HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast?
by cody Baker (cody baker)
on
Dec 14, 2005 at 5:31:48 am
Sorry for the newbie question;
Is it possible, desirable, feasible, etc. to shoot with an HDV camera (say Sony FX-1), edit in FCP pro, then downconvert to SD to deliver (say a 30 second spot) for broadcast?
My concern/question is, does the downconverted HDV footage look better than DV? or how does it compare to other SD formats like Beta SP?
My guess is that shooting, editing and then downconverting to SD for broadcast would look great... better than DV, beta SP, etc.
Thanks for the reply.
cody
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? by Camafe on Dec 14, 2005 at 11:33:03 am
I shoot on HDV and downconvert directly from the Sony Z1E to my NLE.
Capture in YUV uncompressed and the image is as good as when I capture from a Digital Betacam tape.
(sometimes the color is better. I usualy do some ColorCorrection, but lately I can't improve a lot from the Z1 images !!!)
I do not have the experience from capturing and editing in HDV and then downconvert to SD in the end.
I'm still waiting for my AXIO...
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? by Tim Kolb on Dec 14, 2005 at 1:37:36 pm
My experience with HDV has also been that SD downconverted from an HDV edit timeline is a significant improvement visually over DV...Digital Betacam might be a closer call, but there is no doubt that it looks very good.
(When it's well shot of course...)
TimK,
Kolb Syverson Communications,
Creative Cow Host,
2004-2005 NAB Post Production Conference
Premiere Pro Technical Chair,
Author, "The Easy Guide to Premiere Pro" www.focalpress.com
"Premiere Pro Fast Track DVD Series" www.classondemand.net
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? by Graeme Nattress on Dec 14, 2005 at 3:00:04 pm
All things being equal, well shot digibeta, given the 2/3" chip on it's camera etc. should look a touch better than HDV to SD. You'lll get more lattitude on well shot digiBeta, and less visible compression artifacting and lower noise.
That said HDV->SD does look good. Just make sure you downconvert with good software that does the proper filtering and that you go down to uncompressed, not DV.
And all that said, will you notice the difference on an old analogue format with 3/4 of the luma rez of anyway?
Graeme
- www.nattress.com - Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? by Larry Sherwood on Dec 14, 2005 at 3:37:06 pm
My Axio SD system does allow me to edit native HDV on the timeline and have automatic real time downconvert on the outputs. It absolutely looks better than most 8 bit uncompressed SD original source footage, my stuff is shot with Sony Z1.
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? by Scott Brown on Dec 14, 2005 at 7:38:43 pm
Interstingly the BBC have conducted extensive tests on the HDV format and the Sony Z1 in particular and they conclude that shooting in HDV mode offers NO benefits for material destined for SD transmission and users are advised to shoot in DVCAM mode.
The in-camera downconvertion offers NO improvement in picture, however shooting in HDV and using a "High End" downconvertor DOES offer picture quality benefits, however these pro tools are seriously expensive and would perhaps negate the cost benefits offerd by shooting in HDV in the the first place.
Not my personal thoughts, but BBC findings and advice to BBC users.
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? by Larry Sherwood on Dec 14, 2005 at 7:51:46 pm
My only problem with the BBC view is the fact that, since they see no "gain" in quality i9n shooting HDV for SD they advise to just shoot DVCAM, HOWEVER, there is probably a great advantage in shooting HDV as camera original since you will be able to deal with this material as HDV when the format is used for output at a later time, you won't have that advantage with the DVCAM footage. Since they don't say that HDV looks worse than DVCAM in SD and the price of the Z1 is so comparable to DVCAM, why not shoot HDV ASAP and have the legacy material be HD ready?
2 cents worth
LS
Larry Sherwood
Sherwood Post Production
Austin, Texas
512 219-8721
larry@sherwoodpost.com
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? by nookynook on Dec 14, 2005 at 8:25:38 pm
how is it possible that users come to very different results (opinions?) on the quality of downconverted hdv-material?
what about using component out and dvcpro hd - setting for capturing? is that always better than native hdv via firewire? why? how much more disk space does it require?
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? by Michael Slowe on Dec 14, 2005 at 10:06:40 pm
In my humble opinion the BBC are talking b.......s, not for the first time. There is to my quite experienced eye as far as DVCAM is concerned, a hell of a difference between the picture quality of original DVCAM material and down converted (through the Sony HDV deck) original HDV. I am viewing on a Sony PVM-14MU CRT monitor. By the way, in order to preserve the quality for archiving it must be best to upgrade to uncompressed HD, through the Convergent Design box, and edit in HD, rather than throw it all away by not even shooting in HDV if the Z1 is available. The only problem being the large capacity storage required.
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? by Tim Kolb on Dec 15, 2005 at 2:07:12 am
[nookynook]"how is it possible that users come to very different results (opinions?) on the quality of downconverted hdv-material?"
Well, I haven't really ever measured the camera's downconverter...I don't go to standard definition until I'm literally compressing for SD DVD from the PPro (CineForm AspectHD) timeline. Maybe downconverting the HDV to a DV timeline and editing it doesn't do it any favors.
