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Zooming into HDV in an SD timeline
I recently did a one-cameraman, two-camera shoot of a client’s band (one handheld & one locked-down/wide on entire stage). I used the Canon HL-X1 and shot 1080i. All along my intention was to downconvert to SD 16:9 and edit in a DV timeline. It looks fantastic (MUCH better than anything I have seen shot with a PD150/170) and my client is very happy. Now, I want to do more…
I have read about editing HDV in an SD timeline, thereby allowing a person to zoom in on elements that are part of the full-sized HD image. So, I could “zoom in” on one of the musicians on stage using the wide shot of the lock-down camera.
The Canon HDV camera was a rental and I only had a couple hours free to play around with the footage, but I did not seem to be able to get a sharp looking enlarged image – even after rendering. Even with just a 50% enlargement, I was disappointed with the image.
Any thoughts on what I am doing wrong? Filters that could be applied? Workflow issues?
I have a dual G5 running FCP 5.1.1, 2.5Gb RAM, dual SCSI storage with ATTO UL4D card.
Thank you!
Bob O’Brien
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4 Replies
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I don’t have an answer, but I do have an observation. I regularly do this with two cameras: 1) Sony HDV, and 2) Panasonic HVX. The Sony (shooting in HDV) always gives me a lower quality shot than that of the Panasonic (which shoots in true HD at 1080 or 720).
The Sony is always shows more “grain” and more “noise.”
When you say “enlargement,” do you mean you’re pushing it more than 100%? That would make your image soft. A 1080i clip in an SD timeline at 100% would allow you to see only a small part of the clip so it looks like it was “zoomed” in. Are you pushing this further than this? -
No. Initially, I tested the clip at 100%, which filled my SD timeline with about 1/4 of the image (which is what I wanted). When I rendered, though, the quality was not all that great. So then I tested it at 75%, which still gave me just a portion of the total image in my frame. That too did not look that great. In fact, neither looked as good as the full frame when it was downconverted from the camera to SD during my initial edit.
Bob
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I’m going to ask the stock question, “are you looking at this through the video that is output to a monitor, or in the canvas/viewer window in FCP?” If you’re trusting the rendered image shown in any FCP window, you will not seeing the quality you expect. It must be seen from a TV/Monitor to judge your quality (and color). It may be basic and below your user level, but it happens to the best of us at times.
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James, you’re entirely right to ask that question. I see that being the underlying problem with a ton of these posings.
But I am monitoring thru firewire to my DSR-25 which connects to a Sony fine pitch monitor thru an S-Video cable. I can also monitor component video thru my ALA IO. Same result either way.
I think what I have to do is just experiment some more. I only had a couple hours to do my initial testing. Perhaps I had my setting wrong?
I am going to rent an HDV deck so I can capture more footage and experiment some more.
Thanks!
Bob
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