• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Prores HD timeline to Prores SD edgecop

  Posted by Scott Sutter on January 8, 2011 at 6:54 pm

  so ive been reading through the FAQ’s about doing an hd to sd conversion and want to throw my workflow out there to see if it works.

  using fcp v7 with a kona 3 capture card.
  have a 1080i prores sequence with my 20 min edit of a talking head video. footage was captured though kona 3 card 1080i proress.

  client wants 2 different versions of this video. were going to make a HDCAM 1080i master and a HD H.264 file.

  were also going to make a 4×3 edgecrop DVD and a 4×3 edgecrop H.264.

  Footage was shot 4×3 safe and we added 1920×1080 GFX in the hd timeline that are 4×3 safe.

  my original workflow was to edit the video in the hd prores timelime. once we had a locked cut i was going to nest my hd sequence in a SD prores timeline resize it for edgecrop, render, then send to compressor and make the mpeg’s and H.264.

  upon doing this the DVD and H.264 looked like crap. the interlacing was pretty evident. i noticed when i nested the hd in the sd sequence the shift fields effect was applied automatically, is this correct?

  would i get better results by exporting the hd sequence as a proress quicktime either self contained or refernece, then bring it into compressor and let compressor do the edgecrop resize? or do i do the “send to compressor” option for the hd timeline from within fcp and have compressor do the edgecrop resize. or is there a better option?

  thanks for the help

  John Pale replied 15 years, 4 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  John Pale

  January 8, 2011 at 7:06 pm

  [Scott Sutter] “upon doing this the DVD and H.264 looked like crap. the interlacing was pretty evident”

  Of course you are seeing interlace. You are using interlaced footage. If you are viewing on a computer monitor, it will not look great.

  [Scott Sutter] “i noticed when i nested the hd in the sd sequence the shift fields effect was applied automatically, is this correct?”

  Yes. HD is upper field first, SD lower.

  [Scott Sutter] “using fcp v7 with a kona 3 capture card.”

  If you have access to a Kona card, it can do the downconvert and center crop cleaner than a software conversion. Just output your HD sequence to SD tape via the Kona and recapture it.

  If you dont want to do this, its certainly is possible to get decent results via FCP or Compressor, but the Kona will most likely give you the cleaner result.

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