1080i converted to 720p for BR-HD50 deck recording?

[Shane Ross]

Why do this? Why output the lowest quality to the lowest quality HD format? HDV is an acquisition format, not a mastering one. You should master to DVCPRO HD or HDCAM, if you can. The general consensus is that if you record HDV, get out of that medium as soon as you can.

I am curious if this will work, as there are two flavors of HDV…long GOP and short GOP. How does Compressor compress the HDV format? Into one that Sony/Canon works with, or JVC? Interesting question.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Chris Borjis]

I’ve seen some selectable GOP options within compressor, set it for 6 and see what happens.

[Graeme Nattress]

I don’t think compressor makes a valid HDV stream – you’d have to check. FCP’s timeline does though. I’ve done this conversion (but never managed to get it back out to HDV tape) with my 60i to 24p conversion tools in Standards Conversion pack to get 720p24 from 1080i60 and that bit worked well. If you’re confident you could get 720p24 back to HDV tape, then try it. It doesn’t matter what you use to do the 1080i60 to 720p24 conversion, but compressor is rather slow at this. I’d then use FCP to make the 720p24 HDV by putting the converted video on such a timeline and hoping that it will go out to tape.

As Shane mentions, HDV is not to be considered a mastering format though. It’s way too much of a pain to output to and recompressing back to HDV doesn’t look too hot. HDV isn’t the worst 720p format in the world, at least it’s full raster, but that doesn’t make it that good either.

For mastering, best look to HDCAM SR or D5, both of which are sufficiently less compressed than HDCAM or DVCProHD, and record the full HD signal.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP