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HD footage to SD timeline???
Ok, I have searched for the answer here and I’m still not sure. We are thinking of buying the sony PMW-EX1 camera and are aware that it does not shoot in SD. I am wondering if we need to edit and master in SD, is there a way to do this in FCP? or will we need to buy hardware to do this?
thnx in advance -
16 Replies
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When you say “need to master in SD” do you mean:
1) You have no HD monitors or a computer that can handle editing HD and thus must edit SD all the time.
or
2) You’ll mostly edit in HD but may have the occasional need for an SD project for some specific reason.
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yes to #2. we will need to edit some projects in SD and distribute them in SD. Can FCP down-convert?
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[Mark Griesbauer] ” we will need to edit some projects in SD and distribute them in SD.”
How are you distributing in SD? If it is just a DVD, then that is simple. if it is in a tape format then you can do it in a couple of ways. The best way is to use a Kona card that can convert the signal on output. Or you can always nest your HD sequence on a SD timeline, render and then send to tape.
I am a big fan of always editing in HD if you have the ability because then you have an HD master that you can use if down the road you end up needing to redistribute in HD. Sales you the hassle of redoing the whole thing.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity!
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I agree with Zane. Edit in HD.
Then, for DVD just compress the HD directly to MPEG II. For tape output, convert the final project.
The only time I’d ignore this advice is if you’re doing something like (for example) shooting 20 hours of confrence panels at a convention and they want all 20 hours delivered in SD with minimal editing.
But outside of that, most projects are going to have far shorter masters than all the source footage is. Converting it at the very end shouldn’t be that big of a problem considering the advantages it gets you.
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According to Doug Jensen in the Vortex Media DVD, “Mastering the PMW-EX1,” the process he recommends is just dropping the EX footage into a DV-NTSC timeline, and editing the entire thing in SD. I haven’t tried it yet myself, but I intend to do a little experimenting today. I’ve already edited a small project in HD and then let compressor do the SD-mpeg2 conversion and the resulting DVD looked great.
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ok thnx Zane…so if I nest the HD seq in a SD timeline will there be any major problems with mastering to tape? quality issues? How will the SD version look? Will the SD have a letterbox? We backUp all our programs to betaSP and use a AJA io la for that. I am just trying to be prepared for any problems that will popup.
thnx again -
Will you post your results? I would like to know how the looks. Also, could you master the SD seq to Beta?
thnx, Chris
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Also, how would the HD footage look? Will it be letterboxed or will it be masked?
thnx -
In this case, Doug put the footage into a 4×3 sequence and panned & scanned. I’m going to try an anamorphic sequence and see what happens.
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OK, I tried it. I dropped the EX clips into a DV-NTSC Anamorphic timeline, rendered and it worked. It looks good on my NTSC monitor. Next, I’m going to burn DVDs using both methods, and see which one looks best. Since I work with DVCAM, I have no way to test this going back to Beta, but I suppose the same method would work with other codecs or an uncompressed SD sequence.
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