HDV>ProRes>SD DVD

[David Roth weiss]

Lucas,

Forget Ken Stone’s tutorial, his use of Quicktime Conversion in that example is questionable, completely unnecessary, and more than likely the source of your bad looking video. More importantly, rendering HDV to ProRes or capturing HDV as ProRes does work very well and it’s a workflow that I use and that many others use all the time.

Okay, now that we have that out of the way, why don’t you start by explaining exactly what you’re trying to do. Have you already edited an HDV project that you’d like to like to render and finish as ProRes before turning out a SD DVD, or are you trying to figure out a good workflow for capturing and editing HDV as ProRes before making the DVD?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY â„¢

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Jerry Hofmann]

I’ve never used QT conversion for this either. But I capture HDV as ProRes all the time. Only had to edit one HDV native project to decide that capturing to Pro Res was a ton better.

Jerry

Apple Certified Trainer

Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here

8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO, CD’s

[Rafael Amador]

Absolutly agree with David and Jerry. The QT Conversion step makes no much sense.
QT Conversion is OK to send a preview of your work to your customers, but no for mastering.
Anyway I consider going to Proress via FW a generation lost. You get your 420 wrote as 422 and re-compressed.
No the same if you capture through a video card that with the transcoding includes a Chroma Filtering.
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Chris Poisson]

Rafael,

Going by the numbers regarding a generation lost, that may be true, but my eyes can’t see it, and look at all the other benefits, re: color correction, effects and compositing. No brainer. FW to ProRes rocks.

Have a wonderful day.

[Lucas Cheadle]

Great responses! Thanks guys!
David-
I have a native HDV project ready for BluRay authoring (waiting on Encore disc to come in mail). I have a new project ready for capture but delivery on SD DVD. Everything I work on for this company is shot on Canon XH-A1 in HDV mode. Typically I downconvert to DV in the deck during capture. Since I had an HDV project to play with I thought I’d experiment hoping to find a way to bump up the quality of an SD DVD project having the HDV source footage.

I agree with everyone that ProRes rocks, as long as you have the drive space! I did a test before starting the HDV/BluRay project and one tape captured using regular quality ProRes took up five times as much drive space as HDV. It was an eleven tape job and I didn’t have the funds to buy a terabyte size drive so I opted to stay HDV all the way…. jobs have to get completed, right?

Would working in ProRes from capture to export make a better SD DVD?
As for BluRay is there any visual difference between HDV and ProRes once it’s compressed into a m2v file and on the BD?
Thanks!

[David Roth weiss]

[lucas cheadle] “Would working in ProRes from capture to export make a better SD DVD?”

Better workflow? Certainly. Better DVD? Possibly.

Whether you capture as ProRes (as I do), or whether you simply render as ProRes by changing the Compressor in Sequence Settings, is up to you. But, please don’t let me ever hear you say you can’t afford a 1Tb hard drive. You’re talking to somebody here who remembers when hard drives were $1000 per gigabyte.

So, don’t pass go, don’t collect $200, go immediately to https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145167&Tpk=hitachi%201tb and spend the $199 on a 1Tb hard drive, please. Managing your entire post-production workflow in ways that are counter-productive just to get around buying a $199 hard drive is the epitome of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Jerry Hofmann]

It comes down to this old axiom: The less you compress the better. There is no loss in picture quality going from HDV to ProRes, and there are benefits. The obvious one is that all material not originally HDV such as graphics, stills or other CGI elements will be better because they are not HDV… It’s a garbage in/garbage out scenario… the better the source, the better the SD DVD.

Jerry

Apple Certified Trainer

Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here

8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO, CD’s

[Michael Azzarello]

I have been reading this post but can’t find the solution. I shot a project using the XHA1 in HDV. Captured the footage using ProRes 422, edited my timeline and am now ready to output to SD DVD. I’ve tried using Ken Stone’s method, and haven’t been happy with the results. When I view the footage on my DVD, it has a strobe like effect and looks blurred.

I shot it 60i and did not mess with any of the settings. I let FCP set the timeline settings according to my footage. Any ideas why the footage is coming out like this?

Thanks,
Mike A.

[John Kaplan]

Also interested in an alternative to approach to go from ProRes to SD DVD.
I exported a selfcontained ProRes movie out of FCP. I keep adjusting my compressor settings, but I can’t get anything that looks good. The HD video looks great on my monitor when in FCP, but doesn’t hold up when I compress for DVD.

Any workflow steps I might be missing?
What about using compressor to do an HD > SD > m2v. I know this is an extra step (and I never usually do it) but would that help?

John Kaplan
Final Cut Studio 2
Mac Pro 8-core, 10.5.8

[Laura Weinstein]

Hi, I was wondering, I need to export from FCP an apple pro res 422 sequence shot on canon60D to standard DVD. I can’t use compressor because of some glitch from some trial effects I used so I have to do it through FCP. Which settings would I use for the best results?