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HD Downconverting for Fun and Profit
So, hooray. Got the HVX200. Looks great, feels way more like a film camera than any prosumer stuff I’ve used yet. Love it.
We got it thinking that this camera will be a step above the DVX100A that we use so much now, and that maybe we could use it for some higher end projects that we would have normally rented the SDX900 for.
Problem is, we have very little need for 720 pixels in our market, let alone 1080. My question is this…
If I shoot in the variety of higher-res modes and downconvert to uncompressed SD (which is our standard for broadcast video), am I gaining anything over just shooting in the 480 modes?
And, if I am going to downconvert, what is the best way to do so? Editing Natively in HD is not really an option becuase we don’t have an HD monitor yet. So we need to downconvert before the edit. Have people had good luck using the in-camera P2-to-MiniDV dub function? Bump to Beta out of the camera using the Video-out? Or is what I am getting importing from the P2 card and rendering on an 10bit uncompressed FCP timeline as good as it gets? Maybe there is superior software for downconverting?
I find the variety of format in this camera astounding, dumbfounding, and a little bit frustrating. After a number of tests, shooting in the various formats and bringing them into an FCP project with an 10bit uncompressed timeline, I am not closer to deciding what the best workflow for HD shooting to SD editing is.
G5, FCP HD, Aurora Card, frustation galore.
Allen Baldwin
Catama Productions
South Portland, Maine -
3 Replies
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I shoot all my stuff in HD now for SD conversion. The last 2 jobs I did were shot different. 1 was in 720 60p for a 30 second comercial and 720 24pn for a documentry. The one shot in 60p was great because I sat in a wheel chair and a guy pushed me past a bunch of HD tv’s for a commercial for a local TV store. Since the frame was so much larger then an SD frame I dropped the footage into Apples Shake and applied the Smoothcam node which took all the bumps out of the footage. I could not have done this shooting is SD since there is very little room for that type of manipulation.
My workflow process has turned into this. Shot in HD and edit in DVCPRO HD timeline. Export a Quicktime reference movie and import into After Effects where I resize the video in an SD comp and make a movie file that is 29.97. if I shot in 24pn I would also do a 3:2 pulldown for a 29.97 timeline and reimport it into FCP to an uncompressed timeline for SDI output.
I like AE better for doing the conversions. FCP has displayed some quarks for me.
-Lars
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Thanks for the ideas. Just curious, do you crop when you go from HD to SD, or do you resize, or both?
Unfortunately, I can’t really edit natively in HD because I don’t have an HD monitor (yet). And I tend to think that I would rather see the downconverted image as I was editing, rather than finish an edit and find that something didn’t look “quite right”. Do you ever run into this problem?
Thanks very much for your workflow. I knew someone out there had to be doing this on a regular basis.
Allen
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Working in HD is something new for me since I got this camera but has proven very hand to do. I always talk to the client first and show some samples of letter box and full screen. So far they have all gone with letter box. But doing a center cut from the HD footage would work to I would just need to frame it correctly when I shoot.
I also do not have and HD monitor and only use my Dell 24″ monitor which is really nice. If I want to check something out I just create a DV50 24p sequence and drag the DVCPRO HD 24p into it and render and view that on my Sony monitor. That has worked out well for me so far. 720p is the format that works out the best for me and what I do. I like shooting at 60p and 24pn into a non interlaced frame. If you are shooting in HD you should get yourself a 7″ Marshall HD Monitor, they are very nice since the one on the HVX is not good quality for shooting HD and you always have to push the Focus Assist button.
Good Luck
-Lars
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