[Tom Brooks]

Guys,
Enlighten me here. I’m probably putting my ignorance on display. Can you make a progressive DVD in 30P? Otherwise, what is the use of 30P? While Dave’s description of the 30P recording in the camera sounds correct to me, the reality of its playback in an interlaced world is complicated and not clearly advantageous.

It’s going to have a comb-tooth look every sixtieth of a second, isn’t it? I’m talking about displaying it on an interlaced display, which is 60i in my world. It’s described in “The HVX Book” by Barry Green.

So, I don’t see an advantage to 30P–for interlaced display. If you play it back as progressive frames on a progressive display, there’s no question. That’s why the FCP manual recommends that you only shoot and edit progressive when your output is progressive only. For what it’s worth. I wish you could convince me otherwise. This is a puzzler to me.
Thanks for shedding light on the topic.
-Tom

[Tom Brooks]

Kyle,
This is a topic on which many of us are relatively stupid. A few who have worked out the details know what’s up. That isn’t me, but the way I understand it is you have to deliver a mixed track in which:

1. The dialog-only yields a -23 measured value for LAeq
2. The other effects and music are mixed with dialog to your taste
3. The peak levels of the entire track are within specs

This suggests a workflow. First get the levels of your dialog right. Measure with the free Channel-D tool. Go back and adjust till it measures correctly at -23. Then adjust your mix to that. Then check peak levels throughout. Deliver in the format of your choice. Admittedly, there are most likely some hidden complications.
Comments anyone?
-Tom

[Tom Brooks]

Eric,
Thank you for this excellent post. It really puts things in a very useful perspective.
-Tom

[Tom Brooks]

Sorry–didn’t mean to tell you stuff you already know. Could it be an extreme dropped frames issue, related to media drives filling up? See if your user prefs, general, shows that “report dropped frames on playback” is turned on. Check to make sure all your media is on the proper scratch disk instead of system disk? I haven’t run into this problem, so I’m fishing for an answer.

[Tom Brooks]

Always start by choosing the correct Easy Setup for the type of video that you will be capturing and editing. That keeps it simple. When you open a 720 25P project, choose the DVCProHD 720P 25 Easy Setup. If you are working in DV, choose the DV PAL setup. All your system hardware will be set up to display that format correctly. If you put video of a different format on the timeline you may need to render it in order to play it.

For video, you will always use “All Frames.”

According to your profile your system does not have a true reference video monitor. The Syncmaster monitors are only showing you Final Cut’s preview, not a true video or “broadcast” output. If you are dealing with the world of broadcast television, you should have a video monitor.

[Tom Brooks]

[rafalaos] “In the end a video-card is only running some software.”

I second that Rafael, while agreeing that the hardware probably is king in this particular case. I know my AJA Kone LHe makes a really great downconvert from 720P 60. It’s super clean and the progressive frames are converted precisely to 60i fields.

The only thing is that it sounded like Dane wanted to individually center the HD shots for optimal cropping in 4:3. He could do that in the HD sequence, making sure not to let black edges enter the 4:3 area, but it might be a better creative experience to put the material on a 4:3 timeline and adjust the centering there.

We could all wish that one day we won’t have to think about all these formats and conversions, but that’s what they pay us the big bucks for!

[Tom Brooks]

If you simply export to a new format, heck no, it won’t look better. But if you put your title clips into an uncompressed sequence, that’s something altogether different.

Your Livetype titles could indeed look better if placed in an 8 or 10 bit uncompressed sequence. (I assume you have put a LiveType PROJECT clip on your timeline, not a .mov rendered out from LiveType.)

But let’s face it, it’s not always as dramatic as some of us insist. It really depends on the color content of the titles.

Theoretically, live action video originally captured in DV may look a tiny bit worse because you’re starting with DV and then re-rendering it in another codec.

[Tom Brooks]

If you make a new sequence using the easy setup for DV NTSC Anamorphic, you can then copy and paste your HD clips into it and it should look fine. If that’s not what you’re looking for, please try to rephrase your question.

[Tom Brooks]

Jeremy,
Thanks. I’ll try it for comparison. Could be some advantages there.
-Tom

[Tom Brooks]

What’s your HD sequence setting? Is it uncompressed or DVCProHD?
What about this supposed new feature of FCP 6 to output to a device that has settings different from your sequence? Apple’s example is an uncompressed sequence output to a DV device via FireWire. If you have FCP6 and a fast system, maybe this is possible?