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1080i60 to 480 for broadcast: Conversion questions.
Hello there,
I have quite a conundrum I was hoping to get a second opinion on.
I recently completed a music video that was originally for the web. It was shot on HDV at 1080i60, and then converted to 720p24 for posting online. The results looked pretty good and achieved the film look we were going for.
I got some good/bad news that the video is to be broadcast on TV. Trouble is, I’m not sure how to convert the product into NTSC and maintain the film look im going for, as well as keep the footage looking good.
The first thing I tried was to export a quicktime movie at 480i60 and place that in a new timeline, and I applied Magic Bullet’s “Frames” plugin which is designed to give that 24p look. This worked ok, but it was a little more jaggy than I would like. I was wondering if there’s a better way.
Anybody have thoughts?
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9 Replies
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Hi Jon,
The p24 look you have it already. Don’t mess with MB frames or so.
Make a copy of your 720 p24 movie an conform it to 23,98 in CinemaTools. No rendering needed.
Now you only need to resize it and add the Pull-down to have SD NTSC movie.
rafael -
AJA Kona products do the conversion in realtime via the Kona hardware. This is the cleanest conversion you’ll get from FCP.
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!
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[Rafael Amador] “Now you only need to resize it and add the Pull-down to have SD NTSC movie.
rafael”How would you do this without hardware (like Walter suggests)? I’ve done it many times through hardware and it looks great, but if I don’t have access to quality hardware, how could proper pulldown be added in software?
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Unfortunately the 24fps version is just an H.264 for the web and won’t be suitable for broadcast.
The problem is complicated by the fact that we used several effects for slow motion that used sequential fields played individually at 30 to give smooth slow mo from 60i footage.
Currently, I’m attempting to export the sequence through compressor as a 480p24 movie. Compressor offers motion adaptive scaling and rate changing and hopefully all i’ll have to do is add pulldown to that and i’ll have something that looks good.
The Aja is another idea, but I don’t have the budget for hardware on this project and I don’t have one myself. I would have to call in a favor for that one, but i’d rather keep it in house.
Does anyone have any experience with compressor to make these changes? (it better look good it’s taking 20 hours to render 3 minutes on an 8 core mac pro!)
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Why couldn’t you take the original 1080i60 sequence and nest it into another sequence that is set to SD NTSC standards. FCP scales it and it still looks fine.
Russell Weston
Weston Productions
westprod@gci.net
https://westonproductions.tv -
I’ve actually been very dissatisfied with the quality of the scaling that final cut does in this manner. Also, I’m trying to get a 24p ‘look’ and that would leave this off.
I’ve been testing various methods and it seems like what looks the most convincing is outputting the sequence as a 480i60 prores quicktime, putting it in a sequence, and using MB Frames to get the 24 p look.
The file I ran through compressor using the insanely high settings
Retiming: (Best) High quality Motion Compensated
Resize Filter: Statistical Prediction
Deinterlace Filter: Best (Motion Compensated)
Adaptive Details: OnCame out with very strange glitches in one scene that was using a flicker effect. Of course other than that it looks spectacular. Bummer.
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[Mark Spano] “How would you do this without hardware (like Walter suggests)? I’ve done it many times through hardware and it looks great, but if I don’t have access to quality hardware, how could proper pulldown be added in software? “
Hi Mark,
Sorry I just found your post.
FC is able to add Pull-down on play.
rafael -
[Rafael Amador] “FC is able to add Pull-down on play.
rafael”Forgive my ignorance, but I’ve never seen any toggle or menu feature that does this. Is it as simple as setting the video output in Audio/Video Setup to a 29.97 output? Not around the system at the moment, but I’d be surprised. Is it a proper 2:3 pulldown? Also, how would you edit your 24p sequence to a 29.97 tape? I’m confused…
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Hi Mark,
I’m in PAL land and (thanks God) I don’t have to deal often with Pull-down.
I know this more from the “papers” than from the practice.
If you go to FC System Setting> Playback Control, you will find “Pulldown Pattern”.
You can change that in the RT menu in the time-line.
Up to the manual this works when working with FW.
FC is able to add on the fly the pull down to the 23’98 footage. I guess this work when monitoring and when Printing to Video. The manual clearly states that the result will very much depends of the performance of the computer.
In the end to add Pulldown is just to play the movie repeating some fields.
So i guess this works if your sequence is DV or DV50.
In any other case I guess you need a video card to add the Pulldown.
As I told you, I know all this “from the distance”, but there are many people around who will give you more accurate info than my self.
rafael
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