Sony EX1 edit for SD DVD

[Rafael Amador]

[Greg Ball] “he creates a new sequence as DV-NTSC Anamorphic. My question is why DV? Will that give me the best quality for a wide screen DVD? “
DV is only acceptable if you send from the FC time-line to Compressor. In this case what Compressor will process is a 444 picture. Before DV compression.
I do DVDs with my EX-1 footage and I do it a bit different.
I edit in EX-1 and very often CC with Color, exporting ProRess HQ. If I CC in FC I export as well in ProRes. When I have my ProRes HD ready, I drop it in a SD sequence. Be careful about the field order.
In the Sequence Setting check “Render Motion Effects: BEST”. FC will render in “32b Floating Point” . FC wil make a very good job and in a fraction of time that Compressor. In Compressor use the High Quality preset. No need to set Frame Control ON, because you won’t re-size, de-interlace neither change the time base. Fast.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Greg Ball]

Thanks Rafael. There are two comments that you made that I have questions about:

“I drop it in a SD sequence”.

“Be careful about the field order”

What settings do you use in your SD sequence? Do you check anamorphic?

By field order are you referring to Field Dominance? if so what do you use? Upper, Lower, None?

[Rafael Amador]

In the A/V preferences or Easy setups check Apple ProRess NTSC 48Khz and when you open the new sequence, in the Sequence setting check Anamorphic.
When you drop your HD master (Upper first) on the SD sequence (Lower first), FC will add the Shift-fields filter.
In the Sequence Setting check “Render Motion Effects: BEST” and ready to export.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Greg Ball]

Thanks so much. I’ll give that a try

[Chris Babbitt]

Rafael,

Wow, what am I missing here. First-of-all, I tried exporting a 3-minute 720p project to Pro-Res, and it took about 30 minutes on my Mac Pro, so I don’t see the time savings here. Also, it produced a huge file. Why not just export the HD timeline directly to Compressor, or export a QT reference movie and drop that into Compressor? No need to ever go to DV, and I get excellent results this way? Why all the different steps?

[Bob Pierce]

I’ve been exporting my final master out as an HD quicktime file (using prores). I drop this file into compressor to create the ntsc mpeg and ac3 audio files, then author the disk in DVD Studio Pro. The results have been superlative. Perhaps Ken Stone is going to DV to have a SD master file that is as compatible as possible for posterity (I’m guessing). Not a great workflow for your final DVD though I would say.
Bob

Mac Pro 2.66 – 8GB memory – Mac OS 10.5.2 – Quicktime 7.4.5 –
Mac Book Pro 2.33 Duo –
FC Studio 2 (Final Cut 6.0.3) – Kona Lhe
Adobe Production Suite CS3 –
Sony Multiformat 14″ – Panasonic 42″ Plasma –
Ikegami HLDV7 – PVW EX-1

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Chris,
Really I think your MP is working slow.
I’ve been making few test so I could give some accurate data.
I’ve done few test in my MBP 2.4 Core 2 Duo. 4 GB RAM.
And all the test with the same clip:
– 1080i50 ProRes HQ. Duration: 2 minutes 45 seconds.

Downscaling to ProRes HQ PAL;
– IN Final Cut (Motion Render: BEST): 10 Minutes 12 Seconds
– In Compressor (Frame Control: ON): 14 Minutes 32 Seconds

QT to MPG-2:
– HD to MPG-2 PAl: From FC time line (Frame Control ON): 17 Minutes 42 Seconds.
– SD PAL to MPG-2: Self Contained imported to Compressor (Frame Control; OFF): 4 Minutes 6 Seconds.

So making the downscaling in FC and them sending to Compressor was the shorter process.
But for me in the end the difference in timing is not the most important. The point is that you really can check the results of one process before start the next. I don’t like to ingest a QT HD and get a MPG-2 SD. I prefer to have a look to the SD QT prior to be converted in MPG-2.
This process is proving for me very useful when doing clips for the web where you have to downscale, change pixels aspect, de-interlace and transcode to H264, Flash or WMV. If you are not happy with the final clip you some times can’t really know where the problem was.
I prefer to do all this (except the transcoding), in FC.
I export a hight quality QT movie (10b Unc or ProRes) de-interlaced and with the size and the pixels that I want in my web clip. If its look perfect, then I only need to convert in Compressor to web format I want. Fast and you never will get disappointed of what you get from Compressor after, some times, a long, long rendering.
Split Process I call it.
And that of FC can’t not make a good downscaling is a myth today.
Cheers,
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Chris Babbitt]

Oh, I get it. You said in your prior post that you were exporting to ProRes HD, not downscaling to SD.
“When I have my ProRes HD ready, I drop it in a SD sequence.”
I exported to ProRes HD. That’s probably why it took so long and the file size was so huge.