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Am I misguided or a genius
In my search for a “best of both worlds” workflow I came up with the following scenario, which seems to be working on my Kona2. But I’m curious if anyone else has done this and I am headed for trouble.
I have a feature length movie that is comprised of many After Effects animations. They are created at 1920 by 1080 at 23.98 fps. I have a simple SATA raid that is plenty fast for DVCPro HD and uncompressed SD (but not HD). I am rendering out the animations at that size and frame rate to the DVCPro HD codec. In Final Cut HD I have created a 1080 23.98 timeline that uses the DVCProHD codec. The output through the Kona2 to the HD CRT monitor is set to 60i. This works so far.
But my understanding of the DVCPro HD codec is that it isn’t really designed to do this. I gather people work with DVCProHD at 720 for 24p or 1080 for 60i. In some case I guess they shoot “24p over 60i” at 1080.
But I don’t really want to do that for a couple reasons. I want to stay with pure 24 full frames throughout the workflow. If I need to go back and edit a frame or two it’ll be much easier if it’s not interlaced. And I don’t want to sacrafice the resolution I have by going 720P. Also, and I guess this is the BIG QUESTION: If I am only rendering 24 frames per second using the DVCPro 100 codec, am I not getting better quality (less compression) than I would at 60i?
Anyway, so far audio seems to stay in sync, picture looks good on the CRT and the LCD and I’m hoping that this will be what I use to master to either D5 or HD CAM when the whole thing is finished. Anyone know if I should be anticipating problems?
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6 Replies
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I think you probably have the KONA set to downconvert on the output of the monitor. You are most likely looking at the footage in SD rather than in the native HD resolution. The pulldown is being done by the Kona on the fly.
David
Peace and Love 🙂
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No the output is set to 1080i 29.97 and I am going out to the monitor through the analog out. When I put up an SD resolution image, you can see the resolution difference.
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nothing wrong with that… but i would ask if this is a feature project are you planning on ever doing a uncompressed HD conform? it might be worthwhile to render After Effects at 10-bit uncompressed HD… when you drop them into FCP it’ll render down to DV-100, but at least when judgment days comes all your animations are finished.
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Yeah, I thought about that. But disk space is an issue and I haven’t seen THAT huge of a difference between the uncompressed imaged and the DVCPro HD final renders.
I know DV100 is considered an acquisition and editing format, but aren’t many people using it for their final master? Also, do any techie engineer-types know if I am getting anything more out of the DV 100 codec by rendering to 24P instead of 60i? It seems there should be less compression per frame, since there are less frames. Thoughts anyone?
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There is not less compression per frame. You get lower data rate, not the same data rate. If you render a 1080i29.97 file you will have a higher data rate than if you render a 1080psf24 file. If you were getting less compression per frame then the data rate would be the same no matter if it was 24 frames per second or 30 frames per second. I don’t know the technical ins and outs and proper terminology, but I know this is true. When you work with 720p24 DVCPRO HD you have a data rate of 7 or so MB/sec, when you work with 720p60 DVCPRo HD the data rate is higher.
Hope this makes sense.
Jeremy
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It does, and thank you Jeremy. Not the news I had hoped for, but thank you none the less.
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