HDV to Beta SP workflow

[Michael Gissing]

If you have Kona card you can down convert as you playout from the HDV timeline to Sp Beta. Faster and better down convert than Compressor.

I used to have Decklink HDPro which didn’t do as good a downconvert as the Kona, but I don’t know if Decklink downconvert has improved with more recent cards & software.

[Brandon Carter]

I have a blackmagic card and while it downconverts quickly, the quality is TERRIBLE. I’m wishing I would have opted for the Kona card now.

[Michael Gissing]

Yes my old Decklink was worse than Compressor. In order of quality my list would be

Best – Teranex or specialist hardware equivalent
Next – Kona3 or Sony HDCam deck (yep on some programs I prefer this to the Kona)
Cheap – Compressor
Desperate – FCP or Quicktime Comversion or Decklink

[Shane Ross]

Why you dissin’ Decklink? It does a FINE job of downconverting. Did you set up all the settings properly in the Decklink interface? I can’t tell you what they are, I haven’t used one in a while, but it was the first card I had and I used it MAINLY to downconvert HD to SD for output.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Steve Eisen]

Ditto. It’s got to be user error. I still have my Decklink in my G5. MXO2 on my Mac Pro and Kona 3 offsite. All perform great downconversions.

Quality all depends on what your source footage is.

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

[Michael Gissing]

I was being specific about my Decklink HD Pro card. It is still in my old G5. There is nothing to the setup page but to choose which SDI connector to downconvert with (it is a dual 444 card or 2 x 422 SDI) and a choice as to anamorphic or letterbox. I did say that newer cards and software may have improved the Decklink downconverts.

The downconverts were soft, on a par with FCP scaling so I used my HDCam deck which is just as good as the Kona3.

[Brandon Carter]

When I downconvert and output through the Decklink card the video comes out very jittery and blocky looking. If it could be user error, I wish someone could point out some settings to check. Compressor is converting much better, but its very soft and not so sharp. I’m looking for the ABSOLUTE best quality here.

[Pradip Patil]

Hi Brendon,

I have faced similar situation earlier with Blackmagic. The problem was with external video playback settings in FCP. I had set it to SD resolution and that was causing the problem.
I changed it to HD resolution and the quality of the downconverted video improved a lot.

[John Fishback]

I’m not familiar with those cards, but have you fed proper reference video to all devices?

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.2, Motion 4.0.2, Comp 3.5.2, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.2)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO & 192 Digital I/O, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[Michael Gissing]

Yes I have always had ref video fed to all machines and I/O cards. Decklink are great cards but one of the motivations for changing to Kona was their superior downconverts.