I am in a little bit of a bind. I am shooting an infomercial next week with a JVC GY HD110U. The client wants me to shoot in HD but then export SD to a DVCam or DVC Pro. My question is a JVC and Final Cut Pro issue. If I shoot in HD or HDV, do you know what settings on Final Cut to use for capturing, editing and then what settings to export to DVCam or DVC Pro and still be in 4:3 and not be squished in the final product for broadcast?
You can shoot HD for an SD finish but I hope you realize that this means you need to color correct for each different color space.
I would say that it might be smarter to shoot it all with an SDX-900 (rental maybe) and just stay in SD, capture it all in FCP with a DVCPRO deck (rental) and then output your final show to that deck.
OR
Shoot HDV (4:2:0 codec) edit in FCP.
Downconvert a center cut of the HDV to SD
Color Correct in SD (different color space)
Output to DVcam or DVCPRO
Either way you should shoot with the 4X3 markers ON so that your center crop is correct.
David
Peace and Love :)
Read my Blog
http://blogs.creativecow.net/DavidBattistella
Re: HD to SD by Don Greening on Jul 3, 2008 at 4:31:52 am
[Martin Leeuwner]"In FCP how do I "Downconvert a center cut of the HDV to SD" "
You don't actually do a downconvert with a centre cut during capture. You can drop your native HDV 16:9 stuff directly into a 4:3 SD timeline. When FCP v.6 asks if you want to change the sequence settings to match your footage just say no. FCP will letterbox the footage so all you need to do is scale the first clip so it fills the frame. This will crop the sides in the process, leaving you with a 4:3 centre cut at the proper aspect ratio. You can drag all the rest of your 16:9 footage into the timeline, copy the scale attributes from the first clip and paste those attributes onto all the rest of your clips in one shot.
[Martin Leeuwner]"How do I set my JVC for 4:2:0 I don't think that's an option. "
You don't need to change any camera settings. David was just referring to the HDV codec, which is what your camera uses. The colour space of HDV is 4:2:0.
Re: HD to SD by Kevin Reopelle on Jul 7, 2008 at 10:03:04 pm
Don,
If you paste 16:9 HD video into your 4:3 SD sequence and then scale the video is this in effect a digital zoom on SD quality video, or is it zooming in on the original HD file?
I have tried this already an noticed something was odd when it came to patterns of horizontal lines. I'm not sure if it is a loss of quality from the scaling, or if it is because the HD video has too much detail to cram into SD video resolution. Any ideas on how to work around this?
I did find a helpful link in a different forum, Outputting SD from HD ,but it is a downconverting method specifically for the Sony EX1 and XDCAM EX format (which is what I'm using). I have yet to try this method but will soon.
Re: HD to SD by walter biscardi on Jul 8, 2008 at 2:15:19 am
[Kevin Reopelle]"I have tried this already an noticed something was odd when it came to patterns of horizontal lines. I'm not sure if it is a loss of quality from the scaling, or if it is because the HD video has too much detail to cram into SD video resolution. Any ideas on how to work around this? "
That is interlacing on your SD video timeline. HD video is upper field first, SD (NTSC) is lower field first so the fields get reversed. If your HD video is progressive, then those frames are separated into fields in SD.
This has to be done correctly by the software or hardware to achieve a clean look on the SD output. FCP does a fair job of this by itself, most of the time you get some ugly field interlace issues. Compressor does a better job. Hardware, such as the AJA Io and Kona series do this the best as far as anything you can connect to FCP.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: HD to SD by Don Greening on Jul 8, 2008 at 6:47:25 am
[Kevin Reopelle]"If you paste 16:9 HD video into your 4:3 SD sequence and then scale the video is this in effect a digital zoom on SD quality video, or is it zooming in on the original HD file?"
Do this with your master clip first by dragging/double-clicking it into the Viewer. Once you've finished your modifications then drag from Viewer to Canvas or timeline. You can right or control-click any clip in the Browser or the timeline and choose "Media Manager" from the pop-up. In the dialogue window that appears you can convert your HD clip to a DV clip from the drop down menu. This process uses Compressor for the down convert instead of FCP.
If your Viewer and Canvas windows are displaying DV footage at 100% and you drag an XDCAM EX HD clip into the Viewer you'll see the percentage drop to 44%. If you drag the same HD clip directly into the DV timeline it will display at 100% in the Canvas window. This is because it's now been converted for DV but hasn't been rendered yet. So any panning, scaling, zooming, etc. you need to do should be done before it goes in the DV sequence. If you just need to do a 4:3 centre cut with your 16:9 clip and don't need to put any moves on it just drag it straight from the Browser to the Canvas or Sequence
In addition to Walter's advice make sure if you have progressive footage and it's destined for a DV timeline that said timeline is also flagged as progressive.
