Editing Stills: HD or DV timeline

[Steve Braker]

Depends how you’re delivering. If you’re delivering on DVD then there’s no advantage (and some possible disadvantages) to any of the HD formats. If you can show it at a higher resolution then go for it.

[Shane Ross]

[braker] “If you’re delivering on DVD then there’s no advantage (and some possible disadvantages) to any of the HD formats”

Uh…yeah, there are SERIOUS advantages. The pictures will look MUCH sharper. Working in a highly compressed format like DV, which makes still look like junk, then compressing again to MPEG-2 for DVD…not the best. But working in say a DVCPRO HD (heck, even DVCPRO 50 would be a good choice) timeline will get you MUCH BETTER results with your stills, then you compress to MPEG-2 for DVD. By far a cleaner image.

Try DV50 first. Then DVCPRO HD if you want to see what that looks like.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Steve Braker]

There’s no DV compression necessary when using a DV timeline to go to DVD. Just output as uncompressed or as reference movie (with renders trashed) – the DV timeline is just a convenient way to edit and monitor. The stills will only see the final compression. Sure, DV50 is fine too, but the results are no different if you don’t use that compression.

I disagree about HD and here’s the reason: Jeff is obviously serious about the quality of these images. He will spend some time being frustrated and searching here and perhaps Apple forums for hints on getting better results.

That’s great, but if all that energy is directed towards getting an optimal result at 1080 or 720 resuolution, he will lose all that and more when it gets crunched down to 480. He will get flickers and shimmers he hadn’t seen before, plus his resolution will suffer from having been scaled twice instead of once. If his efforts are put into an optimal result at 480, then that optimal result is what he’ll get.

An NTSC DV timeline as described above (or DV50) will get him optimal WYSIWYG results on a DVD, with only one compression (to MPEG2) and only one scaling (from the image to final resolution).

All the above is assuming a DVD delivery. We still don’t know how Jeff is showing this…

[Shane Ross]

[braker] ”
There’s no DV compression necessary when using a DV timeline to go to DVD”

As soon as you drop a still into a DV timeline, it gets compressed as DV. Export out of that timeline as uncompressed, then you are sending DV compressed footage out uncompressed…the damage is still there. It began with the DV timeline. DON’T USE A DV TIMELINE. Use DV50. True, DVCPRO HD woul dbe a bit much for a Standard Def DVD. DV50 is a great codec. BUT…you must have that as the sequence settings. Just because you export as another format doesn’t mean that suddenly the DV compression is erased and it is uncompressed.

[braker] “the DV timeline is just a convenient way to edit and monitor.”

If they have an external monitor. If this is the case, then edit in a DV timeline, then copy and paste everything into a DV50 timeline and rerender before you export. Again, simply exporting as a different format doesn’t fix things.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Steve Braker]

Apologies to Shane and to Jeff, (and thanks to Shane) I think I just stumbled on a big hole in one of the things I “know” about FCP.

It has been my impression that a QT reference movie only contains references to the source media, and that it therefore isn’t affected by the compression used in that sequence unless you ask it to (by leaving renders intact or by recompressing all frames). I had thought that when a reference movie was read by something like Compressor or DVDSP, QT was reaching all the way back to the timeline and essentially rebuilding renders to output to the new format.

On revisiting the manual (starting P. 239), I see I had it wrong. It is now clear that, although the reference movie directly hooks up media that didn’t require rendering in the sequence, in the case of rendered material it either contains the renders (at sequence settings) or refers to the renders saved by the sequence.

Is this correct now?

My other assumption has been that exporting uncompressed – without any renders available – would render anything requiring it directly to the output file – so in that case those renders would be uncompressed. In the case of Jeff’s photos, that would mean everything.

Is this still correct, or is this a myth?

[Shane Ross]

[braker] “although the reference movie directly hooks up media that didn’t require rendering in the sequence, in the case of rendered material it either contains the renders (at sequence settings) or refers to the renders saved by the sequence.

Is this correct now?”

Correct. It references ALL the media used in the timeline, including the renders.

[braker] “My other assumption has been that exporting uncompressed – without any renders available – would render anything requiring it directly to the output file – so in that case those renders would be uncompressed. In the case of Jeff’s photos, that would mean everything.

Is this still correct, or is this a myth?”

That isn’t how it works. You need to render before you export. If you don’t, it will render USING THE SEQUENCE SETTINGS, then export.

The Sequence is what the export always refers to.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Steve Braker]

Thanks, Shane. I can’t remember where I picked those particular muyths up. I hope I haven’t contributed too much to popularizing them. Or others…

[Ron James]

Those myths have been popping up in posts around here and 2-pop for years. I would often make a point of challenging them, but the thread would just fizzle then (because there were NO answers and/or proof!).

The popular one is to export directly from, say, your DV timeline while it’s UNRENDERED, to MPEG-2 (assuming you’re going to DVD) so that all your Graphics and text will bypass the DV25 compression and go straight to MPEG-2. I’ve always doubted this and I’m not sure if that’s been directly addressed in this thread (not that I could see).

[Shane Ross]

I hadn’t heard that myth before last week. It is an interesting theory.

But so is pre-blacking your tapes before you shoot. That is a DOOZIE.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Steve Braker]

Shane O Shane, if you’re still tuned in I’d love to hear your take on these numbers from Rocco:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/923535?

It does seem to contradict the manual, but I’m sure that’s happened before. If this stuff turns out to be true again I certainly want to know about it. I will do some testing of my own when I get oput from under a big heap here.