progressive to interlaced

[Chris Tompkins]

Wow, Well there is a ton of HD formats and frame rates and options when shooting. You need to read up on HD formats.

Don’t convert/compress/transcode your finished vid b/4 going to dvd – this is adding another step of compression (bad)

Shot and edit in HD.
Output current settings making a ref file.
Drop that into compressor
make dvd files
import into DVDSP
Burn.

Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC

[Jeff Greenberg]

Matt,

First, thanks for the kind words! Feel free to ask followups or contact me directly if you like.

Understanding DVDs
All DVDs (in NTSC) are 29.97, interlaced video.

When you give DVDSP a 23.98 asset (progressive, HD or SD), it then adds the appropriate frames (telecine) back to play back correctly on a TV set.

It’s not a compatibility thing. The DVD spec was cemented back in 92 or 93. All DVD players follow this (it’s different for blu-ray)

I’m not sure why you have footage in AIC (Apple’s intermediary Codec.) I usually see that when someone puts HD footage through iMovie. I’d use Compressor to make M2V (mpeg-2) assets – I’d probably turn on the frame controls in Compressor (although the defaults are set to automatically turn on under the right circumstances.) It HAS to be an Mpeg-2 and DVDSP will do that if a video stream isn’t compliant.

The alternative was to capture in a different format – AIC isn’t great. ProRes is really the way to go.

I have no idea about how to set your camera correctly; I could figure it out, but you sound pretty intelligent; It sounds like you’re shooting HD at 23.98 and your camera has the choice to spit out an interlaced feed (24@30i) as well as the true progressive feed (23.98.)

Does HD take up a lot of space?
Depends on how you think. Uncompressed HD takes up about 6 gigs/min where ProRes LT is about 1 gig a minute.

Your last question: Is it common to convert from HD to DVD
Sure – and there are bunches of ways to do it, some hardware based some software based (and almost always, software based takes longer!0

The real thorn is if you’ve shot progressive 30 (which some cameras do) Both fields are temporally captured at the same time, but displayed (on most TVs and blu-ray) field based. It’s almost the same but not as good.

I don’t think compressor has this specific bug – most of these problems are (unfortunately) workflow based. When I do jobs, I specifically test the workflow in advance and think it through. Despite Apple’s general desire, these tools do require reading.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer
Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC
Avid & Color Videos Vasst.com
Compressor Essentials Lynda.com