HD to SD DVD

[Tony Brittan]

Personally, I would say to go with the full frame size (using Prores) for the edit, and use compressor to create your DVD files for dvdsp after its all done.

[Steve Eisen]

What’s up Chip

Edit everything in HD then export QT movie and drop that into Compressor and make an SD DVD. Make sure 16:9 is selected in the aspect ratio (Inspector/Video Format). Easy way to do this is click on the gear.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Chip Hess]

Thanks fellas! Thought 720 might be easier in terms of machine performance, but everyone seems to agree!

I will indeed just knock it down in export. I know we are losing quality, but it is for a huge sales meeting and they don’t have the budget for HD projection, just SD. At least we they will have the original project and footage archived at full rez.

SIGH.

[Drake Hale]

Here’s a great walkthrough on how to do the above described compression HD to SD DVD, you can ignore that its for HDV

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/hdv_to_sd_dvd.html

“It’s all about keyframes”
Anonymous

2011 3.2GHz 27″ iMac, Final Cut Studio 2, Adobe CS4

[Bret Williams]

Your link didn’t work for me for some reason. I found it manually and it looks the same – https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/hdv_to_sd_dvd.html

From my experience, what he demonstrates will look fine on a 4:3 TV. But once you look at it on a big ol LCD HDTV, it will look like utter hell. Lots of stair stepping on lines, especially if from a 1080i source, as compressor just can’t seem to scale anything worth a darn. And he didn’t even mention turning on frame controls and putting scaling to best. But it doesn’t seem to matter, the output still looks cruddy when bumped up to HD LCD.

Then solution imo, is to run your 1080i (or 720p) but in this case I think Chip should’ve been editing in 1080i, through After Effects to scale a separate ProRes output at 486p or 486i. Or 480p/i. Place the file within a 486 or 480 comp. Don’t scale in the render que. It will create mush. You’ll have a separate SD master and you have relied on a real compositing app to do the scaling and not compressor. The results are infinitely better. You won’t see any of the stair stepping an/or line doubling created by compressor. Especially on 1080i material. But don’t believe me. Try for yourself.

[Chip Hess]

Hello All –

I am having intermittent playback issues, play head starts stuttering after working awhile.
This is true in a 1080 timeline. I tried a 720 and was having same issues.
I am on a quad 2.66 iMac with 16GB RAM, any thoughts?