[Dave Beaty]

Sometimes It depends on how you have to deliver the project as to the editing format to conform all assets to.

You can mix formats in FCPro and that may be the way to go for your project. Perhaps edit everything in DVCPro HD if the majority of material is in this format. Remember, if the content is digital and created in that format, editing in the same format is a 1:1 proposition. You don’t gain nor lose anything. If you are adding color correction, you may want to change the render settings to a codec with a wider latitude like ProRes 4:2:2.

Dave Beaty
Dreamtime Entertainment
1625 SE 46th St
Cape Coral FL 33904
239-549-4081
800-446-7575
dave@dreamtimeentertainment.com
http://www.dreamtimeentertainment.com

[Dave Beaty]

Yeah, I did think of that. But at that point it was the end of a long day and I just figured I’ll go back and export the audio clips one by one and replace them in the timeline.

I wonder if it could be related to the timecode as well on those clips. They were PAL DVD’s ripped to Mpeg2 and then to low bit rate NTSC PJPEG.

Dave

[Dave Beaty]

George,

Quote
> I have tried this on a Kona LH too, with the same poor results you describe. It looks like NTSC’s much courser cousin. Diagonals have short black serrations and horizontals blink horribly. And this is viewing NTSC Component on a Sony PVM NTSC monitor with the video in motion. >

Exactly, I have both Kona LH and Multibridge Pro on two system hooked up via component to Sony BVM’s and Panasonic plasmas. As I understand it, Multibridge is software conversion but Kona LH is hardware. Both look the same when downconverting the 720p sequence to NTSC. Aliasing on the fine detail.

If I export a HD sequence to QT 10 bit NTSC and it looks so so much better than both the Kona LH downconvert and the downconvert by putting clips directly in an NTSC sequence.

Using media manager and recompressing a sequence to a new 10-bit uncompressed sequence also looks very good and this the path I am using to mix HD and SD in an NTSC project. I will finish the edit in HDV, then recompress and re-edit the NTSC elements and CC in 10-bit. This also gives me the change to tweak gfx that sometimes don’t look proper in the plain down converted movie.

You may see this program later this year on PBS. John Paul II : A Saint For Our Times. See what you think of the results.

Quote
>I had an off list email exchange with Graeme Nattress on the subject. His comment was true progressive HD clips can’t be interlaced. If it’s not encoded that way when it comes off the CCDs, you can’t add it later. < I would dissagree with this. Like I said, 1 frame of 30p (29.97) footage should be seperated into 2 fields playing back at 1/60 (1/59.94) sec each resulting in an exact reproduction of the frame. Perhaps I am missing something in this logic? I'd leave the sequence as progressive, but I want to add NTSC clips to the edit, which are interlaced, thus defeating that plan. So - using media manager to recompress the HD is the only path until Apple figures out a way to properly interpret 720p30 clips in NTSC timelines. I have not experimented with scaling and aspect's role in this problem, I suspect it is also key. As I believe that 720p30 clips that are placed in NTSC sequences that have no scaling will play and look properly. On another subject, the HDV that I edit natively looks great and the sequence is quite responsive, really no distracting slow down. As long as I don't try to render a bunch of FX or color correction into HDV, it looks great. Thanks to the new render codec setting in sequence settings, we can now totally avoid that and render transitions and effects into any compressed or uncompressed codec. I've have used Kona component caputre to DVCProHD on several projects 2 years ago when FCPro did not support 720p24 HDV, but abandoned that practice because the gains vs using native were not worth it to us. We compared work flows, disk space usage, time savings, output quality and came to this conclusion. Others may have had other experiences. Dave Beaty Dreamtime Entertainment 1625 SE 46th St Cape Coral FL 33904 239-549-4081 800-446-7575 dave@dreamtimeentertainment.com
http://www.dreamtimeentertainment.com

[Dave Beaty]

I’ve found the same problem with 720p30 HDV footage.

I need to move my HDV shots to an NTSC timeline to continue working with NTSC footage that will also be used. When the HDV is dropped into an NTSC timeline (any codec) and letterboxed, the interlacing applied causes the footage to fall apart with aliasing. Be aware, that unless you’ve seen how the footage SHOULD look, some people may just assume it’s OK and the best they can get.

For these shots, both fields should be the same, coming from a progressive clip. But the fields are somehow getting split, with motion filtering or sequence settings, improperly.

I found that if I set interlacing in the NTSC sequence to “NONE”, then the 720p30 shots look fine – as they should in a progressive timeline. When set to lower field, to mix with the other 720×486 shots, the HDV’s images edges all go aliased. Motion filtering setting does seem to have an effect and fastest linear is the best looking, but not as good as when interlacing is turned off.

