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Exporting Help – FCP HDV Project to SD Quicktime Issues
Hello…
I just started editing FCP at a new company and was given a project in progress to complete. It was in an HDV format project containing HDV footage (shot progressive) and a number of clips of game footage captured by an AJA card at DVCPRO HD 720. The piece also contained uncompressed AVI’s at 1280×720. The final piece is going onto a DVD that is going to be SD. I didn’t mind having to increase the size of the DVCPRO HD footage or avi’s since we were going to be down-converting to SD in the end. All looked good in the timeline and the monitors.
The client has asked us to deliver in 4×3 Anamorphic DVCPro at highest quality setting. I exported the timeline out via Quicktime Conversion in the DVCPro format 720×480, interlaced, highest quality. The resulting quicktime looks correct – anamorphic and all. The picture quality is fine, but I did notice some ‘strobing’ in the progressive HDV footage. I’ve gone through fielding issues in the past with SD but this is my first experience with HD and down-converting. We created an MPEG-2 file and burned a DVD just to see what the final output looks like in SD. Everything looked great played off a DVD on a SD TV but the interviews still had a bit of a ‘strobe’ to them. Nothing else had any obvious fielding issues. It’s not terrible by any means and I think the average viewer will never know the difference – of course we can.
I’ve done some experiments since then (exporting upper field, de-interlace, and progressive) and nothing has given better results. The timeline is HDV and upper field based (like the original HDV footage) but I know the DVCPro export is now lower field.
I guess I’m asking for any advice to help correct this other than making sure we use one format to begin with when we start a project. Any advice would be greatly appreciated by this FCP newbie.
Thanks,
Greg
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1 Reply
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Hi Greg,
When you lay Lower-First footage in an Upper-First time-line (or vceversa) FC automatically aplie a “Shift-fields” effect in the layed clips. This should be fine bat not allways it is. I just installed a Black Magic card, and the card deal with the shifting by its self, so to get the correct interlacing, I must take out the “Shift-fields” that FC sets.
You should also have a look in the brownser to see if FC has recognized properly the field dominnance of the footage that you have imported.
Is the only tip I can give you.
salud.
rafael
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