HD to DVD – Hardware Downconvert Workflow

[Rafael Amador]

[Chad Brewer] “Still is every day in the United State”
Not only there but all around the world.
The product was so good and convenient that the Video-TV industry lowered the quality requirements.
Betacam reduces the chroma A LOT in order of being able to record it.
Broadcast, at that times, meant that meet certain specs (Bandwith and SNR) that Betacam never met.
If you compare a signal recorded in a SONY 1″C with the same signal recorded in a Betacam is not the same thing.
Betacam have been yielding good pictures because cameras had good lenses. Put to a Betacam camera de average DV camera lens and you will find the truth about Betacam.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Chad Brewer]

Rafael, I understand and respect that you are a forum leader here.
I can’t understand what you’re conveying at times due to a language barrier or perhaps a lack of competence on your part. I work with former Sony Engineers every day. One of them is by boss. My suggestion to you would be that you don’t talk about broadcast television in the United States if you don’t have experience in it – at least in current times….You deal with Laos broadcast specifications. We’ll deal with SMPTE specifications in the U.S.
Edit on…

chad
TeleVersions Broadcast Video

[Tim Gibbons]

Rafael,

That’s really interesting that you live in Laos. I was there in 2001 shooting a travel doc and speaking of BetaSp I was shooting on a BVW-D600. Due to the humidity, I was seeing this weird vertical oscillation in the picture when I played back video through the camera. After a few days my, concern grew to the point that I just had to find a place to check the video out on a real deck. I think we were in Vang Vieng. So I tell our driver, Sai, that we need to find a place to view the video and he takes me to this concrete compound with military guards armed with AKs at the gate. they instruct me to walk in and the driver has to stay outside with the van. I walk in, not speaking a word of Lao and they bring me to a guy that looks and acts just like an engineer but doesn’t speak English. I pantomime to the best of my ability, show him the Beta tape and he looks really worried. I start following him down the hall of this concrete bunker. All I can think is that this is reminiscent of “A Year of Living Dangerously”. We turn a corner and there’s a door with all these shoes lined up at it’s base. The engineer gestures that I should take off my shoes and after I do he leads me in. BAM! It seemed like I was in the jungle walking through an abandoned military installation and then I walk through that door into a first-rate television station control room. I walk to a wall of video monitors and tape decks and there is a PVW-2800 BetaSP record deck. I gesture that I want to put the tape in and the engineer nods. The video starts to play back and the visual problems I had viewing through the camera were gone . . . . but now there’s a very hard horizontal black line running through everything and the audio is running perceptibly slooooow. . . .

The engineer is looking at me like I just ruined his day by bringing those guards to him and I’m staring at my video wondering what the hell is wrong and then it dawns on me that this is PAL country! Sure enough, I look at the deck again it I notice that it’s a PVW-2800″P”. So I chalk the visual issues up to the NTSC/PAL issue and get out of there.

Laos had to be one of my most memorable international gigs that I ever had. The people there were so kind and at least back in 2001, we were an oddity as tourism wasn’t a big industry back then. People were genuinely interested in us and they didn’t have any problem at all that we were Americans. In fact they seemed genuinely pleased that we were from The States. . . . . considering the bombing the US did back in the late 60s and the early 70s.

We used to joke that we were a multi-million Kip production! We used to carry two backpacks filled with Laotian currency.

Rafael, you are truly lucky to live in that country. I’d go back in a heart beat. Please check out my website http://www.TimGibbons.com, I have some video on there and a few of the shots on “Profiles” are from your country.

Are they still making “Lao Beer”?

Warm regards.

Tim

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Chad,
Perhaps my problem is that I learnt the NTSC system in Tokyo instead than in LA or NY.
Do you know what a Betacam Ferric was?
Was the first model of Betacam. Before the development of the SP tapes.
I’ve been working with that 22 years ago.
Please don’t come to tell me what Betacam is about.
Just think that today the quality of Betacam is compared with MiniDV.
Again, Betacam have worked due to expensive lenses and huge tubes/CCDs.
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Chad Brewer]

[Rafael Amador] “Please don’t come to tell me what Betacam is about.”

Like I said, I’m working with fellow engineers who actually have more experience than you. 22 years for you? Great. Your MiniDV camera makes better pictures than my old BVW-507? Cool.

chad
TeleVersions Broadcast Video

[Rafael Amador]

I have to recognize that for many years Betacam have been “the format”.
Betacam simply had no competence (U-Matic, M-II?).
This doesn’t make it a better.
Your fellow engineers have been working for SONY, so they are not impartial at all.
If you want to compare a MiniDV or DVCam camera with a Betacam, chose a DVCam with a 2/3″ CCD and put in front a 15K glass. Don’t compare a PD-170 with an IKEGAMI.
Anyway it seems that you feel insulted for what I say. As I said I’ve been working with Betacam for many years and I love it.
I’m just talking about technical specs. Some time ago the term “Broadcast” implied the accomplishment of certain band-with and SNR. The 1″B of Bosch and the 1″C of SONY set the mark. The very modulation format of Betacam does’t allows to reach the same specs. It had other advantages that made from this format the most spread around the world.
Cheers,
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Tim Gibbons]

Dave,

Thank you. You are absolutely right. I did a test this weekend and sure enough your workflow produces better results than the dead chicken to BetaSP system I started this thread with.

I’m rendering out one of my projects in AE as we speak.

Just to double check, could you take a look at my seetings below and confirm that they are correct? It would be much appreciated:

Render Settings. . . Based on “Best Settings”
Quality: Best
Resolution: Full
Size: 720×480
Proxy Use: Use No Proxies
Effects: Current Settings
Disk Cache: Read Only
Color Depth: Current Settings
Frame Blending On For Checked Layers
Field Render: Upper Field First (Appropriate for my video (XDCam HD422)
Pulldown: Off
Motion Blur: On For Checked Layers
Use Open GL: Off
Solos: Current Settings

Output Module . . . . Based on “Losseless”
Format: QuickTime Movie
Output Info: PNG — Spatial Quality = 100(Most)
Include: Source XMP MetaData
Output Audio: 48.000 khz/16 bit/Mono
Channels: RGB+Alpha
Depth: Millions of Colors+
Color: Premultiplied
Final Size: 720×480

Thanks again Dave.

Tim

[Tim Gibbons]

Dave,

Great info. I’ll do another render today with your changes. In terms of FCP defining it as “Field Dominance”, are they still correct in the order? I mean, FCP says that XDCam HD422 footage is Upper Field and you just mentioned that it they were wrong. So is this just an incorrect term or is FCP getting the field order wrong.

Thanks again. Your advice solved a very big problem for me. I’ve been pushing this client off for two weeks now.

Tim

[Rich Mellon]

Hi Dave,
Sorry take up more of your time but I have a very similar problem.
I produce a TV show and recently the channel wants it produced in both HD and SD. The footage is mostly shot in HDV 108060i. Should it be edited in HD first and then converted to SD? How would you do the conversion without having the aspect (squashing) problems?
Thank you, Rich

[Francesco pio Tessarolo]

Have you never tried this on your workflow?

The Popcorn Island Final Cut 2 After Effects Script.

Francesco