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EX Edit to SD DVD Test Results
I posted this before, and I think it got buried in a thread and no one saw it, so I’m posting it again, ’cause I put a lot of time & effort in it, and I think it’s helpful:
I have Doug Jensen’s DVDs and I wanted to test his method for outputting SD from EX footage, so yesterday, I took some footage that I had shot with my EX while on vacation, and edited together an 8 1/2 minute piece. It had a few dissolves, a supered title, and one clip in with variable speed. The piece was shot in 1080 30p, and I edited it three different ways. The first, I edited in it’s own native format. The second one I did the same, but then copied the whole thing and pasted it into a DV-NTSC Anamorphic timeline. The third, I edited from start to finish in the DV timeline. Since I am looking for the fastest-most streamlined workflow, I did not render anything during editing. I just exported each sequence directly from FCP into Compressor, with a 1-pass CBR of 7.4.
The first method (XDCAM sequence) took 23 minutes
The second method took 15:30
The third method (Doug’s method) took 14:30This is on a MacPro 2.66 Quad
I then burned a DVD and compared. All three looked great and virtually identical. It might be that version one looked a bit sharper than the others, but it was so close that it could be my mind playing tricks. I viewed the DVD on a Sony 36″ SD monitor and also my Samsung 56″ dlp HD monitor. There was a little bit of aliasing on some of the fine horizontal lines when viewed on the Sony, but I attribute that to the fact that the TV does not support Progressive.
It looked amazing on the Samsung which I attribute to the excellent upscaling of my Blu-Ray player.Now, since it was a pretty simple edit with mostly cuts and no filters, I don’t know how different the editing process would be when working native vs. in an SD timeline. I’ll have to try a full project before I figure that one out. But, for the time being, Doug appears to be correct.
Next. I wanted to see how long it took if I rendered first before compressing, so I took the SD sequence and rendered it first, before exporting a Quicktime movie, and then taking that into Compressor. It only took 2 minutes in Compressor, but took 18 minutes to render. So, the whole process was 5.5 minutes longer than exporting directly to Compressor without rendering first.
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4 Replies
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I find that most EX material looks good going to SD DVD. The exception is material with lots of fine lines and camera motion in/out. Example, tree branches (sans leaves) on slow zoom in/out.
Also things should really be tested under lowest common denominator circumstances. For me that would be SD TV set from DVD with no progressive mode. Where you doing this with your SD TV?
That aliasing you saw is probably what I’m seeing with the tree branches although it I’d describe it more as twitter since that’s what I see as the camera zooms. This is exactly the kind of thing a client will complain about.
Even going to my HDTV 46″ 1080p LCD I see the issue to some extent. I tested with a DVD with progressive mode but no up-convert. On the other hand when I take computer out of full 1080p source DVI to HDMI to the set, it looks astounding (just in case anyone would think this is a camera issue).
Think of your results and compare that to a typical commercial SD DVD coming from a movie. How to downconvert and get that results?
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Craig,
The aliasing I noticed was when I panned slowly across a fence. There was noticable fine jaggies along the horizontal members of the fence. I also saw some “twitering” in the branches. This was all on the SD monitor, and I attribute this to the fact that the monitor does not support Progressive. None of this was evident on my HD set with the uprezzing DVD player.
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So it seem you do see the same issue I see.
I wonder if the answer is to “interlace” for SD DVD (yuck!)?
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Naw, I’m not worried about it. Most people seem to be viewing on HD TVs nowadays. In fact, the main reason I bought the camera now instead of later was not for HD but for 16×9. I was using DSR 300s before and found that my clients were mostly viewing on wide screen sets. The thought of them viewing my stuff all stretched out was too much for me to handle.
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