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mixing 720p24 720p60 and 1080i HDV
Hi Everyone,
I have a client doing a reality show in Iraq on the JVC 100 HDV camera. They have the bulk of their footage shot at 720p24, but they also got some tapes back that were shot at 720p60, and a couple shot at 1080i (not sure which camera this was shot on). They have around 300 hours of footage to comb through… Now what we need to know is can they edit on Final Cut 5.1.2 and cut the 720p24 and 720p60 footage in the same timeline without rendering, or if they can’t is it better to simply render it or media manage the footage into new clips? Also what is the best way to convert the 1080i into 720p24? Thanks for the help. -
4 Replies
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FCP is not the right tool for this kind of project unfortunately. Mixing formats is the one thing FCP is way behind on compared to the competition. Of course for HDV, I’m not sure any NLE can do this with native HDV. You can use Media Manager, but the last thing you want to do is transcode HDV to HDV. It will really hurt the image quality.
Don’t convert 30fps and 60fps to 24. Bad idea. 1080i from a Sony Z1U (which I bet is the one you used) does not look very good when converted to 24fps. It has a high shutter speed which makes the footage look pretty jerky when you do this. That aside, FCP isn’t the best tool for framerate conversions. You’d want a Teranex ideally, and that brings you way out of the low-budget HDV workflow.
This is my suggestion. Invest in lots of SATA disks. And get an HDV to SDI converter. Miranda and Convergence make these. AJA does too now I think. Capture everything at NTSC from a Kona or Decklink (use the downconversion feature) and do your offline editing. Then when it’s time to finish, batch recapture the footage you used at the native res and framerate. The 24p footage will have flash frames so fix those. Then just render everything on a 720p60 Uncompressed timeline. You’re not delivering this on HDV are you? You really don’t want to do that. If you’re delivering on D5 or HDCam, it will have to be 720p60. There is no broadcast standard of 720p24. If this is for DVD authoring and not broadcast, don’t even bother delievering it on tape. Send them data files or at least downconvert it to Digibeta.
Sean
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[Sean ONeil] “Don’t convert 30fps and 60fps to 24. Bad idea. “
This is only if it is HDV. I intermix DVCPRO HD 720p24 and 720p60 all the time and rather successfully.
The solution would be to capture everything as the same format. With the use of HDV decks and a Kona LH you can capture all your footage as DVCPRO HD and have everything uniform.
That FCP can handle.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
[Shane Ross] “This is only if it is HDV. I intermix DVCPRO HD 720p24 and 720p60 all the time and rather successfully.
The solution would be to capture everything as the same format. With the use of HDV decks and a Kona LH you can capture all your footage as DVCPRO HD and have everything uniform.”
The Varicam camera uses a slow shutter speed. As the name implies, it was especially designed so that you can change framerates in post and it will still look good because the motion is blurred. It was made to capture motion like a film camera.
Converting 1080i HDV to the DVCPro HD codec will not change the fact that the Sony Z1U looks awful when converted to 24fps. No matter what codec you work with in FCP.
Aside from that, I agree. If he converts everything to DVCPro HD 720p60, he can achieve a solid workflow. The only problem is that there will be major cadence breaks. But when you mix framerates like that, it goes with the territory.
Sean
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Thanks for the help guys.
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