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HDX-900 1080 30p footage looks awful when digitized into Final Cut Pro
I’ve just gotten off the phone with an engineer from the place we rent our cameras. We did a shoot with the HDX-900 shooting at 1080 30p. It is now my understanding from talking to the engineer that this camera does not actually shoot in true 1080p. I got the footage back from the house that digitizes for us (they used the DVCPRO HD 1080 30p preset), and it looks awful. It looks like mini DV, with all of the fine detail areas appearing blocky. I had him capture the first tape over using the 1080i setting and it looks much better. I know I can have him recapture all of the tapes at 1080i and rescue the footage that way, but it will cost me money that is not in the budget. Is there a way to make this footage look decent from within Final Cut Pro, or am I pretty much going to have to pay for the footage to be digitized again?
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11 Replies
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Any chance you can upload a second or two of the raw video? Preferably something with motion in it.
Jeremy
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You rock. I am downloading now.
By the way, did the capture house give you a project or just the quicktime media?
Jeremy
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The link below contains a 5 second pan of some signage. I see a lot of blockiness in the “O” of the US open logo, plus look at the “M” in Johnny Miller on the cardboard sign. I’m seeing this type of artifacting on all smallish detail like this. The file is around 60 MB DVCPRO HD 1080 30p.
https://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=TTdIeEVhZy9OQnp2Wmc9PQ
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They just give us the quicktime media. They give us a killer price that keeps us from having to shell out the $18,000 or so for a DVCPRO HD deck. I now have them capture everything using the DVCPRO HD 1080i60 preset and it looks fine, even stuff shot on this camera as 1080p30. I only get this wierd artifacting when they capture using the DVCPRO HD 1080p30 preset. They capture firewire from the deck to an internal raid, then lay off the files to one of my hard drives.
I have verified that their DVCPRO 1080p30 setting is exactly the same as the one on my copy of FCP, so I am sure that no one has tweaked the settings from their defaults. Perhaps the settings need to be tweaked? I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to get a 1080p image if the camera records 1080p as 60i? Some type of pulldown?
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Did you try checking the box in FCP to remove advanced pulldown?
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[Brandon Parris] “I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to get a 1080p image if the camera records 1080p as 60i? Some type of pulldown?”
No. It’s the difference between true progressive and psf. This footage does look like it’s been through the ringer, and it appears that the fields have been handled wrong somewhere. Do you have an example of the stuff captured @ 60i?
What I would do is have them capture 60i, then when you get the media, change the field dominance of all the clips to ‘None’ in the browser and then edit in a 29.97 1080 DVCPro HD timeline with a field dominance of ‘None’. That will ensure the best quality while maintaining a progressive (or psf) workflow.
Jeremy
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[Chris Bell] “Did you try checking the box in FCP to remove advanced pulldown?”
That won’t do anything as this footage is 30p, not 24pA
Jeremy
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Thanks for the help Jeremy, I’ll give it a shot. Unfortunately I don’t have the hard drive with the 1080i60 sample on me as it’s being used in the field currently, but in looking at it on their monitors when we did the test I know it resolved the artifacting issue. I will try changing the field dominance once I get the 1080i60 sample back, and see if that does the trick while giving me progressive footage.
I had another phone call with the engineer this morning, and he said that in the future if I want true progressive out of this camera I should shoot in 720p. Our deliverable on this stuff is to the web, we are only shooting in HD to future proof the footage, because the clients I work for end up recycling footage from other shows and vendors quite often, and they want to have a standard look when they mix and match footage in a show. That current standard is DVCPRO HD 1080p30.
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[Brandon Parris] “I will try changing the field dominance once I get the 1080i60 sample back, and see if that does the trick while giving me progressive footage. “
Cool. Remember, if you have clips already editied in to a timeline, then you will need to change those clips in the timeline as well as the clips in the browser. After you change the clips in the browser, anytime you add those clips to a timeline, the settings will follow. It’s just the clips that are already edited into a timeline that oyu will have to change manually. I hope that makes sense. It’s easiest to make this change before you start editing as you won’t have to worry about it after the fact.
[Brandon Parris] “I had another phone call with the engineer this morning, and he said that in the future if I want true progressive out of this camera I should shoot in 720p.”
Yeah, he’s right. 720p is true progressive. You can shoot 1080 psf as well and maintain a progressive workflow. I personally, work with mostly 720p footage. I like it. If someone needs 1080i footage from 720p, it’s a breeze to do a cross convert to 1080i. If you do decide to go with 720p, shoot 720p30 and not 720p60. That way when doing the crossconvert, you will get 1080p30 footage and not 1080i30.
Jeremy
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Gentlemen,
this camera does not record 1080p, it is 30p over 1080i. When played back on a 1200a or 1400 deck, the progressive scan is still a 1080i 59.94 signal playout. Firewire playout of the tape, whether 720p or 1080i does not compare to the SDI output from the deck, IMHO. Even though this camera is native 720p, I feel the best picture is obtained by a deck playout over HDSDI (using 1080i recording) & (into a capture card) and not from the firewire output.Richard Boghosian
Bogh AV ProductionsFCP 6.03 Intel 2.8 8 Core Apple X-Raid and Atto SCSI UL5D Kona LHe
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