HD into SD timeline issue

[Sean Oneil]

[Shane Ross] ” If you are on the verge, what is stopping you?”

What is stopping me? I’m on the verge. What that means is I’m not there yet but close. It doesn’t mean something is stopping me. I believe FCP will solve its problems in 2007. If it doesn’t, then I will be past the verge at which point I will look for another tool for our day to day work here.

[Shane Ross] “Mixing formats on a timeline…easily solvable with a capture card. That is what Avid and Media 100 used to do. To me, that is low on the priority list. Downconverting? Again, capture card. Upscaling? Some capture cards. Does Avid upconvert or downconvert well? I’d be surprised if it did.”

No, it’s not always easily solvable. What if someone sends you media on a hard drive? What about not even 4 months ago when the only way to ingest HDV footage was with firewire? Even now, you need an HDV or HDMI to SDI converter which many producers don’t want to have to buy or rent or worry about.

To say that always going through a capture card and converting everything to one format is somehow all you’ll ever need – that’s crazy. I think almost everyone could agree they’d rather capture everything natively and mix formats with transparency and ease. Or at least have the option to do so. If you have hundreds of hours of footage, would you enjoy telling a producer that everything needs to be converted first before you can start cutting?

And what those two NLEs used to do has no significance in this discussion. I’m talking about what they can do now. Not only Avid and M100, but almost every other NLE can mix formats now. Even Adobe Premiere can. They don’t all do it perfectly (Avid can’t mix framerates I believe) but they’re all more apt than FCP at this moment. FCP is essentially the last NLE in which every piece of video in a timeline must be the same codec, size, and framerate in order to avoid rendering. And even if you do render, it doesn’t always work right. Using three sentences to explain that they are all tools doesn’t change that. As a FCP customer, I’m eager for Apple to provide essential features that are present if almost every one of their competitor’s products.

[Kevin Reiner]

We’re having the same problem right now. We received hours of footage on a large firewire drive. It is in multiple formats (6 different frame sizes and frame rates!) So we don’t have the option to downconvert during digitize. When we try to batch export to a letterboxed SD 720×486 10-bit QT files, batch export ignores the size request of letterboxing. Everything comes out sqeezed instead of letterboxed. When we do the same process with the Quicktime player, it comes out correctly. I don’t want to send it through QT for 300 files though. We’re trying to do it in compressor, but that it is being overcomplicated. I wish we could just edit multiple formats directly into the timeline, but that takes tons of rendering time and we’re getting the interlacing image that santellavision report on the DVCpro HD stuff.

To tell you the truth, we’re having so many problems just getting this project rolling that I don’t even know where to start with asking questions.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
-Reins

[Shane Ross]

If this is the footage you have been given…if this is the situation that has been handed to you than FCP is not the right application for you at this time. Avid Meridian and I believe Express Pro HD handle multiple formats on the same timeline. Sony Vegas does, I know that, but how professional that edit system is I am not sure. Edius makes an editor that might handle multiple formats. You’d best research other editing system if this is the situation that you are stuck in.

FCP is a great system, but not suited for all situations. This situation is a prime example.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Kevin Reiner]

Thanks Shane

I just can’t believe that there isn’t an easier way to convert all of this footage in FCP, compressor, or QT. I don’t want to change my entire system just for this one project, albeit a very important project. The other 99% of our projects work fine in FCP using the Kona card. What is killing me is that the batch export out of FCP should be the answer, but I believe there is a bug in its settings that doesn’t allow for an export with letterbox.

Does anyone know of a way to make this work?

Thanks in advance,
Reins

[Jeremy Garchow]

Yes, bring it in squeezed and then change the distort aspect ratio to 33.33 or -33.33 ( I always forget which way to go). The anamorphic clips you are creating will preserve the most detail/resolution anyway. Also, capturing the footage with a capture card and bringing them in to one codec, frame rate and resolution will alleviate this problem.

Jeremy

[Kevin Reiner]

Thanks Jeremy

Thats the problem. We don’t have access to the original tapes. Just video files on a firewire drive that was compiled by a 3rd party. I think there were numerous shooters all with different cameras.

So we’re stuck with what we’ve got. I am going to try that anamorphic idea. That might work if we want the footage letterboxed, but what if we want it croppped? We would have to resize it horizontally, resulting in image quality loss, correct?

Thanks,
Reins