HDV to SD help

[Lloyd Coleman]

I am having the same problem. I found a couple of things that to work so far. If I import the HD footage into a SD project and resize it in Premiere it will export as an SD(avi or mpeg) file and look great. The problem for me with this is that I would like to do my editing in HD and then be able to deliver in both HD and SD. If I import the edited HD project in the SD project it looks bad. I also downloaded the trial of Aspect HD. It does work very well for editing and the exports in any format look good. I am not excited about buying more software, but I guess that is the best solution I have found so far. If anyone else has a solution, I would love to hear about it.

It is curious to me that Premiere can import and resize HD footage inside an SD project and look great, but can’t downsize out of an HD project and look good enough to be usable.

[Craig Howard]

If this helps:

I did some down rez tests recently (note – PAL 720p @ 25fps)

I built a SD 4:3 comp in After Effects and brought in the HD footage. Worked perfectly and it allowed me the ability to PAN and SCAN (keyframed). This I would call a centre extraction (4:3 from 16:9)

I then tried bringing the HD footage into a standard DV project in PremPro. By standard DV project I mean non Cineform AspectHD. I scaled the footage down to fit using motion and that worked fine as well. I would have been able to PAN & SCAN in PremPro had I chosen to.

I did not do any test to quantify the quality differences between the two processes. I intend to in the near future.

Both looked fine on my monitor but I suspect that AE would produce a better result.

Craig Howard
Shooter Film Company
Auckland
New Zealand

Premiere Pro 2.0

[Craig Howard]

Lloyd.

Output the HD project (export movie) and open it in a new SD project just fort the purpose of down rezzing.

That gives you both delivery options.

Craig Howard
Shooter Film Company
Auckland
New Zealand

Premiere Pro 2.0

[Robertahdv21]

Even if I bring my original HDV broll in to a SD project I get that flicker. I have need right now to only export to DVCPRO tape. I just tried a option that seemed to help a little and that is that I click on the clip in the timeline go to the menu bar on top and click on clip> Video Options> Field options and select interlace consecutive frames. I think this help some to reduce the flicker. I have looked at this footage so long that my eyes are tired, so try this your self and let me know what you think. I also noticed on a soap opera on TV right now that they have some of that same “flicker”, in my eyes it is not a “Film” flicker it is a nasty down conversion flicker. Maybe this is just something I can’t get away from using HDV but I sure wish there was a fix.

[Craig Howard]

Wish I could help more. I do not know so much about HDV because I work with Panasonic HVX in true progressive frames and luckily for me (PAL)

Craig Howard
Shooter Film Company
Auckland
New Zealand

Premiere Pro 2.0

[Craig Howard]

Lloyd – I am not sure what you are saying.

You said that if you import the HD into an SD project it looks great. SO what is the problem …because that is what I thought you were trying to achieve?

If you can not down rez from the HD project directly it seems easy enough to open an exported file in a SD project (without buying additional software)

BTW: Do you get the flicker problem that Roberta is talking of?

Craig Howard
Shooter Film Company
Auckland
New Zealand

Premiere Pro 2.0

[Tore Gresdal]

I think I had the same problem as yourself;

– Flickering due to Fields order (HDV PAL is Upper and DV PAL is Lower Fields)
– Project edited in HDV becomes slightly soft on export to standard DV

Here’s what I did to get around it:

1. Export HDV project to tape (in HDV format)
2. Go into the menu on the HDV deck and set it to downconvert to DV through firewire.
3. Open a standard DV project and capture from tape. (The hardware downscaling in the deck did both a beautiful sharp downscaling to SD DV and also took care of the conversion from Upper Fields to Lower fields

Regards
Tore Gresdal