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DVC Pro HD (HVX 200) settings confusion– please help!
I’ve tried many searches here and in other places, but am still confused about this. I’m trying to do a little work on some DVC Pro HD footage from an HVX200 shot at 720pn. So I exported a quicktime file from FCP and made a 960 x 720 project in AE (as I had read to do here). Then the problems started. The clip never fit right in the project (was either cut off or stretched) and exporting it caused aspect ratio issues. So I played around with 1280 x 720 and as a square pixel project and now finally this seems to work. I export it and import it to FCP and it seem to match the original footage. But, its format is 1280 x 720, not the 960 x 720 that the other cips in the FCP project are, so I’m confused. Is this the DVC Pro HD strech thing I’ve heard of? It’s even more confusing to me that importing clips that have been exported from FCP now look superwide screen.
Anyway, I just wanted to check that I am doing this correctly. Honestly, I have been searching around, but can’t find a white paper or tutorial on the subject. So, thanks ahead of time for any help! -
7 Replies
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Hmm … I import the clip into AE and drag it to the new comp button at the bottom of the project window. This gives me a 1280×720 square pixels comp. I do my AE thang, then render out as Best Settings, DVCPRO HD 720p60. Oddly enough, when I drag the clip into FCP and check its properties, FCP has interpreted it as 960×720, with non-square pixels, the same as the captured (no AE intervention) clips. Everything looks fine.
Can you try my process and see if it works?
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Thank you very much, Steve! Yes, that did work, exactly as you said it would. The only thing I’m wondering now is, should you output from FCP or AE (or both) as uncompressed rather than using the DVC Pro HD codec? When I used to use a PC, it was the only way that seemed to work right when moving from DV25 to AE and back again.
Thanks again for the help! -
Well, DV25 is not as good as DVCPRO HD, which is basically DV100. However, you have a point.
If my FCP sequence contained a lot of rendering, I might export from FCP to a lossless codec such as Animation, then once done in AE, render to the DVCPRO HD codec for re-import into an FCP DVCPRO HD sequence.
But …
– If I were just dragging an FCP-captured 720P clip into AE, I’d leave it as is. This is what I’ve done so far, and I think it’s fair to say that one recompression to the DVCPRO HD codec (within AE) can’t cause much harm. But I should do my due diligence and test.
– If I were exporting a cuts-only (no rendering) sequence out of FCP for use in AE, I’d leave it as is, current settings, since no recompression would be done in FCP. Then I’d render to the DVCPRO HD codec in AE, as I mentioned above.Does that help?
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Sorry for the delay, but thanks again for the help! Sounds like a pretty good guideline to go by and I appreciate it very much.
I was wodering though, in exporting a cuts-only (no rendering) sequence out of FCP for use in AE I would have thought there would be recompression. Is there not? Also, when I used Vegas I could have sworn there was some theory about exporting uncompressed if you’re going to to do keying, but that never made any sense to me. Kind of a getting something from nothing kind of thing.
Thanks again for the help! -
There’s no recompression when exporting an FCP sequence when:
– it’s cuts-only, no effects (no rendering in the timeline)
– you use “current settings”
– the “current settings” match the settings of the captured clips
– you have “recompress all frames” uncheckedNot sure about Vegas.
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Very interesting. Those are the default settings, so that’s very handy. The thing about Vegas was meant to be more of a general rule about exporting when doing keying. It never made sense to me. Then again, it did make sense to me at first to export to uncompressed before doing compressing to mpeg2, but that definitely made a difference in some cases in the PC land.
Again, thank you very much for taking the time to explain this to me! -
Glad to help.
Regarding keying, the main thing is the acquisition. You want to shoot the best image possible, with the most color information and least in-camcorder compression. Then you want to avoid recompressing after keying, but that holds for all clips. Avoid recompression if you can.
After shooting, if you have to key the footage in an app other than your capturing NLE, you should make sure you don’t recompress on the way. So you should just import the captured clip into AE, or if it has to go through a NLE sequence for some reason, export with current settings and no recompression.
Now then … if you key in AE, and you need to bring the clip (with alpha) back into your NLE for some reason, you should render (within AE) to a lossless (Animation) codec with alpha channel. But if you also do the compositing (after keying) in AE, then you can just render the composited clip to the DVCPRO codec for import back into the NLE if you don’t expect to recompress again in the NLE.One recompression in the entire chain is unavoidable if you do any effects, keying or compositing.
Does that make sense?
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