[David Mercer]

@Dave – Okay so edit and export prores, then use Compressor or Streamclip (which I have much better luck with – not crashing) to encode to .h264 say 30Mbps (frame blending and better downscaling checked?). File size is slightly larger than HDV but should be better quality right? Again the difference is tough to see on my LCD (and unfortunately I live in a little village in the Guatemalan highlands where broadcast spec anything is nonexistent).

@Michael – I’d like to change the look so everything matches, but seeing as my final output is 50i, wouldn’t I be better trying to interlace the progressive footage (if that is possible)? Sounds crazy these days with so many shooting progressive.

In the past I’ve tried to render progressive footage out as interlaced, but it still doesn’t look interlaced when viewed on my LCD.

As you can tell guys, I’m relatively new at this …

Thank ye all!

[David Mercer]

Thanks Shane and Dave.

I suppose I’m worried that the interlaced and progressive clips won’t look so hot when combined on the timeline, and then rendered out as 50i (and watched on a broadcast interlaced monitor).

Over the past few months I’ve been uploading news pkgs filmed progressive to the channel’s office in DC. The editors there use software to convert it to interlaced.

Last week one of the editors called me find out what kind of compression I was using to ftp as the video looked youtube quality. I explained I’d gone from AVCHD to Prores (Toast Titanium) for edit, then rendered out to HDV for upload. Needless to say the “youtube” quality comment left me feeling a bit deflated.

Is there an easy way (ie: batch convert) to use something like twixtor to convert the progressive clips to interlaced? Or am I being overly cautious.

Chanel pays about a grand a minute for half hour, so this certainly isn’t Discovery quality we’re talking about. But HD broadcast is HD broadcast …

Thanks again.
David