HDV to FCP to widescreen iDVD

[Tom Wolsky]

Yes. The material will be letterboxed on a standard aspect television and widescreen on a widescreen television.

All the best,

Tom

Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 2 Editing Workshop” Class on Demand “Complete Training for FCP5” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy” DVDs

[Walter Biscardi]

[John West] “P.S. And what if he wants to up-res the whole shebangy to HD in the future?”

Just edit in HD to begin with. HDV is a very small codec and you can create an SD DVD right from the HDV timeline. I do this all the time with DVCPro HD projects. Simply select 16:9 as the aspect ratio in Compressor when you create the MPEG-2 for the DVD. Then when the DVD is played, it will come up letterboxed on a 4:3 monitor and 16:9 on a widescreen monitor with the correct DVD connections and settings.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Miodrag Ristic]

[Walter] –

Walter,

Sorry for interjecting, are you trying to say that you can capture HDV into HDV
timeline and then just send it to compressor for a regular DVD-5 (SD – DVD).
(you mentioned HD, HDV and DVCPro HD, so I’m a bit confuesd there)

Thanks

Mick

FCStudio 5.1.2, OS X 10.4.6, G5 2.3 Dual, 2 Gig

[Walter Biscardi]

[Miodrag Ristic] “Sorry for interjecting, are you trying to say that you can capture HDV into HDV
timeline and then just send it to compressor for a regular DVD-5 (SD – DVD).”

Yep, at least it works fine with a DVCPro HD timeline.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Miodrag Ristic]

Thanks Walter,

Why the choice of DVCProHD?

I’m just trying to get the complete workflow in my head (still on DV)
before I jump and buy Canon XH A1, heard/read many people
complaining about HDV.
Do I need an MXO (cheapest way to go) to monitor HDV as well?
So far I’ve learnt that my current Firewire 800 drives will be OK for HDV.

Am I missing something here?

Thank you

Mick
FCStudio 5.1.2, OS X 10.4.6, G5 2.3 Dual, 2 Gig

[Walter Biscardi]

[Miodrag Ristic] “Why the choice of DVCProHD?

I’m just trying to get the complete workflow in my head (still on DV)
before I jump and buy Canon XH A1, heard/read many people
complaining about HDV.”

HDV is a great aquisition format, not a good editing format due to all the rendering / conforming that must be completed before editing to tape. There is a also more color information in DVCPro HD since it’s a true 4:2:2 format so it holds up better to color correction. DVCPro HD is just a much easier format for Post than HDV, though the new ProRes 422 codec could change that next month.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[John West]

Thanks for the info, guys!

– JW

[Brian Paterson]

I have read that idvd does it’s own compression therefore no need to use fcp’s compressor before sending to idvd. In fact this could cause footage to be compressed twice thereby losing quality. Is this true or a myth.?
Yesterday I completed my first ever HDV wedding video with an XHA1 and made a short test. I made a self contained quicktime file straight from fcp and burned it at professional quality in idvd. Quality looks fine on my widescreen telly but image is squished on my old standard one. ( there is probably an anamorphic tick box somewhere I missed ) Apart from that there dosen’t seem to be a problem. Thought I would write the whole two hour video today but contemplating the file size thought I would do it as a reference movie instead of self contained before sending to idvd but just read somewhere that I can’t make a reference file from fcp if it’s in hdv. Is this true? or another myth.
It’s going to take a long time so would like to start off on the right foot.
Many Thanks

brian paterson