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Mixing 1080p25 with 1080i50 in the same project – FCP 6
I started shooting a 30 minute doc here in Central America using a camera that shoots at 1080p25 (wrapped as 50i).
However, while in the States recently I picked up the next generation of the cam, which shoots 1080i50 or 720p50, but not 1080p25.
I’d prefer to shoot with the newer model for a number of reasons, but am worried about the combining 25p and 50i on the same timeline. I’ve shot about half the interviews already, and about 30% of the broll, so it’s enough not to make me want to go back and reshoot.
Final output is 1080i50, as I’m hoping to sell it to a broadcaster I do some work for.
Any advice?
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7 Replies
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They both run at the same frame rate…25fps. So I don’t see any issues mixing the formats. (50i is interlaced…but still 25fps)
Shane
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Thanks Shane and Dave.
I suppose I’m worried that the interlaced and progressive clips won’t look so hot when combined on the timeline, and then rendered out as 50i (and watched on a broadcast interlaced monitor).
Over the past few months I’ve been uploading news pkgs filmed progressive to the channel’s office in DC. The editors there use software to convert it to interlaced.
Last week one of the editors called me find out what kind of compression I was using to ftp as the video looked youtube quality. I explained I’d gone from AVCHD to Prores (Toast Titanium) for edit, then rendered out to HDV for upload. Needless to say the “youtube” quality comment left me feeling a bit deflated.
Is there an easy way (ie: batch convert) to use something like twixtor to convert the progressive clips to interlaced? Or am I being overly cautious.
Chanel pays about a grand a minute for half hour, so this certainly isn’t Discovery quality we’re talking about. But HD broadcast is HD broadcast …
Thanks again.
David -
The progressive footage is already wrapped as 50i so you don’t need to do anything. All the footage will work in a 50i timeline.
If you want to change the look so everything matches, then the interlaced footage can be deinterlaced. I have had success with the Nattress deinterlace plugins. The FCP deinterlace filter is hopeless, just throwing away resolution.
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@Dave – Okay so edit and export prores, then use Compressor or Streamclip (which I have much better luck with – not crashing) to encode to .h264 say 30Mbps (frame blending and better downscaling checked?). File size is slightly larger than HDV but should be better quality right? Again the difference is tough to see on my LCD (and unfortunately I live in a little village in the Guatemalan highlands where broadcast spec anything is nonexistent).
@Michael – I’d like to change the look so everything matches, but seeing as my final output is 50i, wouldn’t I be better trying to interlace the progressive footage (if that is possible)? Sounds crazy these days with so many shooting progressive.
In the past I’ve tried to render progressive footage out as interlaced, but it still doesn’t look interlaced when viewed on my LCD.
As you can tell guys, I’m relatively new at this …
Thank ye all!
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Your progressive footage is already interlaced. Both fields are identical so it looks progressive. You can’t really change that look to i. All you can do is deinterlace the i footage.
The look of interlaced footage is the slight image variation between fields. This changes the way movement is recorded. That info is different on progressive shot with an interlaced wrapper.
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Thanks Dave. I learned not to export from FCP to Compressor awhile back. But even as a self-contained movie Compressor can do all sorts of funky things, in my experience.
I’d love to what conversion settings you’d use to get the .H264 file, to end up with a file the same size as HDV but better quality.
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Thanks. Please let me know if you do come across them. I tried one test on a short clip and yes LOOONNNNGGGGG render times on my laptop.
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