But, I can’t do that because I am using interlaced NTSC shots too. They go to crap when interlacing is turned off. So, the only method that works is to export every HDV shot to NTSC via QT or use media manager to batch convert each HDV shot to NTSC before editing in the NTSC sequence. That also works. The resulting clips now mix with the NTSC video and don’t look aliased.

Something with FCPro’s field interlacing is not working with these scaled down clips from HDV source. I suggest those of us with this issue send feedback to Apple to get them to address our problem.

Dave Beaty

Dave Beaty
Dreamtime Entertainment
1625 SE 46th St
Cape Coral FL 33904
239-549-4081
800-446-7575
dave@dreamtimeentertainment.com
http://www.dreamtimeentertainment.com

[Dave Beaty]

I figured out why there is a problem with 720p30 down converts in FCPro. It’s the way the sequence is adding interlacing to the progressive footage even though is SHOULD just flag both fields as the same, it doesn’t do that and creates a jagged edge or aliasing.

Good news, I did tests this morning using Media Manager to Recompress the HDV material into a new SD timeline. The results are startling.

First I copied and pasted the 720p30 HD edited clips into an Uncompressed NTSC 8 sequence and rendered. Looks terrrible. Lot’s of aliasing on all edges. Shimmers and looks soft.

Next, I used media manager to copy and recompress all clips into a new uncompressed NTSC sequence. Looks good with no aliasing. Switching between the recompressed project and the original down converted sequence with HD clips showed noticeable differences. The recompressed SD sequence looked much better.

But then I had a thought, perhaps the problem FCPro has dealing with 720p HDV has to do with the interlace vs progressive timelines. I changed the original problem sequence to none for interlacing in the sequence settings and the problem dissapears.

That fixed the shots with aliasing and it was now a carbon copy of the recompressed sequence when I switched back and forth.

But the issue isn’t solved. Now the problem is with source NTSC material that IS interlaced. You can’t put this material into the non-interlaced timeline without it looking terrible. So, for now, recompressing is the only answer for mixed format down conversions.

Dave B

Dave Beaty
Dreamtime Entertainment
1625 SE 46th St
Cape Coral FL 33904
239-549-4081
800-446-7575
dave@dreamtimeentertainment.com
http://www.dreamtimeentertainment.com

[Dave Beaty]

We have Multibridge Pro’s here, but I don’t know if the RT down converts are as good as Kona. We do have one suite with a Kona LH board.

I want to try the render to SD method, so I can preserve the stock footage which we will be redigitizing as NTSC. The master has to be NTSC so, I’m thinking I can work on getting the stock footage cropped to match the 16:9 HD in an NTSC sequence without scaling up.

I’ll have to do some tests with FCPro’s scaled HDV as see how it looks output SDI. I’m dissapointed that FCPro can’t scale down HD footage with good results.

The Multibridge downconvert looks great but some HD images shimmer when they have lots of fine detail or horizontal lines.

Dave Beaty
Dreamtime Entertainment
1625 SE 46th St
Cape Coral FL 33904
239-549-4081
800-446-7575
dave@dreamtimeentertainment.com
http://www.dreamtimeentertainment.com

[Dave Beaty]

I edited on Media 100 for many years before moving to FCPro a few years ago. AFAIK there is no way to change multiple graphics title clips at one time with Graffiti.

The only thing I can even think of, is since M100 uses stills rendered for realtime graphics when you hit “Apply” , it should be possible to set up an automatic batch in Photoshop to act on those realtime stills. If that worked, you could change the color ect, anything you could record as an action in Photoshop.

Animated graphics would be a whole other prob.

DB

[Dave Beaty]

Hi Peter, It’s an Intel Mac. As a follow up, I emailed Boris tech support and they explained the transition from V4 to V5 universal. No, titles will not automatically open in the Graffiti. If you open a FCPro timeline with V4 titles, you get an error. (Because version 4 Graffiti will not work on the Intel Mac)

The work around is this: Open the timeline on your previous G5 Mac. Edit each title in V4 and save the title from within V4 Graffiti interface.

Move these to the new system. Open a timeline and create a new V5 title. Open the saved file from the hard drive or CD you created on the G5.

That should work, but if you have 200 titles in one time line….sorry charlie.

Dave Beaty

[Dave Beaty]

I had this Multibridge replaced and it works fine now, so it was indeed a hardware malfunction.

What a pain, because it’s new, I wasn’t sure if I was configuring it incorrectly. At least my other unit was working fine, so I new it had to be it and not me.

Dave Beaty

[Dave Beaty]

Tried driver 5.7.2. No change. One other thing I tried which leads me to think it’s hardware failure:
I change the display control panel for the multibridge desktop output from default 1080 x 1920 to 720 X 486 29 Hz and the analog displays go blank with a little snow. I have both the NTSC output and component outputs hooked up. I tested both of those cables just to be sure.

this is a real bummer.

Dave