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Really? No One Has Seen this?
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Hello Rich, I think you might be missing the point. You can watch a real time down convert of your HD footage with a Kona. You can then move, scale and crop your footage right there in real time from your HD timeline to your SD monitor.
Jeremy
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[Rich Rubasch] “We sell the fact that we can take HD footage and move it around in an SD frame….I have found that even AE is not great at interpolating it”
See, now if you’re selling this as a service, then you really should already have your method in place BEFORE offering it. I offer this service too since I can pan and scan the footage with the Kona and it’s pristine.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Not exactly….I have a 4×3 standard DVCPro50 SD sequence. We drop in the 720p footage and it automatically scales to 75% and displays letterboxed. The end frame of the spot is full frame 4×3 720 x 480 graphic filling the screen.
Footage letterboxed, end frame full screen.
With that workflow, the idea was to drop a Photoshop mask where the black letterbox area is and then scale the 720p footage under it from 75% to 100%….in theory. I always assumed that this would work. No different than using a 1200 x 900 still frame in FCP and flying it around an SD window.
I understand all the downconverting, and pristine, and all that. Just not in this workflow. At least not exactly….
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
You are essentially experiencing the limitations of software encoding. Hardware encoding is much better. In other words, I can’t do what you want in FCP but I could take it downstairs to our online Sony suite and crush this. It’s a linear, hardware based suite with multiple DMEs. Software is just not good at this type of thing. I’ll add a caveat. I’ve never worked with 2k or better images. I’ve heard you can do stuff like this with those types of resolutions. Any kind of compressed format is iffy.
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In all the tests on the same clip the best looking clip was the 10bit uncompressed using advanced conversion our of compressor. Off tape, the 10 bit and Pro Rez looked identical but both added field or interlacing jitter…the advanced downconvert I chose frames and the clip is nearly perfect, and better than anything else I tried.
At long last we cut in 720p native and talked the client into making the end graphic letterbox as well. This way we stayed 720p all the way and will output an HD master and dub downconverts to the Betacam letterboxed right out of the deck.
Still, the original revelation is this…saying that FCP can use HD footage in an SD timeline and be able to use that extra resolution is not really a great workflow if you want great picture quality.
Using advanced format conversion to create new clips is a great way to downconvert 720p or 1080i material to SD, even better than having the deck or the Kona do it, at least in my tests.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
[Rich Rubasch] “At least not exactly…. “
You set the Kona for a 4×3 down convert (crop), you scale down a clip in your HD timeline to the proper size (75%), copy and paste that to all the clips and then you view the down converted playback on your SD monitor. You can make a mask like you said to keep everything underneath it letter boxed, then you make a 4×3 graphic at the end. Layoff 4×3 to tape.
Jeremy
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Jeremy….cool workflow and one I hadn’t tried. Worked very well. I will still argue that the 10 bit uncompressed advanced conversion out of compressor keeps the most sharpness, but it does not allow me to pan and scan the clips on a timeline. And sure enough, my 4×3 graphic held up as a 4×3 in and out of the footage.
Keeping that one in my back pocket, and it has made this whole thread very worthwhile!
Kind of made my day, actually…thanks Jeremy.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
[andre delena] “You are essentially experiencing the limitations of software encoding. Hardware encoding is much better. “
That is a myth. Hardware can do the things faster but no better. Any digital hardware is just running a software so if you can run the same software in your CPU, you can get the same results. Hardware will do the things faster but no better. If any video card can do something better than FC is just because is running a better software than FC. Give to FC the proper information-software-algorythm or whatever and you will get the same quality conversion than with a Kona 3. No RT off course.
When in analog things are the other way. Electronic components and circuits is what determine the quality.
Rafael -
[Rafael Amador] “That is a myth. Hardware can do the things faster but no better. Any digital hardware is just running a software so if you can run the same software in your CPU, you can get the same results. Hardware will do the things faster but no better. “
I’ve yet to see any software solutions that can match a Terranex for conversion. That’s a hardware box running incredibly proprietary software that works in conjunction with the hardware.
Just like I’ve yet to see a software solution for FCP that comes close to the hardware conversion built in to the AJA Konas. particularly the downconversion and the HD cross conversion.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Hi Walter,
First to wish you a happy 2009.
There is not a software solution compared to a Teranex or an AJA Kona because “software solutions” gives less benefits and more headaches to the manufacturers. If they wanted, Teranex or AJA could release an application with which you could get exactly the same quality conversion in a lap-top.
The hardware will gives you the speed but the quality depends only of the software that is installed.
In analog the quality will fully depend of the hardware you are using. Even a bad quality cable can degrade your video signal. In digital the degradation of the picture comes only from wrong mathematical operations. A bad FireWire connexion can break the stream between two machines and give you many troubles, but will never change a single bit of the information belonging to any pixel in your video.
Cheers,
Rafael
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