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HD .mov > SD .avi = very poor quality…
Hi,
I just bought a mac pro (8-core, 2Gb ram) and installed final cut express HD, meaning to buy final cut pro next week. I used this to capture some HD footage that I shot last week (1080i/50).
Because of sheer deadline pressure, though, i decided for now to edit it on my old pc in Premiere Pro 1.5, which is what i’m used to (HD, Apple and FC are all pretty new to me).
So i had to downconvert my footage to standard avi (pal). And that’s where the trouble started:
– using final cut express’ quicktime converter to export as avi resulted in poor image quality (jagged edges etc)
– using quicktime converter to export as .mov (using h.264 codec) took a LONG time, about 75 minutes for 25 minutes of unedited footage, although the image quality was very good. (interestingly enough, when i tried to render this mov-file in Final Cut, it told me it would take 25 minutes to render… on an 8-core machine !?)
– importing this mov-file in premiere pro 1.5 made for a LONG time of audio conforming (app. 1 hour) and then exporting to avi gave me the same, crappy, jaggy-edged result!
So I’m once again at a loss: how do i downconvert my HD 1080i/50 footage to standard PAL 720×576 (aspect 1.42) avi?
Really, it shouldn’t be this hard now should it?
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1 Reply
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In FinalCutPro you would use the MediaManager to accomplish that. There is another way I think could work with FCE, but I don’t know FCE at all. Put all the HD-clips in an anamorph Pal-Timeline (if only DV or 8Bit or 10Bit you have to decide, but you seem just to look for a solution for an offline-editing, so I suggest go for DV-Pal) and render this. Then export->quicktime movie with the boxes make movie self contained checked and the one which says recompress all frames unchecked.
The file opened with QuickTimePlayer will look crappy. But hit CMD-J, choose the videotrack and go to visual settings, check the high-quality box. Save the file. You are good to go.
I wouldn’t know if this works inside FinalCut Express the same, but I would give it a try.Regards,
MatzeHali
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