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1080/50p footage edited as 25p ….. then copied to 50p project?
I posted this question on the official Apple FCP X forum a few weeks ago but it received no useful responses . . . . . maybe it was a stupid question . . . . anyway, here goes again.
I have always shot 1080i50 on my consumer camcorders as the motion created always appears smoother than progressive.
However, I’ve decided to drag myself into the 21st century and start shooting progressive . . . . even though that was first used by the Lumiere brothers and others in the 19th.
Until recently the 50p mode on my Panasonic was pretty useless for general video shooting (other than slo-mo) due to the lack of output possibilities, but things have changed a little in the past couple of years and my Panasonic Blu-ray player will now deal beautifully with 1080/50p H.264 videos fed to it from a USB HDD or memory stick.
So I have now decided to try the following scenario which appears to work well but maybe there are some problems I have not foreseen.
Basically I shoot at 50p and edit it in a 25p Project for maximum compatibility.
Then if I decide I want it at its best (regardless of compatibility), I can copy the 25p project and drop it into a newly created 50p project, in order to save re-editing everything.
Obviously render files will have to be recreated but all the clips and edit decisions should be there and the new 50p project should only take seconds to create (apart from the new render files).
I have tested it successfully with a number of short and simple projects but I don’t know whether problems will arise when I tackle more lengthy and complex ones. (The new 50p project appears to be exactly the same as if I had edited it as 50p right from the start . . . . so this gives greater flexibility for output).
Is it a viable technique or are there any pitfalls I have overlooked?
The only disadvantage I can see is that I will get less video on each SD card!
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3 Replies
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[Ian Brown] “Is it a viable technique or are there any pitfalls I have overlooked?”
If you were editing in NTSC, perhaps, but the PAL frame rates are integers instead of fractions so the pulldowns are easy to perform.
I can’t think of any problems off-hand unless you created 25p graphics in which case I’d recreate them in 50p.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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The only thing that crossed my mind was that if you’re shooting at 50p, and watching the end result at 50p, why not edit at 50p? You can always drop that 50p edit into a 25p timeline if you need to output it that way at any point. I can’t really see why you’d want to edit, and therefore evaluate your project, in a format other than the final output’s 50p.
The difference would be subtle but there nonetheless.
Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland -
Thanks for your valued input Andy and Jeff.
The point about editing initially in 50p is interesting.
I think the reason I plumped for 25p is that I’m using a 2008 Core2Duo iMac with 4GB RAM so rightly or wrongly I assumed that to edit in 25p would be easier for the computer.
My delivery comes in 3 forms . . . 25p for DVD/BD and the internet for other people, with 50p for my personal viewing using my BD player as an .mp4/h.264 media player.
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