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Activity Forums Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy Going from 720p to 1080i best practices

  • Going from 720p to 1080i best practices

    Posted by Jeremy Brunson on November 7, 2011 at 11:53 pm

    Hello everyone,

    I wasn’t sure which forum to post to so if I need to move it to another, please let me know.

    I have an hour long program that was originally supposed to go only to DVD and the web (in sections). Now, I have to prepare it for broadcast. The project was shot at 23.98 at 720p, DVCPRO HD. I now need to convert it to 1080i, 29.97. I know it’s my fault for not covering my ass but I’m trying to salvage this the best that I can.

    It ultimately needs to be converted to XDCAM HD to go on a disc for one particular station. I have to convert it to MXF file to send to get closed captioned and put on a disc.

    I’ve made a few conversions thus far. I had OK luck with Apple Compressor but it seems to introduce weird artifacts every now and then. Adobe Media Encoder has been better for consistency but I seem to get some jagged edges from the blowup and/or interlacing. I’ve used the frame blending and a tiny bit of blur, but they don’t seem to help that much.

    Are there any tips anyone might have? Anyone recommend any plugins or other programs? I would be happy to clarify further. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

    Best,
    Jeremy

    Jeremy Brunson replied 14 years, 6 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Shane Ross

    November 8, 2011 at 12:18 am

    Those “weird artifacts” might be interlacing. If you don’t look at the result on an external monitor, it wont look right, because computer displays don’t show interlacing properly…they aren’t designed to.

    In Compressor, you need to adjust the size and frame rate to what you want, then you need to turn on the FRAME controls and use the following settings:

    RESIZE: Better
    Output Fields: TOP
    DeInterlace: Best
    Rate Conversion: Fast.

    And leave every other setting alone. The result will split up frames into fields, so it will look odd on your computer monitor. But output to a broadcast monitor, and it should look smooth.

    Shane

    GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
    Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

  • Bret Williams

    November 9, 2011 at 4:05 am

    Should see 3 nice solid frames in a row, and then two interlaced frames in a row. That’s the pulldown it’s adding.

    I use After Effects to convert stuff like this because I know that AE’s scaling engine is pretty stellar. Seems faster. But alot of people don’t have After Effects.

  • Jeremy Brunson

    November 9, 2011 at 7:13 pm

    I ended up scaling it in FCP. I nested the sequence at 1080i and it looked a lot better than what Compressor or Adobe Media Encoder was giving me.

    I then took it to Compressor and then did the frame rate conversion.

    Everything looks great now! It took a lot of experimenting to get the right brew of settings that didn’t look bad or take 3 days.

    Thanks!

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