[Tom Brooks]

Your answer is in the FCP forum. You can use Compressor to make a DVD that automatically plays full 16:9 on a wide monitor and letterbox on a 4:3 monitor.

[Tom Brooks]

Free download flip4mac.com.

[Tom Brooks]

Sam,
Recording to tape is Mini-DV only. You can’t do the fancy frame rate stuff with DV only. But you can combine P2 with tape in some creative ways. You can transfer P2 shots to DV in the camera to take advantage of some of that off-speed capability and this could be a good option for you. You should download the manual from Panasonic and check it out. “The HVX Book” by Barry Green is also a good resource.
-Tom

[Tom Brooks]

[George] “The animation artifacts will go away when created on and downconverted from a DVCProHD timeline.”

George,
I’m very interested to hear the resolution if you get it from the hardware folks. Question: Was the animation in DVCProHD created in 60P or 30P? I’m absolutely sure that 60P is downcoverted correctly, with each frame corresponding to a field in 60i. Not so sure what happens with 30P.
Thanks.
Tom

[Tom Brooks]

I understand that the display system is always interlaced, but wondered whether the LHe handled the downconvert in this most sensible way. Indeed it does, as I’ve since supported with a simple test.

Unfortunately, it appears that Final Cut Pro and Compressor are not so precise with downconversions.

[Tom Brooks]

I see exactly what you’re talking about. When objects are moving there is a jagged or comb-like edge which disappears when you pause the timeline.

Isn’t this normal and predictable? Progressive 30P material will always look this way on an interlaced display, won’t it? Barry Green explains it in “The HVX Book” about the Panasonic HVX-200 camera. Look on page 51 of that book if you can get it. I’ll email the page to you if you can’t.

Thing is, I don’t see how you can fix the live shots for NTSC. The 30P is what it is. The animations could be done in the NTSC format instead of the 720P format.

I hope somebody like Gary Adcock jumps in here to explain this. It could help a lot of people understand which recording format to choose in a case like this.

[Tom Brooks]

George,
My experience with HD has been 720 60p (59.94 that is) thus far. It was shot with a Panasonic HVX-200 on P2 media, so it’s true progressive at 59.94fps. The downconvert to SD 29.97 does show the jaggies only when the subject or camera is in motion and only certain types of subject matter. It only shows up on hard-edged diagonal lines. The jaggies go away when the timeline is paused. The jaggies only show up on an interlaced display, not on thePanasonic TH-37PH9UK. I call these jaggies because it’s a sort of blocky jaggedness, rather than a comb-like look as is usual from interlacing. I get the same jaggies from a real-time down-convert on the Kona LHe and from a down-convert to MPEG-2 through Compressor. My SD monitor is a Sony PVM 1220. It’s ancient, but in good shape and properly calibrated. I suspect it’s just the nature of 59.94p. What I’d like to try is to convert it to 29.97p, but I have not found a way to do that by dropping frames from the original 59.94p source. Not sure how or if this relates to your situation, but here it is FWIW!
-Tom

[Tom Brooks]

Yeah, the big three are H.264, Windows Media 9, and Flash 8. It’s the details that will kill you. Maybe if you post more specifics about the running time, the purpose, and the intended audience, you’ll get some tips. You’ll also want to search around a lot in the Compression Techniques forum (Cow). When it gets to the details of compression, they are real smart over there.

[Tom Brooks]

Flip4Mac makes the Quicktime export component for Windows Media as well as a full-featured encoding program called Episode. Once you buy and install one of the above (choose based on needed features) you can duplicate an existing Quicktime preset in Compressor and modify it to do Windows Media. Export capability can be had from $50 on up. The export component enables Compressor and Quicktime Pro for Win Media encoding. As someone else stated, change the File Format to “Quicktime Export Component” and then adjust the settings to taste. Ben Waggoner’s book gives some insight on how to get decent results. Check him out in the Compression Techniques forum. If you want more encoding features, look at Episode.

[Tom Brooks]

Compressor has the controls you’ll need for gamma, brightness and contrast. The Flip4Mac encoder works within Compressor. We turn gamma down and contrast up.