Shooting 1080p or 1080I for SD DVD Delivery

[Stephen May]

Dave – what was the outcome of your quest to figure out the best EX format for SD delivery?

I recently switched a live show for Zumiez using three EX1 cameras and two EX3 cameras. It turned out that the HD-SDI switcher did not like the PsF output of the XDCAM’s but loved the 1080i format. I was pretty nervous because post event, the client gets the ISO’s off of the SxS cards as well as the switched master from the AJA KiPro, and usually they’re mostly web delivery so they don’t get interlaced.

The images looked fantastic on screen and the show was the focus, so we were fine for show, but afterwards, my preference would be to convert the files to progressive. I’d appreciate hearing what you ended up doing. I also have searched and searched for some kind explanation about 1080i. I even hooked up a single EX1 directly to a large flat-panel display, and it seemed to look best in 1080i.

Sports networks often send a 1080i signal too, and again, why? There is so much misinformation or at least people who can not agree on anything from spatial resolution to even if it is really 60 frames per second or 30 odd, 30 even, and each person who tells their opinion is completely certain but often in direct conflict with the next certain opinion. Please let us know what you ended up doing, and how it looked.

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Dave Graack]

OUTCOME: Ended up shooting in 1080!. The show looked fantastic! We ran the 3 EX1 cameras into a Panasonic AW-HS50N HD switcher and recorded to an AJA KiPro in HD 1080i. It was so easy. The switcher took three sdi signals from the cameras and backed up iso records in the cameras. The HS50N is a tiny switcher but has multiview capability. The final DVD looked great. I edited in 1080i and used BitVice to make the compression. All it had to do was scale the size down to 480i for DVD. If I would have shot in 1080p I would be asking either Compressor Or BitVice to do the pulldown and scale down the file. Client was very happy.

Dave

[Stephen May]

Dave – thanks for the follow up – sounds like you did a great job. I think my challenge is that I have very few clients that request DVD delivery. Thanks again for your reply – I’ve been busy and hadn’t checked back until this morning. -Stephen

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Dave Graack]

Hi Stephen, Thanks for the feedback. The switcher we used was the PanasonicAW-HS50N. The only formats it could do were 1080i or 720p. If I were shooting for web delivery I would have set it up for 720p. I know it is not the full size that 1080p is but most web content is not larger than 720p. Not to mention that 720p is YouTube native for HD content. Something to chew on.

Dave