unsure which HD format to master in: here’s why…

[Shane Ross]

Figure out your MASTER FORMAT, then work backwards. Who will you be delivering this to? How? on HDCAM? HDCAM SR? D5? DVCPRO HD? What? BluRay? SD DVD?

Again, I advise against shooting 1080p (and 1080i) and 720p. Choose one, use that. Any “smoothness” you gain with shooting 720p60 at 60fps is GONE when you edit it into a 1080p 29.97 sequence. half the frames tossed out. And now you are dealing with blowing up the 720p footage, via software IN FCP, to 1080. Avoid shooting and mixing formats if you can help it. Either do everything 720, or 1080, and convert the SD to match.

What your timeline should be is what you deliver. Or what you want to shoot most of. I have shot and edited 1080i and 1080p, and then delivered 1080p. I have worked with 720p footage at 720p, then converted in the end to 1080p when we delivered. We did this because we wanted to take up as little space as possible on the P2 cards, because we liked the ability to shoot 720p60 and slow motion it to 23.98, and we liked the look 720p gave us. We cross converted to 1080p in the end and it looked great. just saw a re-run on History 3 weeks ago and it STILL looked great.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Nick Natteau]

Hi Shane,

Thank you again for taking the time to share your advice and help. The only problem I keep having with my MXO2 is the split screen I keep seeing in the Log and Capture window. I called Matrox tech support amd e,ailed them a snap shot and they couldn’t figure out why it was doing that. Perhaps I received a defective unit. I’ll wait to hear back from them or call them tomorrow.

But basically every time I open the log and capture window to import a 480i clip and upconvert to 720p, I wind up with the split video image. This is driving me nuts.

Thanks again for all your help across these forums.

[Shane Ross]

It could be hardware. If I were in your shoes, I’d ask for an immediate replacement. They should be able to accomodate that. It definately isn’t normal.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Robb Harriss]

Temporarily– why not walk your SD clips over to someone else’s system and capture them their, and then carry them back to yours.

Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.

[Nick Natteau]

Hi Shane,

Thank you very much for your continued help. It turns out that the split screen may actually be due to my component Y cable. For some reason whenever I plug the Y (not Pb or Pr) cable out and back into my MXO2, the problem goes away. Weird.

I just had another question: Is it better to upconvert via a single HDMI cable than via the three component cables? I was told that HDMI is usually the best way to go. And since I happen to have another Sony deck that has an HDMI port, should I not be upconverting with MXO2 via HDMI instead of component from my tape deck?

Thanks very much in advance,

– Nick

[Shane Ross]

Odd. Might be a bad unit. I’d request a new one if I were you.

And I answered that question on another forum.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2376249&tstart=0

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Jon Grimson]

Shane, just checking on this response to verify a spot I’m shooting in a few weeks. I intend to shoot 90% of the footage in 1080p23.98 on a Canon 7D system, but one shot will be done 720p60, retimed ala optical flow in Motion and conformed to 23.98 in cinema tools.

My main question is when I resize that from 720 to 1080, I’m blowing it up, and I’m concerned it will look like crap blown up ~66%.

You mention that you’ve done this (I think) and it looks great. Just wondering about that or is my math funky on this.

The other thing is this is a Golf Channel spot but I still am awaiting deliverable info for master. Still primarily going with a 1080p23.98 acquisition though.

Thanks Shane!