-
Field Dominance Issue on First Clip Only???
Im having an issue where HDV footage that i have shot and edited in FCP has the wrong field order on the first clip and ONLY the first clip when it is down-sampled to SD and put on a DVD.
My workflow is as follows.
Shooting in PAL HDV 1080i50
Editing in FCP. Timeline settings are default for HDV 1080i50.
(1440×1080 HDV Field Dominance Upper (Odd) )I export as a self contained movie from final cut as PAL DV 48khz Anamorphic at this point as testing various ways to do the converting found this was the fastest and it had no effect on the final quality of the DVD.
This SD file is converted to MPEG 2 using compressor and I double check here that Field Order is correct (Upper Field First for PAL DVD).
If I put a shift fields filter onto the first clip it solves the problem, but I’m assuming I am doing something wrong along the way and I’d rather be doing it the right way to avoid this problem.
Any ideas what I’m doing wrong?
Cheers
-
6 Replies
-
Hi Shane,
There is something strange here.
All of your clips in the Browser should shows up as Upper-first.
When you drop those clips in a PAL DV sequence (Lower) all the clips in the sequence they should get the “Shift-fields” filter on.
When you send this DV movie to Compressor, you will get a “Lower-first” MPG-2. You don’t need to change the field order again in Compressor to get an Upper-first MPG-2.
Next time you can edit in a ProRess Upper-first sequence.
Rafael -
Instead of using the deplorable QT conversion menu, just export your HDV sequence as HD, and do the MPEG-2 down convert in Compressor.
Much better quality with much better control.
Jeremy
-
Actually Jeremy, to my eyes ( and they’re still pretty good at 40) there is no difference in quality whether I export in HD or SD and whether I let QT or Compressor do the down-sampling.
I opted to do it the way I did after extensive testing of which techniques and processes would be fastest.
The quicktime export gets the entire job done in 1/5th of the time the HDV export does.Nevertheless, none of this banter actually solves my problem of field dominance issues.
Anyone have any idea as to why it only affects the first clip in the timeline?
Cheers
-
[Shane Kerr] “Actually Jeremy, to my eyes ( and they’re still pretty good at 40) there is no difference in quality whether I export in HD or SD and whether I let QT or Compressor do the down-sampling. “
Yeah, except the field dominance is goofed. So is that acceptable to you?
If you export a reference movie (not a self contained) movie and import that to Compressor, you can assure that your field order will be taken care of.
You want fast, you want cheap, you want good. You can only have two.
-
You want fast, you want cheap, you want good. You can only have two.
Well as I said, my system IS fast. It is (apart from clip one) Good and since time is money here, it is cheap. (See point one).
I am not asking for suggested workflows, I’m asking why it affects only the first clip and if I have made some error in my “easy setup” selection?
What timeline options should I be using if I shouldn’t be using the one I do.
-
All right, Shane. Since you won’t take use compressor for an answer, and since I am not talking about how cheap, fast and good your machine is, but rather a cheap, fast and good down convert…I’ll try and help you, but I will stand by my use compressor and not QT conversion advice. If for some reason you don’t believe me, you can search this forum and find that a lot of people use this method. It yields the best results. At some point you will have to try it and at least compare the results. Otherwise, you don’t have a test and we can’t move on.
Do all of your clips now have a shift fields filter on them when you put them in an SD timeline?
Jeremy
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up