Exporting HD project to DV format

[Mark Maness]

Wow… That’s a round about way to get a DVD.

The easiest and best way is to export your HD sequence to Compressor, set it to one of the DVD settings, not HD-DVD, and compress it. Take those files into DVDSP and burn your disc.

[Thom Sullivan] “What settings am I looking to set to burn the project in the DV format?
“

This is where I think you are missing something. DVD is a DV format, of sorts. They have lots of similarities but they are still different. Always maximize your settings to match your FCP sequence as best as possible. If you have a 30 minute program or less, use a DVD compression setting of Best Quality 90 minutes.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com
https://blogs.creativecow.net/waynecarey

[Tim Danyo]

I shoot and edit in HDV using the Z1U. I’ve found that my DV downcoversions look much better when I transcode the time line in HDV back to my HDV deck. Then I re-import the project back into FCP while down converting it to DV from the deck via FW. I now have a solid DV file from which to make an SD DVD project in DVDSP.

I know this sounds like a lot of hoops to jump through, but I’ve found the an HDV to SD FW conversion from the deck is gives the best quality from anything I’ve seen in QT thus far. I could be missing something, but all of the conversions I’ve done in QT from HDV to SD do not look the best.

You figure you’ve got to bring it back to tape anyway for storing and creating masters. Going back out to DV is just one extra step.

Tim

[Tim Danyo]

Wayne,

The quality is sub par to me when exprting HD material to SD via compressor- at leaast in FCP. 5.1.4.

Studio 2 could be a different scenerio?

Tim

[Mark Maness]

Truth be known…. I do something like this most of the time except that we use XDCAM HD and I have to make XDCAM SD masters also for broadcast on BetaSP.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com
https://blogs.creativecow.net/waynecarey

[Thom Sullivan]

Wayne & Tim…Thanks for the replies. Looks like all things are not created equal! Ha! I’ll try both ways and let you know how it goes. HD editing is a whole new world for me at work…In most cases my HD projects will be converted to the DV format for playback purposes.

Thom

[Mark Maness]

Yeah, it sometimes can look pretty poor using FCP 5.1.4… We are using FCP 6.0.2 and have noticed a better quality improvement.

The trick I found was to export your sequence as HD Quicktime and set DVDSP to SD DVD (letting DVDSP do the encoding) using the Encoding settings in the Preferences, Mode: One Pass, Bit Rate: 7.0 Mbps, Motion Estimation: Best. It seems better and faster than Compressor using Background Encoding.

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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com
https://blogs.creativecow.net/waynecarey