Best practice for combining 1080p60 and 1080i 5994 in Avid

[Shane Ross]

If you import your footage into Avid 7 (Or AMA Link and import)…It’ll convert it to the project rate, so 1080i60. And it’ll be fine. As long as you don’t want to use that 1080p60 as slow motion…in which case you will have to do some trickery outside of Avid

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Kell Smith]

Thank you Dave and Shane,
Yes I stand corrected, it is 59.94. No slow motion.

I was having some problems transcoding from Avid, so I was going do the conversion in Premiere and then bring the DNXHD into Avid. So to be clear, don’t downconvert to 29.97, keeping the current frame rate is preferred and the project will handle it fine?

Also, with about half and half interlaced and progressive footage, going to dvd (and maybe digital also), is it better to
do the project interlaced from the start, and bring in the progressive footage, or vice versa?

Many thanks!
(note: now that I’ve looked in Premiere (cs6) there’s not an option for dnxhd 1080p59.94 in the settings)

[Shane Ross]

[Kell Smith] “Yes I stand corrected, it is 59.94. No slow motion”

No, I just meant, did you ever intend to use the 60fps as slow motion…slowing it to 30fps frame for frame for smooth 50% speed. If so, then keeping the frame rate, or doing tricks outside, might be in order.

[Kell Smith] “So to be clear, don’t downconvert to 29.97, keeping the current frame rate is preferred and the project will handle it fine?”

You aren’t downconverting…that’s when you decrease the frame size, say from 1920×1080 to 720×480. You are doing a frame rate conversion. Now, why don’t you want to? DVDs are 30fps only…retaining the 60fps really doesn’t do anything.

[Kell Smith] “Also, with about half and half interlaced and progressive footage, going to dvd (and maybe digital also), is it better to
do the project interlaced from the start, and bring in the progressive footage, or vice versa? “

If you EVER intend to go digital…then best to go Progressive. Deinterlace the other footage. Computer displays don’t do interlacing well.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Kell Smith]

>No, I just meant, did you ever intend to use the 60fps as slow motion…slowing it to 30fps frame for frame for smooth 50% speed. <

Sorry Shane for the confusion, I was responding both to your comment about the slow motion and Dave’s comment about the 59.94 vs 60.

>You aren’t downconverting…that’s when you decrease the frame size, say from 1920×1080 to 720×480. You are doing a frame rate conversion. Now, why don’t you want to? DVDs are 30fps only…retaining the 60fps really doesn’t do anything.<

Incorrect terminology!
I was planning to transcode the footage to DNXHD in Premiere and then bring it into MC – due to problems with spanned files in MC – and just wanted to clarify whether to do that either at 29.97, which was my first thought, or at 59.94 (leaving it as is, per your and Dave’s suggestions, and letting Avid just import it in).

>If you EVER intend to go digital…then best to go Progressive. Deinterlace the other footage. <

Currently the project is interlaced, with the progressive footage ( now 29.97 DNXHD) brought in. It would be a hassle, but not a major shakeup to recreate the project. Is it best to go ahead and create a new progressive project then, and transcode the interlaced footage to DNXHD 145 1080p 29.97 (and 709 colorspace?) for import into Avid? If it will make a difference in the final product I will do that.

Thanks for your thoughts on this, really appreciate it. I was reading your blog yesterday by the way and learned a few little Avid tricks, so thanks for that too.