Poor online quality

[Matthew Brunn]

I’m a little confused. Did you edit already or are you digitizing? What format did you shoot in? HDV, DV something else? What are the loads of things you have tried so that our suggestions won’t be duplicating efforts.

Most likely if it’s a “camera thing” it’s how it was shot not the signal from the camera.

At this point my suggestion is to edit in the format that you shot in.

[Gunleik Groven]

OK. I haven’t done any HDV, so jump at me if you like! -;)

I cannot really see why you choose to take one very compressed format (HDV into another very but differently compressed format (DV, and then try to capture as uncompressed. This is 3 times re-encoding your media before an edit.

First: You cannot capture uncompressed 8 bit over firewire (if that’s what you are trying), even when you set your capture presets as such. If you don’t have a capturecard, you’ll have to do the conversion in FCP after capturing.

You’ll probably need a RAID to do anything usefull with uncompressed on a G4.

I just cannot understand why you don’t just capture as HDV?
OK. You’ll find plenty of people around here telling you: HDV – Don’t do it!
But as you’ve already recorded in that format, stay there.

If you have the hardware to handle it, it is maybe an idea to transcode to some more robust format for editing, especially if you plan to do lots of effects and tinkering with the image. DVCPRO HD comes to mind.

Do not downconvert to an SD image before you’re finished.

eh…

But I’ve maybe just misunderstood your whole post…

Cheers!

Gunleik

[Fletch]

hi matt

i’ve already edited it. it wouldn’t really help me to digitize it in the original HD as i need it in PAL.

i’m wondering if maybe, because i down converted to DV-PAL, I should online it as that, rather than changing the codec to uncompressed 8bit. naturally i was trying to online it in the best quality possible.

most of the things i played around with were simple things like making sure the sequence matched the codec of the clips, and playing around with lower and upper fields. none of these things made any/much difference.

[Fletch]

hi gunleik

thanks for your advice. unfortunately i cannot just edit in HD due to my systems limitations.

[Drizzt_g]

Just to be clear you cannot shoot HD with the Z1, its HDV. They are two completly different formats.

[Annaël Beauchemin]

are you doing the HD to SD downconversion in the camera? If so, this is the problem.

The first solution would be to capture in HDV, and convert everything to SD using compressor. But the embbeded timecode will probably go and you’ll have to re edit everything if you already have edited your show.

The second solution would be capture HDV and edit on an SD timeline. But you’ll have to render everything, which is a pain.

[Fletch]

le coyote

thanks for your advice. yes, i am downcervting from HDV to SD in camera. your second solution sounds like a good idea, but if i did that wouldn’t it be better if i edited it in HDV and then just compress the finished movie to SD aferwards?

also, i’m not sure if my G4 can cope with it, not to mention whether 49 minutes worth of HDV footage will fit onto my 400G G-Drive…

Mark

[Stuart Simpson]

[Fletch] ” I am trying to import the footage as Uncompressed 8bit (4:2:2).”

Without a decent RAID there’s no way you’re going to get 8bit uncompressed to play properly over a standard firewire drive. Could be part of your problem right there…

-Simmie
1 G5 – Cinewave
5 G4s – Cinewave
1 xbox, 1 PS2 & a Gamecube
https://www.speak.co.uk

[Gunleik Groven]

[Fletch] “also, i’m not sure if my G4 can cope with it, not to mention whether 49 minutes worth of HDV footage will fit onto my 400G G-Drive…”

HDV takes the exact same space as DV, so you’re well off there.

But the 8 bit uncompressed is another story.
Are you sure you dis this?
How? (without a capture card)?
How can you edit that on your gear?

Or do you mean DV as “uncompressed”?

Gunleik