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hdv to sd
Hello everyone, this my first post here. I am editing a weekly program for broadcast. In the past everything was shot Betacam for SD broadcast. Now I am being sent HDV (Sony) footage that needs to be distributed in both HD and SD (Betacam) formats. The HDV is no problem. The SD conversion looks terrible. I’ve tried dropping a HDV QT into a timeline. I’ve tried Compressor with a variety of settings and the SD still doesn’t look very good. Any workflow suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
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11 Replies
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How are you outputting to HD? What format? Not HDV? Does the network take HDV show masters?
DO you have a capture card in here somewhere? All the majors (AJA, MATROX, DECKLINK) downconvert upon output…that would be the way to do it. Forget doing it in FCP…FCP is horrible at this.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Thanks for the response Shane,
I am outputting to hd with a sony hdv deck. I do use a aja lhe card but my attempts at down converting via the card don’t look as good as the software down conversions. Perhaps I have a bad card? Or more likely, I’m doing something wrong.
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You master to HDV? That’s a first for me. I don’t know people who take that as a master format. Anywho…
To downconvert properly you need to open the AJA Control Panel and do the conversion in there. Set your secondary output to 525i…click on the ANALOG tab to choose the proper ANALOG format. And then click on FORMAT tab, and in the SECONDARY area, choose what CONVERSION you want for output, anamorphic, letterbox or center crop.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
I’ve tried that Shane and the results are extremely aliased. Have you done this successfully before with the same or similar card?
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I do a simultaneous output to HDCam (via Decklink HD SDI) and use the HDCam SD SDI output to feed a digi beta which I crash record during the edit to tape on the HDCam. I like the HDW downconvert. It is much better than the FCP software version or the Decklink’s downconvert.
The digi beta is set to pick up the matching timecode from the HDCam so both masters are correct for broadcasters. I have heard good things about the Kona downconvert, but I can’t compare it to the HDCam machine. I prefer to do the dual recording as it means the digi is getting a downconvert directly from the HD SDI and not play back from tape which has compression.
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I have done this a lot. But with DVCPRO HD to BetaSP and Digibeta…not HDV. Might…OH…might have something to do with the field order. HDV is ODD, right? SD…not sure if that needs to be EVEN. I haven’t dealt with interlaced formats a lot.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
HD is upper, SD is lower. Not sure which is even or odd. I thought that might be an issue also.
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Michael, great idea doing the crash record on the digibeta. So, the hdcam does the down conversion?
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[Mitch Deck] “So, the hdcam does the down conversion?”
Yes it does and it is a lot better than FCP’s conversion and in real time. Go hardware for down conversion.
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I’ve been dropping 1080i HDV and 720p P2 into a DV timeline quite a lot lately.
Scale the 720p to 100% and the 1080i HDV to 67% and the results are great. The 1080i looks horribly aliased until you render of course. But then it’s sharp. 720p looks a bit sharper of course, but not as fluid.
FCP does these conversions beautifully, and takes but seconds to render.
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