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Blur filter when resizing from HD to PAL? (Canon 5D footage).
Hi. I have some 5D footage in ProRes 422. Editing in FCP in HD. Finished edit is then resized to AVI DV-PAL format. And that’s when I see jagged lines and moirae popping up. I can not see these things in the edting window, but in the finished rendered movie.
My project is set up with my HD edit in sequence A, and I have a DV sequence with the usual DV settings as Sequence B. A is put into B and rendered out to AVI file.
Is this a usual problem, when resizing HD footage to DV-PAL? Or is it 5D related?
What’s the method of fixing this?
I am using a soft blur, which of course ruins some of the nice image quality, but is this the way to go anyway? What are your methods?
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4 Replies
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Firstly I would never use DV codec as it is lossy and has poor color space. Secondly, when you copy paste a sequence from HD to DV, it has to shift fields as DV is the only PAL codec with lower field dominance. This will be a problem if you are doing any speed changing and frame blending using filters as they will do so in the wrong field order.
And thirdly, you are letting FCP do the rescaling which it doesn’t do very well. A much better approach is to export a quicktime movie using the current settings of the original ProRes HD sequence. From there you should investigate software to create your AVI, preferably with a better codec than DV. A high bit rate mpeg2 or mp4 will look much better and create a smaller file. Compressor may be able to do this to a .mov that can be rewrapped without loss into an AVI wrapper. I don’t deal with AVIs so someone else may be able to help if a search of this forum doesn’t answer the question already.
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The problem is, that my local television station run everything on AVI DV-PAL. So they want it delivered in that codec.
I am running everything progressive, so fields don’t matter.
But interesting what you’re saying about FCP not handling rescaling very well. I think that may be the problem.
Does anyone have any ideas on what OSX program I can ingest my ProRes422 footage into, getting AVI DV-PAL out in the other end?
I have experimented with this before, but I could never find a good enough conversion. Tried MPEG Streamclip and Compressor going between them. But I couldn’t get the rewrapping to work. The signal got worse even though it shouldn’t as I’m only rewrapping. Probably because of wrong settings.
Any step by step approach, anyone?
Thanx
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I think I found a good solution. With the best DV quality I can get.
1. Export to HD ProRes422
2. Import into After Effects
3. Choose File/Export (and set appropiate DV-PAL settings)(On OSX After Effects you can not add to render queue and choose AVI. You have to choose File/Export)
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This is a problem I have run into before too when something has been filmed in HD and the output needs to be 720×576 PAL.
I don’t feel that FCP is as good as it could be at resizing. On a PC, Premiere isn’t much better either, and I am still not sold by AfterEffects resizing , which is strange as Adobe’s Photoshop is good at resizing.
If I need to down convert, e.g. 1080p25 to DV-PAL for example and am not happy with the output of the above programs for whatever reason, I often use a free program called VirtualDub, and the built in Lanczos resize filter to resize down to the lower resolution. You may get a few raised eyebrows telling someone you did it that way, but the important thing is it works well, and as long as you can get the final result you want, who cares! It has solved a few problems for me over the years.
It usually involves a roundtrip to an AVI file however, but quality is great, and is perfect for those clips that are proving troublesome. Virtualdub is PC only, though I have been told it works on a OSX using Wine, but have not tried running it using Wine personally.
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