HD to SD when Digitizing thru ioHD

[Bob Zelin]

George –
quick easy answer. Hire a freelance FCP editor to help you.
Replies below –

I am investigating the best way to end up with SD for the edit.

REPLY – do your job in HD 1080i, and use the I/O HD to downconvert to SD out to tape.

First test: capture with ioHD using HD-SDI in from camera (capture now- no device control) with ProRes 1080 HQ, edit in 1080 and then export QT and then down convert to SD in Compressor. The DVD looked soft to me.

REPLY – go into EASY SETUP, and select I/O HD ProRes422HQ 1080i 29.97. Make sure you are in an HD project. Digitize your media. Does it look nice and sharp now ? Go to the I/O HD control panel. Format Secondary to 525. Analog out tab to secondary. Play your sequence into a normal TV (like a Plasma) using the analog Y Pb Pr output. This is now a downconverted SD output in real time. Does it look good (please tell me exactly what TV monitor you have).

The project will have graphics that I need to have created in SD frame size, not 1080– cost factor with graphics house.

REPLY – cost factor ? You mean to change the menu to 1080, they charge more money ? There is no extra hardware required to create HD graphics !

I have tried to capture on the fly with HD-SDI into Aja ioHD and having the clips coming into FCP as SD.. can’t seem to get that to work. I am sure I am missing something.. can you share stories of best way to pull this off? I can see the down convert options for the ioHD outputs, but can’t see a way to force the down convert when coming into FCP.

REPLY – do your entire job in HD, and use the I/O HD control panel to downconvert the output into SD 525. It looks great. Try it right now – just change the control panel output (secondary format) to 525. Look at the output on a TV montior.

BobZelin

I need to shoot in HD, but don’t need/ want to edit this particular program in HD. I did try to media manage the HD ProRes to SD ProRes, but that would take a few weeks from the test I ran– very slow.

Any war stories and success stories of the HD to SD journey would be most appreciated.

[George Griswold]

Bob-
Thank you for your reply… I have done that part, but I left out one key piece of information… the project is going right to DVD.. never leaves the machine as a tape output. I have a 1080 timeline, and the ioHD is looking great with output to SD Sony HR monitor. I will look at the DVD test I did again to be sure I wasn’t imagining the softness. The other issue is wanting to cut down on storage space by working in SD. I did do a SD SDI output from the camera to digitize and that looked very good– again could be a bear trap with the camera down convert not being tip-top.

I hire a few guys to edit for me occasionally, but after asking them and 3 others in LA and NYC there is no consensus on the best way to skin this cat.

Thanks,
George

George Griswold
http://www.videonow.info
New Orleans, Louisiana

[Bob Zelin]

a quick answer. If you look at the SD downconvert on a TV monitor, and it looks ok, and then you use compressor to get it onto DVD, and it looks soft – guess what. It’s not the AJA IO HD, and then it’s off to another user forum on Cow !

Bob Zelin

[Ken Botelho]

Bob leave the poor guy alone for goodness sake. Enough with the irrational “quick” answers.

Give “CRAMCompressor” a try George, it should have all the conversion formats your looking for. And if your still not happy with the quality, maybe you can give Telestreams’s “Episode engine” a try

https://compressorpack.com/

[George Griswold]

Ken,
Thanks for your support… it seems to come down to an issue with the Compressor conversion from HD DVCPRO to SD… maybe pixel aspect ratio or the like. I just imported as SD SDI and all is well… I will just do that for simplicity.. this has to be safer because who knows what will happen with my graphics when I down convert them.. just don’t want to go there… that is why tests are always essential.

George Griswold
http://www.videonow.info
New Orleans, Louisiana

[Jeremy Garchow]

To down convert on the way in with your ioHD, you select an SD easy setup in FCP and then set your secondary format to match your incoming HD format.

You do the same with VTR Exchange if you need tc for your captures. SD in VTR Exchange (which should be your primary format in the control panel) and then set your HD format as the secondary. You should see a little down convert icon on the incoming video stream between itself and the frame buffer. Here’s screen grab from a Kona3 Control Panel, but it works the same way:

Jeremy