DVCPROHD Pipeline and Online Question

[Gary Adcock]

[rick McNealy] “we take the DVCPRO HD and dub to HDCAM for use with the DaVinci and then back out to D5”

you do not gain anything by doing this, and in actuality it can muck up the color space when going from the 4:2:2 of the DVCPROHD to the 3:1:1 color space of HDCAM. Your best would be to dub direct to D5 and use that as your master for color correction.

Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA

[Gary Adcock]

[Graeme Nattress] “DVCProHD is a very lossy codec. It’s much more compressed than DV on a compression per pixel basis, and indeed, looks more compressed than DV when you look at it closely.”

I had to do a little research but the numbers support something else;

HDCAM is 1440 x 1080 (Y) and 480 x 1080 (R-Y/B-Y) @ 8 bits. Interestingly it is HDCAM that uses uses a form of DV compression!

[ 720p 59.94 / 60.00 ]
The native video raster for 720p (SMPTE296m) is 1280 x 720 for luminance, 640 x 720 for R-Y/B-Y.
The DVCPRO HD CODEC sub-samples this it 960 x 720 (Y) and 480 x 720 for R-Y/B-Y both at 8 bits. It uses Intra-Frame compression.

[1800i 29.97 / 30.00 US / Japan ]
The native video raster for 1080i (SMTE274) is 1920 x 1080 for luminance, 960 x 1080 for R-Y/B-Y.
The DVCPRO HD CODEC sub-samples this it 1280 x 1080 (Y) and 640 x 1080 for R-Y/B-Y both at 8 bits.

The DVCPRO HD CODEC is basically a 100Mb/s 8 bit ENG/EFP CODEC, carefully optimized towards

[Rick Mcnealy]

Thanks for the advice…I’ll instruct our colorist. I attended the FCP seminar in DC…It was very informative…Thanks Gary.

[Gary Adcock]

Your welcome Rick

thanks for getting thru ATF’s security to join us.

gary

Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA

[Shane Ross]

Gary, you are making my head hurt. I am SO glad I am a creative editor and just get to ask “does it work?”

Well, I go a little more in-depth that that, butnot as far as this. Oof.

Shane Ross
Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net

[Graeme Nattress]

You’re darn tooting right! Dubbing DVCproHD to HDCAM is just loosing you quality before you begin! Going direct from the DVCproHD cuts only edit master to D5 is definately your best bet, but would you not be further ahead using a colourist with a nice, modern, non-linear Final Touch, than going down the rather antiquated tape to tape route?

BTW, REC601 and 709 are colour spaces, 4:2:2 and 3:1:1 are chroma sampling notations.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Shane Ross]

I just got back from a test online at a post facility.

We shot DVCPRO HD at 720p24, and captured to G-Raids. We took the G-Raids to a post facility with FCP bays and had them output several of our tests to D5 for the network to QC. The output was thru a Kona 2, and the upconvert to D5 was done on the fly, thru the Kona…hardware upconvert to 10-bit uncompressed HD at 59.94 fps.

I’ll tell you right now that I will most likely be going to a post facility for the final output, as they know the D5 deck and how to set it up. There is NO WAY I’d be able to set that puppy up.

Anyway, that’s our workflow…capture DVCPRO HD via firewire from the 1200HD deck, edit DVCPRO HD native on two G-Raids, then take the project and the drives to a post facilty for output to D5. Still determining if we will color correct before or after the output. Obviously better if it is after, but costs might be a factor…

Shane Ross
Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net