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HDV, ProRes, and others
Hello Everyone,
I’m new here and this is my first post!
My story:
I have been editing my project for some time and is close to the finishing of it (will do sound mixing and color correction after this).
This project is shot with Sony HDV Z1 and was captured with HDV camcorder and edit with FCP 5.0.4 and 2.5GHz Power PC G5. (So that means I edited it natively??) And this is my first time working with HDV.
While I was editing my film, I found my images sometimes were not satisfactory (when moving frame by frame, squares like mosaic appeared in high-speed footages or dark footages) and sometimes when i stacked several video tracks, the quality declined… My project involves some compositing effects too…
Well anyway all this pushed me to be eager to know more about the quality of HDV and how my film will look like. So I did some search and found some info about HDV’s weakness like GOP and 4:2:0… And I guess maybe the issues I had has to do with GOP….
And then, all of a sudden, I found the info on the possible improvement about FCP 6 and ProRes…. It seems it’s been discussed a lot but there are things I’d like still to make sure..
So my questions are like:
1) If I get myself FCP 6 (I can urge school), and from what I have read, I only need to copy my finished editing to a new sequence set to be rendered in ProRes, and I’ll get improvement on the quality of the images, as well as the compositing effects, subtitles, color, etc… Am I right?? Are the differences big?
2) But I have rendered everything already, so does that mean FCP will render it again? (So there’ll be 2 sets of rendering files and I have to free up more disc space?)
3) I’ve read some people capture HDV in ProRes codec before editing. But you need a capture card which we don’t have at school. Also in terms of my situation (I nearly finish my editing), it does not seem feasible to do. But does this really further improve anything (as opposed to editing natively and just set a ProRes rendered sequence)??
4) Since HDV handle badly with color, so after I finished editing and all the effects handling, I render the sequence in ProRes. And next I go color correction. is this order right?? If my present condition only allows me to correct color with built-in filters that FCP offers, is the order still the same? Or I do everything with FCP first (effectss, subtitles, colors) and render them in ProRes?? (or are there any other good and economical choices in color correction?)
5) After all this, what’re the best output choices for me? This film might get a film print. But it’s not sure yet. Before that, what’re the best possible outputs? (especially if the ProRes workflow works, also considering a possibility of film print, could be considered seperately of course) Digital Betacam maybe? (This project is aimed to be screened in theatres in film festivals)
Thanks for anyone who reads this post. Just found out some solutions and hoping I assume it right and that this would work out! Sorry for so many questions in a row… Any thoughts are apprieciated!! Thank you!!!
bryan
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3 Replies
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So my questions are like:
1) If I get myself FCP 6 (I can urge school), and from what I have read, I only need to copy my finished editing to a new sequence set to be rendered in ProRes, and I’ll get improvement on the quality of the images, as well as the compositing effects, subtitles, color, etc… Am I right?? Are the differences big?
Yes,
Technically you should use Media Manager to create your final Prorez sequence in a new project and then do all of you effects and finsihing in that sequence..
2) But I have rendered everything already, so does that mean FCP will render it again? (So there’ll be 2 sets of rendering files and I have to free up more disc space?
Yes.
3) I’ve read some people capture HDV in ProRes codec before editing. But you need a capture card which we don’t have at school. Also in terms of my situation (I nearly finish my editing), it does not seem feasible to do. But does this really further improve anything (as opposed to editing natively and just set a ProRes rendered sequence)??
I think it would be better to CONVERT the media and then render.
4) Since HDV handle badly with color, so after I finished editing and all the effects handling, I render the sequence in ProRes. And next I go color correction. is this order right?? If my present condition only allows me to correct color with built-in filters that FCP offers, is the order still the same? Or I do everything with FCP first (effectss, subtitles, colors) and render them in ProRes?? (or are there any other good and economical choices in color correction?)
See answer above…
5) After all this, what’re the best output choices for me? This film might get a film print. But it’s not sure yet. Before that, what’re the best possible outputs? (especially if the ProRes workflow works, also considering a possibility of film print, could be considered seperately of course) Digital Betacam maybe? (This project is aimed to be screened in theatres in film festivals)
I would consider the following outputs.
DVD (film festival screeners)
DVCPROHD Tape based output (HD MASTER)
DIGITAL BETACAM (SD MASTER)David
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[David Battistella] “So my questions are like:
1) If I get myself FCP 6 (I can urge school), and from what I have read, I only need to copy my finished editing to a new sequence set to be rendered in ProRes, and I’ll get improvement on the quality of the images, as well as the compositing effects, subtitles, color, etc… Am I right?? Are the differences big?
Yes,
Technically you should use Media Manager to create your final Prorez sequence in a new project and then do all of you effects and finsihing in that sequence.. “
Not necessarily, if the artifacting is in your original captured footage, then it will still be there even if you have media manager convert it to pro res or any other format.
just like if you photo copy a page that has a tare in it, the photo copy will still show the tare in the image.
I would recommend recapturing the footage on pro res thus hopefully avoiding the artifacting. That is unless it is on the tape, then there is nothing that can be done but re-shoot to get rid of it.
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Hello!
First of all, thank you guys for answering my questions.
I understand what zrb123 suggested, so I tried to examine my origianl footages. But since I could only monitor them “interlaced” (HDV deck and a TV monitor) It’s just different from what I saw in computer display which is “progressive”. They just look different, and from TV it always looks good. I tried to examine the QT files that I had captured. They look better than the footages in the timeline, even better then the original footages in the viewer if I use match frame.
And I am still not sure if I have to re-capture (or convert) my footages into ProRes again. David and zrb123 think so, but I saw in many places people argue that the best way is to capture HDV via Firewire and edit natively (which I did) and just set the render codec to ProRes and that’s all. (Supposedly it’s this step that changes all my footages from GOP to iframe?)
So do I really need to re-capture HDV (the only way is via a capture card?) or convert HDV into ProRes (via Media Manager Recompress I guess?) Won’t convertion make the original footages worse in quality? And does re-capture improve anything?
Do we have a clear answer to this or it’s still something that people debate?
which step changes HDV footages from GOP to iframe exactly?
I’d like to make sure about this first (and make sure how to do them correctly later).
Thank you guys!!!
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