1080i advice

[Walter Biscardi]

[Donato M. Rondinelli] “Question 1:
I’ve heard that ABC, FOX & ESPN are 720p. CBS, NBC, PBS, & major cable are 1080i. Is this true?”

What do their specs say? Each Network has a Technical Specs document or a Producer Handbook. You need one for each and every network. Not only might they have different video settings, they may also have different audio requirements too. No way to know unless you get the documents. Very expensive to re-do masters because you’re making a guess.

[Donato M. Rondinelli] “Question 2:
Is shooting 1080 or 720 better to shoot if you’re not sure which you’ll need. I was thinking I’d let the dub house convert it.”

They’re both good. We work with both and convert both to the other depending on what we’re doing. AJA Kona 3 cross converts 720 to 1080 and 1080 to 720 so we really don’t care what our clients shoot. We can convert anything to anything for dclivery. We usually just edit native to whatever the client shoots, be it 720 or 1080.

[Donato M. Rondinelli] ”
Question 3: What about frame rates? Is their an advantage between 59.94 & 29.97? I see the camera will shoot both but my LHe only has a kona setting for 29.97. I don’t see one for 59.93.”

720 you shoot 59.94 for 720/60. 1080i you shoot 29.97 for 1080i/29.97 (sometimes referred to as 59.94) They are NOT the same thing.

720/60 is 60 FRAMES per second. 1080i/59.94 is 60 INTERLACED FIELDS per second.

720/60 actually equals 1080i/29.97 if you need to match up both. 720/30 is a cross between 720/24 and 720/60. I hate 720/30 and really despise it when clients bring that frame rate to us.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Donato M. rondinelli]

Ahhhh…. 60 fields per second. That makes sense.

So we’ll shoot & post in 1080. But if we end up needing a 720 master, I’m not painted into a corner right? Other than paying for the conversion. Unfortunately distribution will be determined at a later date.

-dMR

[Walter Biscardi]

[Donato M. Rondinelli] “So we’ll shoot & post in 1080. But if we end up needing a 720 master, I’m not painted into a corner right? Other than paying for the conversion. Unfortunately distribution will be determined at a later date.”

Buy yourself a Kona 3 and you don’t have to pay for anything. Shoot, edit in 1080 and then output to 720, 1080 or even SD all in realtime and all at the same time if you wanted.

Typically most of our clients shoot 720p and final delivery is 1080i/29.97. So we capture / edit / finish in 720p. Then we have the Kona 3 cross convert our timeline to 1080i when we Edit to Tape. Full Broadcast quality. This is how I delivered about 60+ episodes of “Good Eats” to Food Network HD.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!

[Jeremy Garchow]

Any chance anything will go to a PAL originated country?

[Donato M. rondinelli]

Nope. Not PAL.
-dMR

[Chuck Brown]

I have a ralated question here. Much was answered in this thread, but in FCP, when shooting 720p for 1080i delivery for broadcast, is the project set up as 720p60 or 30? I’m looking for the best use of drive space here. I agree that shooting at 720p30 sucks, but does editing in that setting give the same look to something shot 60? I guess I’d be editing progressive though…maybe I answered my own question. 🙂

Also, in ralation to drive space, which takes up more room…a second of 720p59.98 or a second of 1080i29.97?

Incase anyone has words of advice, here is the low-down. Shooting all 720p, some P2, frame rates of 24, 30, and 60. Not needing any off speed effects, just looking for good interlaceing for output to 1080i29.97. I’ll be looking to edit in some form of HD that will accomidate these different framerates. Don’t care if 3:2 is added. Hopefully no upconvered SD, but I might be dealing with this in graphic builds.

P.S. I miss my Smoke 🙁