Going direct from an HD timeline to SD DVD doesn't subsample the chroma nearly as much as converting from HDV>DV, then on from there...
...I've been at this for 20 years, so I like to think I'm semi-competent and I have to tell you that it seems like a quality jump to me.
TimK,
Kolb Syverson Communications,
Creative Cow Host,
2004-2005 NAB Post Production Conference
Premiere Pro Technical Chair,
Author, "The Easy Guide to Premiere Pro" www.focalpress.com
"Premiere Pro Fast Track DVD Series" www.classondemand.net
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? by Graeme Nattress on Dec 15, 2005 at 7:54:49 pm
That's only down to the BBC's workflow, and HDV not having SDI connections needed for a pro HD workflow. You can downconvert HDV in software just fine, but that would not fit in with a BBC workflow.
Graeme
- www.nattress.com - Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? by Scott Hayes on Dec 15, 2005 at 1:15:01 pm
Can someone post their exact workflow for this? I am using FCP 5. I shot a 2 cam winter concert the other night
(8th grades, 20 min long), and captured and edited native HDV, then exported it back out to an HDV quicktime.
for the downconvert, i created a new project DV anamorphic, dropped in the completed movie, and rendered back to DV.
it doesn't look that great.
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? inclusion of color correction (Nattresss) by Wes Greene on Dec 15, 2005 at 10:03:25 pm
Eh Scott,
highlight your whole sequence in the HDV timeline and just copy and paste it into a DV anamorphic timeline
you'll then have to render the whole thing
this has been giving me great results for SD broadcast work
Graeme, what sort of workflow do you suggest for optimum SD results from HDV in FCP5? Also when is the best stage to undertake color correction using your film effect plug ins???
I have a friend who says he got the best results by taking all the HDV clips into a HD uncompressed timeline, doing all his color correction there, outputting a HD uncompressed master then reimporting this into a DV timeline - a fair work around requiring time and plenty of hard disk but heh if it's the best way!?!?
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? inclusion of color correction (Nattresss) by Ken Hodson on Dec 16, 2005 at 2:39:23 am
Why do you guys keep wanting to go to a DV timeline? What are you doing with it that it needs to be in DV? 4:2:0 to 4:1:1 isn't that great of an option.
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? inclusion of color correction (Nattresss) by Scott Hayes on Dec 16, 2005 at 3:37:56 am
that is what I did. just downconverted via FCP. stuff looks very very good. I did let compressor take 7 hours to encode
HDV material back to mpeg2 for dvd, and the results werent all that. jaggies during movement. Since I don't have a
black magic, anything I do for broadcast has to be DV, then I dub to component betacam. anything else is straight
to DVD. Can you do 4:2:2 to mpeg2?
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? inclusion of color correction (Nattresss) by Stefan Kroesbacher on Dec 16, 2005 at 9:01:16 am
how would you convert the hdv to SD 4/3??
we found that rendering to 16/9 sd in FCP looks good when
rendered as progressive.
but as we wanted to make it 4/3SD it went dull.
FCP scaled the clip to 70%. This is simply incorrect
scaling, since 70% of 1080 are 756 and not 576(pal)...
So FCP is losing pixels. we couldn't get the aspect ratio correct,
for the slider didn't allow us to "widen" the clip as it would
be necessary...
are we doing something wrong here??
we found that done in AE the 4/3Sd looks better...
in-camera converting is not anoption, for we need the
hdv footage as well..
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? inclusion of color correction (Nattresss) by Graeme Nattress on Dec 16, 2005 at 2:44:18 pm
HDV is 4:2:0, NTSC DV is 4:1:1, but in the downscaling process you reall go from 4:2:0 HD, to very high quality 4:4:4 SD, then to 4:1:1 DV, so you end up with high quality 4:1:1 - to say otherwise is to believe the nonesense JVC are spouting in their so called "faq".
That said, you're totally write, Ken, that going to DV is daft as it's not a distribution format. Going to uncompressed SD keeps your options open.
Graeme
- www.nattress.com - Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? by Gordon Gurley on Dec 16, 2005 at 5:08:14 am
I'm just finishing my first HDV to SD broadcast project. I gotta say I'm very impressed with the results. We shot with the Z1. You may get close with DigiBeta using a great lens. We are using AJA cards for the downconvert. But here's a trick: Even the old Kona SD downconverts HDV to SD and it looks just as good as the new cards. I guess it's doing it in software. I dunno, but it works.
Couple of caveats: It better be a short project (:30 or :60). I can't imagine the render times for a 22 minute show. And you gotta have a RAID, Fibre or SCSI.
Gordon Gurley
Director of Operations
Stanford Video
Re: HDV downconverted to SD for broadcast? by Wes Greene on Dec 16, 2005 at 11:16:00 pm
I need to have an end result on DV as I deliver on DVCAM tape for broadcast. Would love to downcovert to SD uncompressed but don't have a digibeta deck only a DV deck.
So finding the optimum workflow to give a high quality DV result is very important to me.
Compressor seems to give poor results. Using FCP seems to work well.
Any other tips or advice appreciated.
