• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Mixed formats for Live to Air Broadcast

  Posted by Brett Ramsey on October 8, 2011 at 4:04 am

  OK so here’s my problem.
  We produce a live to air News show broadcasting in both Analogue PAL 720 x 576i and SD Digital 720 x 576p Anamorphic.
  We play our pre-recorded stories straight out of an FCP 6 timeline live to air.
  Our trouble is now we get so may different sources what is the best to edit in and what should I save the final export as to play out in the studio.
  Right now I export as PAL DV 16:9 but when we play out we are getting major interlacing issues.
  The material I’m getting is a wide mixture of codecs, and formats.
  1080 25p, 1080 50i, 720 x 576 p & i NTSC 720p 29.9fps, plus various versions of flash AVI and .mkv.
  Right now I am using MPEG streamclip to convert to DV Pal but if I chose to deinterlace in Streamclip it just seems to reinterlace when I drag it into FCP 5.
  Oh yes I am using FCP 5 on a G4 so I cant use ProRes.
  Any Ideas?

  Walter Biscardi replied 14 years, 7 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Walter Biscardi

  October 8, 2011 at 10:42 am

  [Brtett Ramsey] “Right now I export as PAL DV 16:9 but when we play out we are getting major interlacing issues.
  The material I’m getting is a wide mixture of codecs, and formats.
  1080 25p, 1080 50i, 720 x 576 p & i NTSC 720p 29.9fps, plus various versions of flash AVI and .mkv.”

  with that mix and no proper hardware conversion tools, you’re going to have interlacing issues. You need hardware conversion to move all of that material to one format before the edit if you can. That’s why we run all AJA Kona boards here because all of their conversions are hardware, though even there, converting NTSC to PAL is not something the cards can do.

  I’m assuming your over the air signal is still only SD since you’re dropping down to DV, which by the way is one of noisiest and worst codecs you could choose for air, but if you’re stuck in FCP 5 then you’re limited really to DV or Uncompressed for your output.

  Really you need a hardware converter outside of FCP to convert all of that footage, particularly the NTSC, into SD PAL before you start editing. Those are very expensive.

  Short of that, you’ll need a very good software converter to convert everything to one format. MPEG Streamclip and Compressor are not that software. Telestream Episode Pro is better than those two, not the best, but better.

  Walter Biscardi, Jr.
  Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
  HD Post and Production
  Biscardi Creative Media

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