 2 hours left to go, so I’m not sure if this is going to do it or not.
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Magic Bullet does have the ability to make a 29.97p file from 29.97 60i… but to do that it looks like I’d have to import true HDV footage (which I have available, I rendered out the timeline in Final Cut as HDV 1080i as well). And that means Magic Bullet will have to process 1440 x 1080 (VERY slow) to get me my 29.97p file (I’d stretch it to 1920 x1080 there too)… my concern is this is not something I’ve done before and if I try it I only get ONE shot at it (which is REALLY scary)…
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Right. So, what’s the best way to do this?
Clearly if I output 640×360 uncompressed 8 bit and bring that to Magic Bullet to make 30p material it’ll render WAY faster than if it was 1080i material going into Magic Bullet.
What’s really getting me here is:
Magic Bullet doesn’t recognize my 640×360 file as interlaced to begin with (and it sure doesn’t look interlaced to my eyes). How can I tell? I went to frames with tons of motion and looked closely- no jaggy interlacing artifacts at all in my 640 wide output from Final Cut. Weird!
Pat
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Another option, just for fun, is to do the first half of what I said before (output to hdv and recapture dv letterbox) then create a mpeg 4 template in compressor that gives you the frame size an progressive scan. You can adjust how good or fast you want the process to be and you might get it small enough to fit on a dvd (4.7Gb).
Good Luck
TonyTony
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I see what you’re saying… definitely an option since my Z1 downconverts HDV to DV on the fly (DVCAM I hope)… but I’m worried I’d be losing a lotta detail and we’d have yet another round of compression going on.
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OK, an experiment I just did:
I imported this 640 x 360 footage from Final Cut Pro which was originally HDV into Apple’s Shake.
Shake lets me increment the footage in field intervals. Maybe AE does too, but I don’t know how. ANYWAY:
It’s clear that my 640 x 360 footage is the exact same across both fields.
If I inspect it REALLY closely, I can see the jaggies from it being interlaced source. But I have to magnify it a LOT.
I’m not sure it’ll be noticeable at the low res that the festival will be showing it.
Still, the best solution is probably to go back to the HDV footage and do Magic Bullet to 29.97 THAT to progressive. Despite the day and a half render time I’ll be getting.
In the meantime I’m finishing my 640×480 backup render, just in case there’s problems.
If anyone has any additional ideas I am all ears…
Pat
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You RULE! That’s exactly what I found out in Shake, going thru field by field. My motion is exactly the same in both. Perfecto!
THANKS!
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Ah, but I’m into beating myself up 😉
Kidding. You’re totally right. We’re good to go with it as-is now.
THANKS!
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