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Future proof project properties
I’m having a hard time going ahead with creating (editing) a few documentary videos – of which, I plan to submit to film festivals; re-purpose as video files available via web (my site, Youtube, etc.); and also to provide on DVD.
For now, I’m creating with a combination of low quality video shot with a Canon G9 (640×480 DV) and a large amount of high res stills shot with my still camera gear. Eventually I will add an HD video camera, but for now, I’d like to take a gorilla approach and use what I have. (uh… I’m broke.)
So, that said, what would you all suggest to set up my Vegas project as? DV widescreen, DV 24p widescreen, 720p HD, 1080i HD, etc? Should I stick with a progressive format? I realize the current video will look like crud, but it has content value, and I plan to maybe use it in PIP type smaller windows as to not stretch out and reveal it’s noise/lack of resolution or maybe apply a light filter here and there so Vegas resamples and smoothes things out.
If it were not for the film festival plan, I would simply create as DV widescreen for now – which should (?) look just fine on computer and DVD. Would creating as HD and down-converting to DV (SD?) degenerate it further or smooth it out and actually give it a more film-like look? Yes, in the future, I will be shooting in HD, but even then, due to computer overhead or lack of HD capable audience, I may still down-convert to SD… Any experience here?
**Oh, and am I confused or do people throw around “SD” to mean many things, like “un-compressed” instead of “standard def versus high def”? I saw this in a COW article some time back:
>>>Although even a festival as small as ours will consider
making exceptions, the festival world is largely SD. (It’s
true for big festivals, too — SD with exceptions.) DVDs
are fine for screeners, but prepare to deliver a BetaSP or
HDCAM copy for event screening.<<< -
4 Replies
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I would not create projects with any more resolution than your source. If you are shooting SD then your projects should be SD. Using an HD project and then downconverting to SD will only make your footage look worse. It is what it is, and in the future you can deal with what it is i.e., buy a plug-in that scales SD to HD or simply use the SD as a PIP in it’s original resolution. Don’t try and make it something it’s not. Many people have entered film festivals with DV SD and done very well. It’s all about the “story”.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
It’s the stills that are pushing me to want to start with an HD project… I’ve basically got better than 4k quality in my stills – the only thing dragging it down is the current quality of the video I’ve shot. I suppose in theory, since I will be continuing to shoot these projects over the next year, I should set it up in HD in the assumption that I will be adding HD content at some point. I’m still timid about any computer processing hassles I will run into working with HD on the timeline.
But for the projects that are shot already, waiting to be edited – would those vegas projects really not display any better projected in HD if created as an HD video? The stills will surely look better (if I plan that way now and don’t down size them to fit DV)
In real world use, is it better to up-res now (at the Vegas properties level) or let the projection system up-res (from DV)?
I suppose I could always change the project properties and output render setting at any time, though I’d have to do a lot of work to go back and replace all the low res stills with the higher res originals and the aspect ratio and screen size would all change as well…
Thanks for your help! The COW rocks!
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If you’ve got a lot of stills and plan to replace the DV then going with HD now may make sense for you. The DV is just not going to look very good. There are products that claim to uprez SD to HD but they usually take a long time to render and while they look better than SD that has not been treated, they are not the quality of real HD footage. The details you would normally have in HD footage simply aren’t there to start with and can’t be added.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
John’s generally right here that SD doesn’t look all that great uprezzed, but if you’re careful you can get a pretty good product.
Case in point. My employers finished a doc a few years ago called Ballets Russes. I think you can rent it or even stream it from Netflix.
The project was shot in DV using a DSR500 (a pretty old camera suitable for industrials, but much better than any prosumer DV cameras). They edited in Media100 as an SD project and did a lot of compositing of archival stills and film in Media100’s 844x system. In the end they output the finished project to a Snell & Wilcox box wich uprezzed the video and output that to HDCam. They then sent it off to Sundance and later did theatrical runs.
Even though it was uprezzed DV, it looked very good! Some of this was the care put into the editing process, some of it was the quality of the stills (a bit of sharpness there gives a little relief from the SD video), some of it was the effort put into the audio (they paid a lot for licensing and they also paid a composer and musicians for original work), and most of it was just simply an engaging story. If people are engaged in the story they stop paying attention to a crunchy picture. They’re less likely to ignore lousy audio.
They also had years of experience and a good amount of time and money to put into this. It’s probably their 5th long form doc. It sounds like you’re at the beginning of that learning curve so you can’t put the resources into your project that they did.
I’d highly recommend that you read the DV Rebel’s guide. It addresses your situation very well. It’s not the final word but there’s a lot of good information in there.
Rob Mack
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