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Importing slow motion (50fps) footage from PDW-F800 XDCAM HD422
Hi There,
For our exam film project at the dutch film school we used the Sony PDW-F800 XDCAM HD422 camera in 50MB/s mode. Some footage was shot in 50FPS to attain a slow-motion effect. Now the camera automatically reduces the resolution by half for 50 FPS so the material is actually in 1920×540 instead of 1920×1080.
Here is the first problem: AVID 5 will not import the clips. To solve this issue we use XDCAM Transfer to import the video to .mov and then Compressor to convert it to Prores 422HQ. That works fine for most clips, though it is a bit time consuming, so if anyone has a better way to get the material into AVID, please let me know.
The second problem is a bit tricky. XDCAM Transfer somehow upscales the image to 1080p, which looks great, but there is one shot, where there is a group of people moving horizontally through the frame in slow motion. Somehow all vertical edges seem to double and jitter in the movement. Now I know that edge doubling can occur if horizontal movement is too fast, but that does not seem to be the case here. The jitter is so bad we suspect there is some other problem. Does anyone have tips what we could try to do about this?
Kind Regards,
Titus
Nachbrenner Productions
Amsterdam/Zaandam
http://www.nachbrenner.com -
4 Replies
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Hi Titus,
Avid Media Composer does not currently support overcranked XDCAM 422 material. Another workaround would be using the Calibrated Software MXF plugins to read the re-wrapped .MOVs (rewrapped by XDCAM Transfer but not transcoded to ProRes). If you install the Calibrated software you can link the rewrapped MOVs using AMA. This will at least spare you having to transcode in FCP..
For the record I don’t know if this workflow has been blessed by either Calibrated or Avid but it should get the job done. You can download the trial version of the plugin and test before you purchase..
Best,
Ian
Ian Cook
Sony Broadcast and Professional Company -
Thanks for the tip. I forwarded it to our editor. She’ll be happy to hear there is a way without using all that conversion.
Kind Regards,
Titus
Nachbrenner Productions
Amsterdam/Zaandam
http://www.nachbrenner.com -
Hi Titus,
I have the same problem with the Sony F800 reducing the resolution to 1920×540 at 50fps. What settings in XDCAM transfer did you use to upscale the image? When I import the file using XDCAM transfer, the resolution stays the same.
I hope you’ll read this.
Thnx,
Marjoke Haagsma
Student Dutch film academy
Amsterdam -
There is no upscale or transcode in XDCAM Transfer; it imports and rewraps as-is. The 540 vertical resolution is normal and most editors support it. It is really only with older versions of Avid that we have issues. If you are concerned about render times or otherwise must have it in 1080 you would have to transcode it in another application or just re-record the playback signal to an XDCAM device.
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