[Randy Lee]

I would assume that he’s making an SD version because he does need it. Whether it be for SD deliverables, which almost all of the corporate clients I’ve done work for where I’m at want, or for some other reason.

Without putting down the big bucks, and I’m sure someone out there knows of programs that can do what you need for the right price, you have to go to tape. I’m not even very impressed by the conversion that the Kona 3 card does. It is definitely better than Final Cut, QT or Compressor, but it still isn’t as good as what it could be. Where I work, we use our Sony PDW-F70 XDCam HD decks to downconvert, rather than the Kona. It just looks better.

Sorry I can’t help you find the software that you need. We simply don’t work that way, we keep tape masters (both HD and SD, for the HD work that we do) of everything.

Best of luck finding something that works, but my guess would be that if you want something better than Final Cut’s down-conversion, you’ll be stuck going to tape.

[Randy Lee]

Make sure you’ve got your preset set to PAL, actually, not to NTSC. That shouldn’t be giving you the issues you’re having, but if you shot PAL, that’s definitely something to try to see if it helps get us a step closer.

What composite modes are you using? Have you used them before, and are sure you’re putting the clip that you want to composite over this clip on the track above these clips, then you’re control (or right) clicking and setting the composite modes on those clips (the ones on track 2).

[Randy Lee]

Can you start with a blank tape, give yourself, say, a 20 second slug at the beginning and 30 second slug at the end, and set up your timeline’s timecode (rightclick your final sequence, go to settings, then timeline settings) so that your video starts at the appropriate timecode, and then in your edit to tape, use the timecode that Final Cut has for the timeline? (I don’t have Final Cut on this computer to double check exactly what you would have to do, but I believe you can tell it to use your timecode upon editing to tape). Just make sure you give yourself plenty of time before bars and tone, and after the video is over.

That is unless you absolutely need to insert edit this onto the tape, in which case this wouldn’t help very much. Best of luck to you.

[Randy Lee]

Thanks for the input. It seems like (although I wasn’t given all the details, I just thought I’d get a jump on the project and see how much I could help find out), they were under the impression that they could get something that would move. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right and they won’t be able to.

They definitely expect it to be expensive, though, and they’re willing to spend the money. For once a client wants something done right, and they don’t care about the cost. I wish that would happen more often. They had already looked into it and found one company, but they don’t want to lease the equipment. I’m looking forward to seeing what they end doing for this, and if anyone else knows anything, chime in.

[Randy Lee]

Do you have a deck at your disposal? We use a PDW-F70 deck, and I’ve found that that gives a better looking down-conversion than what our Kona 3 card does (We also downconvert out of the deck rather than using the Kona for our digitizing right now while we’re still cutting SD. It just looks better) We plan to lay back our Hi Def masters to XD Cam, then use that to dub down to digibeta.

If that won’t work for you, you should leave your timeline and your output in Final Cut set to the HD format that you’re working in, and the Format in the Kona Control Panel should be set up the same. Set your secondary format to 525i29.97, and set how you want it to downconvert (crap, anamorphic or letterbox). Set the output to use the secondary format, and then output as normal from Final Cut, and it should come through just fine.

If that isn’t working, you’ll have to either wait for someone with a little more experience explaining the process comes along, or else do a quick search of the COW, as I believe this has been discussed quite a few times before.

[Randy Lee]

From what I understand, if you build the DVD in DVD Studio Pro and use DVD @ccess, then run it through Intellidisc, you can used the DVD on either a mac or a PC. But this is the only way to make it work on both. I am hopefully going to try this out later today, and will post back with results, since I’ve heard quite a few people say “Maybe Intellidisc would work”, but I haven’t heard about any actual results from anyone.