720p or 1080p Project, that is the question

[Jason Jenkins]

[Dave Gage] ”
Do you mind listing the steps involved in how you created the zoom effect?”

Last I did it was apparently in FCP7. It was a simple matter of creating a couple of scale keyframes.

[Dave Gage] “P.S. It appears we might have the same laptop. I just picked up a new MBP i7 17″ about three months ago. I upgraded the ram to 8 gigs and so far, it’s been great.”

Yeah, my Mac Pro is 5 years old so I went all out on a new MacBook Pro. 8 Gigs of RAM, matte screen, and an SSD. I’ve been considering a 16 GB RAM upgrade from OWC. I’m looking forward to the Thunderbolt stuff coming from Sonnet. It will be sweet if I can run my Kona LHe from my Macbook Pro!

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

[Rafael Amador]

[Dave Gage] “I don’t have any plans in the near future to go to DVD or go to broadcast TV. I’ve been thinking that although I shoot in HD at 1920 x 1080 30p (Canon Vixia), I might set up my default projects to be 1280x720p as my material will either go to Youtube at this size or my own website streamed videos will be exported as 640 x 360p.”
Sure.
Make your project 1280×720.

[Dave Gage] “I suppose in theory, the 1280 x 720p timeline should render faste”
No really.
For the render speed, the footage size will be more determining that the sequence size.
In the end you are processing (stabilization, color, effects,..) the same 1080 stuff and making a downscaling almost in the last step.

[Vince Sanchez] “Habit and I like having a native size edit in case I need it in the future and mainly to keep my mind on the content edit, I’d start futzing with reframing when I need to focus on the content.”
Good if you will deliver for 1080, but not for 720.
If you are going 720 you will always need to downscale the 1080 footage, but no need to downscale graphics.
Cut and downscale your stuff as you want, but finish and set your graphics in 720.

Editing 1080 and downscaling in the end won’t allow to use the potential for pan & scan neither.
No pint to try to Pan&Scan once in the last moment.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Dave Gage]

Rafael,

[Rafael Amador] “For the render speed, the footage size will be more determining that the sequence size.
In the end you are processing (stabilization, color, effects,..) the same 1080 stuff and making a downscaling almost in the last step.”
Got it. Thanks. If somewhere in the future I decide to go to blu-ray (assuming it’s still around with a market for it), what would be the process to take the 720p Project (with 1080p footage) and change it to 1920x1080p?

[Rafael Amador] “Editing 1080 and downscaling in the end won’t allow to use the potential for pan & scan neither.”
Can you explain the “pan and scan”? Is this the same as the pseudo dolly or panning effect I was asking about earlier in the post? If so, what is the setup for it?

Thanks,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

Jason,

[Jason Jenkins] “It was a simple matter of creating a couple of scale keyframes.”
I’m hoping you or someone else here can fill in a few more details so I can start playing with this. Someone elsewhere had mentioned “animating Transform will give you more control”, but again, I just a few more details to get going with it.

[Jason Jenkins] “I went all out on a new MacBook Pro. 8 Gigs of RAM, matte screen, and an SSD. I’ve been considering a 16 GB RAM upgrade from OWC. I’m looking forward to the Thunderbolt stuff coming from Sonnet.”

I went the same way without the SSD as I wanted the extra internal space on the 750GB drive. The 16 GB upgrade would be great, but not in the budget at the moment. I’m also looking forward to the new Thunderbolt stuff. In the meantime, I’ve got an eSata card and 2 drive RAID 1 setup which seems to be working fine.

Thanks,
Dave

[Rafael Amador]

[Dave Gage] “If somewhere in the future I decide to go to blu-ray (assuming it’s still around with a market for it), what would be the process to take the 720p Project (with 1080p footage) and change it to 1920x1080p?”
The process would be changing the project setting to 1080. Of course, basic motion animations (pan, zoom,..) would be lost. You would need to fix Graphics too.

[Dave Gage] “Can you explain the “pan and scan”? Is this the same as the pseudo dolly or panning effect I was asking about earlier in the post? If so, what is the setup for it?”
Right.
if you edit 1080 in a 1080 sequence, the picture size match, so you will need to set the picture to more than 100% size for any zooming or panning.
that will decrease the picture quality.
If you FIT 1080 stuff on a 720 sequence the picture gets a 66.66% of the size. You can blow the picture up a 33% without losing definition.

BEWARE: When you have selected the FIT option in FCPX, the inspector size keeps showing 100% (Transform), even when FIT means up/downscaling.
In FCP that worked different. Size always changes in the Motion tab when there is resizing.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Dave Gage]

[Rafael Amador] “The process would be changing the project setting to 1080. Of course, basic motion animations (pan, zoom,..) would be lost. You would need to fix Graphics too.”
Cool. That’s what I thought. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. I think I would likely just create a new Project and start there.

[Rafael Amador] “If you FIT 1080 stuff on a 720 sequence the picture gets a 66.66% of the size. You can blow the picture up a 33% without losing definition.”
I did understand that from a previous post, but I didn’t know Pan and Scan was the same thing. Makes perfect sense. Sometimes I just get a bit lost with the different terminology that gets used.

[Rafael Amador] “BEWARE: When you have selected the FIT option in FCPX, the inspector size keeps showing 100% (Transform), even when FIT means up/downscaling.”
That’s good to know. I will need to play with this. I am still not clear though how this integrates with the Ken Burns effect when applied to a video clip vs. on a photo. I have no problem with the KB effect on a photo (especially in FCP X, it’s even easier than in FCP 7).

I haven’t been able to find a tutorial anywhere on this, but I believe I’m just missing one simple step somewhere. Do keyframes come into play here?

Thanks,
Dave

[Rafael Amador]

[Dave Gage] “That’s good to know. I will need to play with this. I am still not clear though how this integrates with the Ken Burns effect when applied to a video clip vs. on a photo. I have no problem with the KB effect on a photo (especially in FCP X, it’s even easier than in FCP 7). “
If you intend to do KB effect with Stills or Video, set “Spatial Conform: NONE”.
Resize manually keeping the size below 100%.
A 1080 picture is 1.33 x the size of the 720 canvas.
You have room to zoom the picture without losing definition.

The KB effect works the same for stills than for video, but the results may differ because the size and quality of the stuff.
Average graphics and stills are normally made of a material (8b/RGB) more consistent than average video (8b/420YUV). Some about pictures size.

[Dave Gage] “I haven’t been able to find a tutorial anywhere on this, but I believe I’m just missing one simple step somewhere. Do keyframes come into play here?”
Key frames are reference points.
What is important is the precision and the quality of the filters to calculate the in-between values.
I Havent tried yet, but think FCPX can make a good job on this task.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Dave Gage]

Rafael,

Thanks for taking the time to add your replies. I’ve been busy with non-video related projects and haven’t had a chance to play with this stuff. As soon as I get back into FCP X, I will give this a try and then post back if I run into any problems.

Thanks again,
Dave

[Anmol Mishra]

Is there a way to do this in FCP7 as well ?

[Todd Stoneberg]

I’m trying to execute this effect in FCP 7. Filming 1920 x 1080 30p and changed the timeline to 1280 x 720. It automatically scaled the footage to 66.7% just like you said but it requires me to render the footage. Is there anyway to do this without rendering the footage?