Help! Can’t edit SD and HD footage together.

[Shane Ross]

You need to convert the DV to DVCPRO HD 720p24 in order to get this to work. You can do this in one of four ways:

1) Rent a DVCPRO HD deck and have it upconvert the footage for you, doing a center extraction cutting off the top and bottom of the screen.

2) Thru the use of a capture card like the Kona 3 and a DV deck with SDI outputs (is there such a beast?) Or with a combination Kona 3 and AJA adaper that converts component to SDI.

3) Use my Compressor droplets found on http://www.proapptips.com. Sign up, go to the downloads section. Unfortunately these droplets take a LONG time to convert. meant for small amounts of footage.

4) Take all your DV footage to a post facility or dub facility with a Terranex box and have them upconvert it and dub it to DVCPRO HD. Then rent a deck and capture. But, if you are renting a deck, just do option 1.

Shane

FCP Preferences set to UNCONTROLLED ADVICE
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[David Jahns]

an alternate way to go would be to downconvert your HD footage to 16:9 DV @ 30fps.

This would allow to drop both types of footage into the same timeline without rendering, which would be fine for an offline edit, but you are going to face a challenge when you want to conform your “online” edit – 30i and 24p are going to look quite different. If you need these to match, you’re going to want to give the 30i footage a film look, and probably even rebuild your entire timeline in a 24 frame environment.

But for offline, you should be able to use compressor to convert your HD footage to SD-DV – of course, that’s going to take a long time, depending on how much footage you have. Your 24 frame HD footage will have a repeated frame every 4 frames, but that’s fine for offline editing.

I don’t think you’re going to find a cheap and fast way to mix both formats in the same timeline without rendering – it’s either going to take either time or money. And then the online version will also take time or money.

[Shane Ross]

FYI, adding DV clips to your HD timeline, resizing and rendering takes literally no time at all. I did this A LOT on my last project.

Shane

FCP Preferences set to UNCONTROLLED ADVICE
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Shaun Kendall]

How would I do this? When I tried converting my HD footage to DV using Quicktime Pro, it worked except that there were thin black lines on the left and right sides of the footage. I don’t mind if the footage looks different (it will actually add to the documentary for the effect I’m going for), but I don’t want those black lines on the left and right sides. I assume I’m getting this because the 720p 16×9 resolution is not the exact aspect ratio as the DV 16×9 resolution. Is there a way to use Quicktime or FCP to down-convert the HD footage so it will be the exact same resolution as the DV footage and go into the timeline without the need for rendering?

Thanks,
Shaun Kendall

[Shane Ross]

[Webshark2000] “Is there a way to use Quicktime or FCP to down-convert the HD footage so it will be the exact same resolution as the DV footage and go into the timeline without the need for rendering?”

Yes. Look up the Media Manager in the manual. It lays out how to do this.

Shane

FCP Preferences set to UNCONTROLLED ADVICE
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Shaun Kendall]

I used the media manager and converted the DV footage into HD 720p24 with HD 720p60 compressor, but it wouldn’t convert the framerate to 24, it kept it at 30. When I placed this converted footage into the HD timeline the sides (left and right) had very large black lines.

But, I then took this footage and brought it into Quicktime Pro, then exported it using the same settings as Final Cut, but at 24fps. After it was exported I imported it into FCP and dropped it into the HD timeline and it worked perfectly (the size was the same as the HD footage and I didn’t have to render anything).

Unfortunately this process will take an extremely long time and a very large amount of space (since converting the DV footage to HD doubles it in size).

If you have any other suggestions let me know.

Thanks,
Shaun Kendall

[Shane Ross]

OK….things are getting mixed up here.

You asked how to downconvert the DVCPRO HD footage to DV. FOr that I suggested the Media Manager, as this is one of it’s primary functions.

For upconverting DV to DVCPRO HD, I had four suggestions. You did a fifth thing that I didn’t suggest, and didn’t because the results are poor. Using COMPRESSOR is what I suggested, but I also said that it would take a LONG TIME. I also mentioned a capture card. But internally, Compressor is what you’d use. But yes, it takes a while.

Shane

FCP Preferences set to UNCONTROLLED ADVICE
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Shaun Kendall]

Ok, sorry, I misunderstood. I did try using media manager to downconvert the HD footage to DV, but I couldn’t ever get the size to be the same as the DV footage. What exact settings in media manager should I use for this?

Thank you very much for your help.

Thanks,
Shaun Kendall

[Shane Ross]

Dunno, never done it. Just know it can be done.

Shane

FCP Preferences set to UNCONTROLLED ADVICE
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Shaun Kendall]

Ok, I’ll play around with it. If I figure it out I’ll post back.

Thanks Again,
Shaun Kendall