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HD – SD in same project
Dear All,
We shot a documentary with a Panasonic HVX-200 first in SD (24P) and then, when P2 cards became available, switched production to HD (720,24p). We edited a roughcut in an HD timeline (without upres-ing the SD and suffering through the playback) that is now approximately 40% SD and 60% HD. Now we only have two days before a roughcut screening and need to quickly create a version we can project for a critical audience. This presents two questions for us:
1) The dilemma: upres the SD to HD or downscale the HD to SD? Our main goal is not necessarily HD quality but rather a coherence in image, so we are leaning towards the downscale. Is it wrong to think HD brought down to SD will look less jarring than SD brought up to HD?
2) If we downscale, what is the best way to go? Will Compressor do the job (and if so, what is the workflow?). We also have access to an AJA Kona LHi-RO Card – will this handle frame-rate conversion or will we still need to run the project through Compressor?
Thank you for your help on this!
Be well,
JP
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10 Replies
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Please tell me you didn’t shoot different FRAME RATES. Please. SD and HD, fine. Frame rates? Hoo boy.
Upscaling SD to HD via FCP just for a screening should be fine. I’d hope that your story would carry things and people wouldn’t be distracted by the slight loss of quality in those shots.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
dude you have both the footage at same 24P rate… if the final output is DVD than Downconvert is better.. actually FCP will transcode the footage automatically ..
just keep the sequence settings to match your SD footage.. or you can add your sd footage 1st and when asked accept setting to match the clip setting say yes..
decide your final output..
cheers
sachin -
Hi Shane,
Thanks for your message. Yes, unfortunately we shot different frame rates (29.97 and 23.98). Technical savvy is not our forte. Hopeless?
JP
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Hi Sachin,
Thanks for your message. Unfortunately we have different frame rates (23.98 in HD and 29.97 in SD).
Any suggestions?Best,
JP
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Gah… Not hopeless, but very complicated and time consuming now.
Better for the presentation to go 23.98 HD down to 29.97 SD. Use Compressor. This will take time.
Next time, don’t do this. If you shot 29.97, shoot HD 29.97. Make your life easy.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
It’s still not the end of the world. Put your edit on an SD (29.97) sequence and let Final Cut add the pull-down to your 23.98 clips (along with scaling down to SD. This will be fine for the DVD.
FCP Studio 2
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KONA 2
OS 10.5.8 -
[Fred Miller] “Put your edit on an SD (29.97) sequence and let Final Cut add the pull-down to your 23.98 clips (along with scaling down to SD. “
Absolutely, positively DO NOT DO THIS. FCP can’t properly add 3:2 pulldown to 24p clips on a 29.97 timeline, and FCP’s scaling algorithm was invented by Satan himself.
Batch downconvert all of your HD clips using Compressor before importing them into your SD project in FCP. Follow these steps:
-Change the frame rate to 29.97 in the compression section of the video encoding profile
-Make sure to enable frame controls in the Compressor inspector panel
-Set resizing quality to best
-Set field order to lower field first
-Set output size to 720×480
If you set up your profile correctly, Compressor will add 3:2 pulldown to your 24p source clips.
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[John Sniadecki] “Yes, unfortunately we shot different frame rates (29.97 and 23.98).”
In your original post, you stated you shot SD in 24p. You say in a later post that your SD is 29.97. Which is it?
Obviously if you shot to tape, it’s going to be a 29.97 signal, but if you shot in 24p or 24pA mode, there will be 3:2 pulldown present in the clips. You can remove the pulldown and create native 24p clips by using Cinema Tools. If you did indeed shoot 24p, did you shoot 24p Advanced, or 24p standard? If you shot 24p Advanced, you can remove the advanced pulldown automatically in Cinema Tools even after you’ve captured the clips. Even if you didn’t shoot 24pA, you can still use Cinema Tools to reverse telecine your SD clips, you just need to manually guide the process by specifying the A frame.
Assuming you shot in a 24p mode in SD, I would recommend cutting in a native 24p SD sequence instead of cutting in a 29.97 SD sequence. Conform your SD clips to 24p using Cinema Tools, then downconvert your 24p HD clips to 24p SD. This will avoid the need to add 3:2 pulldown to your HD clips upon downconversion.
By following this workflow you will also end up with the nice side benefit of being able to author a true 24p DVD.
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Thanks, Shane. Won’t make that mistake again!
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Thank you Alan, and sorry for the confusion. We shot 24PA to tape so your suggested workflow should work out great. Thanks!
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