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What’s the deal with DVCPRO50?
Hey Guys,
I’m about to embark on editing on feature shot on DVCPRO50 and am trying to figure out the best way of going about it. The plan is to shoot 24P, whether its straight up 24P or 24P advanced remains to be determined. The DVCPRO50 will then eventually be blown up to 35mm at some later date.
1. Apple Final Cut Pro, can capture DVCPRO50 native, yes? Much like capturing DV into the DV-NTSC codec. Is this native DVCPRO50 codec, full quality? Is it uncompressed? Do you lose quality when you render, like in the DV-NTSC codec? Is there an advantage capturing this material into 10 bit uncompressed, over the native coded?
2. 1. First thing I’m trying to figure out is whether I should cut in 23.98 or 29.97. My understanding is that this format shoots 24P but inserts pull down on the fly, like the panasonic MiniDV camera. People have said I should edit 23.98, but this opens some questions for me. If I remove pull down through cinema tools, this requires a rendering process, which may reduce the quality. This was my experience anyways with using cinema tools in DV-NTSC. Likewise, if you need to lay out to tape eventually, you are just going to have to put the pull down back in. So why not just edit in 29.97? Also, if I want to do a reconform in 10 bit uncompressed, it will be tricky to conform the 23.98 timeline to the 29.97 source tapes.
3. Should I use 24P advanced, or just 24P? I’ve heard that 24P advanced, looks like hell in 29.97. Obviously, I could capture directly to 23.98, if I’m using 24P advanced, but then I will just have to put pull down back in, for when I lay off to tape again. So, is there a ponit in shooting 24P advanced?
Any thoughts would be appreciated
Julian
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3 Replies
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Regular DV, 25mbs, is around 5:1 compression. DVCPro50 is closer to that of digibeta, at around 3:1 compression. So, no, it’s not uncompressed. Anything that isn’t uncompressed will lose something (whether you can see it or not) when rendered. Normally I’d say don’t sweat it, but if you’re going to blow this us to 35mm (won’t those be some big pixels?) I’d guess you should go uncompressed and output to something better. But if you output to digibeta, it’s going to compress it to 2:1 anyway, so I’m not sure if it’d be all worth it. If you’re not doing a lot of heavy processing, I guess you’d be just as well off to go back out native to DVCPro50. Anything that didn’t require rendering would be the same, pixel for pixel, as it was on the original DVCPro50 tape, just like regular DV works.
Just my rambling thoughts.
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Julian,
If you will intend xfer to film then you should be editing in a 24p sequence not 29.97.
Shooting in 24PA is the best method for your eventual xfer to film. Shooting in 24P is designed for projects that will live as a 29.97 project.
The 24PA has the advantage of minimizing any lost in quality due to the method the reverse 3:2 is achieved in FCP versus shooting in 24P which would require using Cinema Tools to extract the 3:2 pulldown.
You can always add back 3:2 for layoff to tape when editing in 24PA.
So in a nutshell if indeed you project will end up on film (and I don’t mean wishful thinking but an actual reality) then I recommend shooting in 24PA.
Good luck,
Tony Salgado
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You might want to talk to Noah Kadner. He shot a feature with the SDX900 this way. Find him on the moderator page of the DVX100 Cow forum.
Best, JIM.
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