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Simplest down convert from HD to SD in FCP
Hi guys,
Yes, I know there are lots of posts on this, but I haven’t found an answer…
Situation:
This is very basic, and maybe stupid of me to ask….I am editing TV commercials that will be broadcast in SD. They were shot on HVX200 P2 cards (should they have been shot in SD to begin with?) But I want to edit them in HD to have for marketing/web purposes, so I can export an HD version to keep, and an SD version for broadcast.Question:
Again, maybe this is dumb. Regarding exporting SD, why can’t I just do this:
1. Edit the piece in HD
2. Move the entire timeline into a new SD sequence
3. Export SD .mov files for broadcast (yes, that’s what our TV Stations want)Thoughts:
Is this bad b/c the quality will look poor compared to a Kona card conversion, Compressor, etc, or bad for other major reasons?
Is this bad for the TV Station? Will the HD to SD conversion mess them up somehow?I don’t have time or $ for hardware (Kona, etc), so should I do this in Compressor?
Thanks,
Adam Keyes
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3 Replies
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FCP can make an OK downconvert to SD. Not great, but certainly passable.
The only issue to consider: the station will *probably* want 29.97 media. If you simply drop a 23.98 HD file into a 29.97 SD timeline, FCP will duplicate every 4th frame. You might see stutter. The best method is to use something like After Effects to add 3:2 pulldown to make it looks silky smooth.
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Hey Adam,
I found a great solution to this just yesterday. You’ll need After Effects though but it works better than many, many different solutions I tried – even a hardware convert with a blackmagic card. Check out the thread I created to learn more:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1063466#1063981
Ignore everything I said and pay attention to what Dave LaRonde suggested. I am very, very pleased with the resulting downconvert.
Tim
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Just do a quicktime conversion. Nesting into an SD timeline seems like the way to go for doing everything in FCP, but it looks terrible. Quicktime will do a very good (for software) conversion.
I rarely convert the frame rate in quicktime but it will do it if you need it to. It will probably do a 2:2:4:2 if you use it to go from 24-30fps, I personally prefer this to a 3:2 anyway, but not everyone will agree with this.
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