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HD-SD: There and back again.
I’m assembling a 15 minute drama on my modest (P4 @ 2.6 GHz, 4 G ram, XP Pro, 32 bit) system on CS4 (big jump up from Ppro 1.5 starting today).
I shot the project on an XHA1, so (I understand) it’ll be HDV. It’s 24p.
I’m expecting to cut in SD because my system won’t be powerful enough to work effectively/efficiently in HD. I’d like to work with the best quality SD version I can create, of course. (Besides that, I’ll be burning SD copies, and I understand for that reason alone it may be best to convert the HD camera footage to SD versions prior to editing rather than burning SD from an HD project. At least I understand that’s the case with FCP.)
I plan to create an HD version of the project as well. I expect that I can export an EDL (or save the SD project as an HD project) to transform the HD .pproj to an SD one, and then direct the clip links from the SD ones to the HD files.
I imagine that my workflow decisions will be critical, so I’ll really appreciate any suggestions.
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17 Replies
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As a general rule, we always create an SD and HD version of a project, and here’s our workflow.
1 – Create a sequence in the format that you’ll need first. In your case it sounds like SD. If you use your HDV footage in the SD timeline, scale your clips as needed. You’ll probably find that you can scale one clip down to fit the SD frame, then save that scale as a Motion Preset and drag that onto the other clips. Finish this sequence.
2 – Create an HD sequence of the settings you’ll need. Select and copy all of the clips in the previously edited SD timeline, and paste them into the newly created HD timeline. From this point you will most likely only need to scale the clips to fit the HD frame, again use a saved Motion Preset to automate this. If you have titles, you may need to create HD versions of them rather than simply scaling the SD versions up.
Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions -
Thankyou Steve.
Seems the step 1 part requires on-the-fly decoding of the HDV delta-compressed original stream (and down-resing to SD) as part of each proxy render or playback as one previews. I’m pretty sure my system won’t have the resources to decode HDV in anything resembling realtime (hence pre-conversion to SD) let alone down-resing or any other effect. (It can’t even play them with VLC wihtout unworkable hiccups.)
Maybe I can use Step 1 to render out (very good – that’s my concern) SD .avi versions of the original footage/clips. After that I could use the method you recommend, but wouldn’t need the motion presets in either step as long as i redirect the clip links in step 2 to the original HD footage.
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Sorry…should have mentioned that we always converted HDV to Cineform before use in CS4, precisely because of the problems you mentioned.
Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions -
If your machine cannot handle any other then SD, capture your footage in SD (downconvert in the camera)
You need a descent machine for HDV.———————————————–
Adobe Certified Expert Premiere Pro -
Thankyou both.
Leaning toward converting in the Camera and an SD capture. Even if Cineform is HD stills wrapped into an .avi (not delta-compressed) I doubt my system could work with it very effectively.
I’m guessing I can give subsequent HD-captured versions of the same footage the same names as the SD ones in an up-resed project and let the system crank out an HD version (at its far-from-realtime pace) using the same in and out cues. Having prestriped my tapes may be very helpful here.
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I like to use HD footage in an SD frame to be able to reframe and/or add faked camera moves. However, if your system bogs with HD, there’s probably no way around downconverting.
Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions -
My humble opinion is that your modest system should actually be able to handel HDV, and it would make sense to cut your “master” in the highest quality available.
Scaling HD to SD has always been a problem for Premiere and FCP both, there is an excellent “external” work-flow for this, if you are not scared of some of the geeky-ness of avisynth. Try googling hd2sd + avisynth. At first I was skeptical of the real advantages/differences of using this method, developed and discussed by Dan Isaac at the Adobe forum HERE (https://forums.adobe.com/thread/546075)
But the results were soooo much better in producing SD files (mpeg2 + mp4) from HD- original I would really recommend trying it out.
good luck, ninetto
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Thankyou Ninetto. Another option. Any guesses about how the SD from the avisynth/HD master would compare to converting to SD in the camera and editing in SD?
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I have no idea, never made such a comparison.
But by my rules:
1)always edit the master in the best/original quality
2)re/downsample after edit is completed (as in my suggestion via hd2sd)good luck, ninetto
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Minimum system requirement for HDV is a dual core.
OP has a P4, not quite the same.
Dan’s methode is meant for getting a HDV timeline to SD dvd.
Downconverting in the camera will give you good quality footage.
I have the same camera.———————————————–
Adobe Certified Expert Premiere Pro
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