[Andrew Rendell]

I’m in the UK and although there are some differences between stations (so you must check with the broadcaster you’re supplying to), the general rule-of-thumb is that broadcast specs are interlaced, PSF is fine for material that’s originated in progressive, but they don’t normally accept material that is shot interlaced and processed to make it progressive.

TBH, if you have problems with camera movement you ought to check where the issue lies, it might not be because of the difference between interlaced and progressive, it could be a camera setup thing like shutter speed or rolling shutter.

[Andrew Rendell]

LCD screens can be either progressive or interlaced. Computer monitors are usually progressive only, tv monitors are generally switchable.

If the broadcast TV systems were switched to progressive at some point, billions of TVs around the world and vast libraries of existing programmes and source footage would suddenly become obsolete and I don’t think anyone wants to handle the political fallout of that.

[Andrew Rendell]

Yeah, file delivery isn’t standardized yet in the UK so you’ll have to get individual specs from the broadcasters in question.

For SD the safe bet is still digibeta tape.

TBH, it’s most likely going to be OP1a transport stream with specific codec settings, but I’ve done some where I just took FCP quicktime exports to White City and the BBC did their own conversions from those, although it’s all changing there at the moment so I very much doubt that that’s still an option.

[Andrew Rendell]

BTW, I found the current “safe area” in use in the UK (so this may not be current in the rest of the world). It’s pretty easy to make up in Photoshop or similar:

Create a picture 1920 pixels wide by 1080 pixels high and set your ruler to pixels.
Counting down from the top, draw a horizontal line at pixel 55 and another at pixel 1026.
Counting horizontally in from the left, draw a vertical line at pixel 289 and another at pixel 1632.

There is another version for centre cut 4:3 compatibility which has the vertical lines at pixels 337 and 1584, but I wouldn’t be concerned about that for DVD/Bluray.

[Andrew Rendell]

Well, the original footage from a 550d is NOT uncompressed. It’s highly compressed and in a codec with is unsuitable for editing.

I would convert it to ProRes, and if it looks shitty and pixellated when you do that I suggest you look very carefully at the conversion settings as that shouldn’t happen.

It’s also possible that ProRes might look shitty on the timeline if the timeline codec setting is something unsuitable and it needs rendering to display properly (although the answer for that is to correct the timeline settings rather than to render).

[Andrew Rendell]

Well, as a rule H264 is generally much lower quality than ProRes 422 (although you can increase the data rate very significantly from the normal kind of figures and get close, but that would defeat the point of it).

H264 is also somewhat variable in subjective quality depending on the source material, lots of detail and movement in a shot will strain the system a lot more than more stationary shots and those shots will look poorer than the less demanding ones, so having material with lots going on may well be part of your problem.

There are a couple of things you can try when you do the conversion to H264 (by stepping into the config settings in whatever software you’re using for the conversion):

Increase the data rate. Unfortunately that’ll make your files bigger and can get you into problems streaming, so it’s fine for playing a file on a computer but not ideal for playing over the internet.

Decrease the picture size. Using the same data rate to encode fewer pixels can increase the subjective quality of the pictures even though you’re technically reducing the resolution.

Are you doing a single pass encoding? If so, I’d suggest trying a two-pass conversion. That takes twice as long to do, but the system fine tunes the encoding process much better than a single pass encoding and the subjective increase in quality can be quite striking, depending on the material.

[Andrew Rendell]

Yes it’s still necessary, but the default areas in FCP (and Avid as well, in fact) are rubbish these days. For the last few years I have used a tiff that I downloaded from a broadcaster, which I place on a layer to line stuff up to, then delete it when I’m done. Vertically it’s close to the action area box, but it doesn’t go as wide horizontally.

IMO without having a broadcaster’s spec to hand, I wouldn’t go wider than the “title” box but going a bit above/below it should be ok, but not beyond the “action” box.

[Andrew Rendell]

I actually like the Audio Technica ones, I’m very happy with the sound but just as importantly they fit my head very well so I find them comfortable when wearing them for long periods. So I’d recommend trying a few different sets to see how well they they fit you – the best reproduction in the world is no use if you have to keep taking them off because they start to irritate you after an hour of use.

[Andrew Rendell]

You learn something new every day. I didn’t know that the XDCam transfer software does OP1a.

Thanks Jean-Christophe.

🙂

[Andrew Rendell]

Swings and roundabouts. Yeah, if you honestly think that the footage is soft on the kind of display it’s going to be viewed on you can sharpen it with one of the filters. OTOH at least you won’t be having to deal with the moiree and artefacts that the Mk2 produces.

Personally, I do that on the timeline so that it can be adjusted shot by shot rather than trying to find a setting that works over a whole bunch of shots (Unsharp Mask usually works best for me out of the sharpening filters).