Compression Confusion – 1080p to 720p

[Eric Holzapfel]

Hello All,
I have been looking all over the forum, and have not quite found out
a way to do this, or at least a way that works.

I have some video that I shot with an HVX200 – format 720p30 (native frame size – 960×720)
and some video shot with a Canon 5D – 1920×1080. I need to edit both of these video formats
in the same timeline (oops I forgot to switch the Canon to 30 fps!).

My initial thought was to convert the Canon footage to Apple ProRes using Grinder, and
then use Apple Compressor to down-convert the footage to 720p with same frame dimensions
as DVCPRO HD – compressor did not change the frame size – it remains at 1080.

I also created a proxy using grinder (1280×720), and just overrode FCP message about matching the
sequence to the clip settings.

What is a better way – or at least a workflow for this? I do not have a capture card, AJA, Matrox, etc.

Thanks,

Eric
Charybdis and Scylla Productions

Equipment – Using FCP 7 along with FCS 2 – Compressor 4
Mac OS Lion
Mac Pro workstation dual 2.8 with 16GB memory

Final Cut Pro, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop

[Russ Haskell]

You’re right that you should be converting the Canon’s h.264 files to Pro Res for editing. The preferred way to do this is via Log & Transfer within FCP. There is a helpful tapeless workflow tutorial by Shane Ross, which should come up from a search of these boards. If you don’t have the original intact card structure, Compressor can certainly do the Pro Res transcode, but it’s not very fast. In situations like that, I tend to use MPEG Streamclip which is faster.

Compressor should do a pretty good jogb scaling the 1080 clips to 720. Go into the frames controls tab and set scaling to Best. How did you try to resize…in the Geometry tab?

Russ

[Eric Holzapfel]

Hello Russ,
It is nice I am on the right track. I did see the FCP log and transfer info by Shane Ross (Creative Cow, thank you very much!).

Using Compressor 4

I selected the DVCPRO HD codec, 720p60/30/24.

My geometry settings are: 960×720 “Custom (16×9)

I had the frames control set to :
Resize Filter: Better (Linear Filter)
Output fields: “Same as Source”
Deinterlace: Better (motion adaptive)
Rate conversion: Better (Motion compensated)

Should I set the rate conversion to “Best”?

Thank you for the information

Eric
eholz1

Final Cut Pro, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop

[Russ Haskell]

IMO, setting the resize setting to Best is a reasonable choice and shouldn’t bog down the process. It didn’t register with me that you were also changing frame rate; Better is probably fine. Too many Best settings combined could produce extraordinary processing times.

Russ