DVC ProHD Round trips
by Sean Davison
on
Jun 18, 2007 at 6:40:24 am
Is any one successfully round tripping interlaced DVCProHD from FCS2 to Color and back. I keep hearing of people who have got this to work but I keep getting these pillar boxes when I come back into FCP. (Color works like a dream!)
I am trying to go DVCProHD 1080i send sequence to color (no16.9 flags on in sequence settings - just AJA Kona DVCProHD 1080i setting) Im not ryiong to upres or anything - all goes well - the frame size is right in color. It renders fine but when I get back into FCP The sequence settings are all the same but the rendered frame size is pillar boxed. If I match frame back the Colored clip is the correct size in the player but not in the sequence.
The browser states that the clips are dvcprohd 1440*1080 but the sequence doesnt agree. Ive tried pasting into new sequences etc but with the same results.
Also has any one noticed that if you try up resing DVCProHD to Pro res the resulting clip frame sizes are still 1440?
All my projects have been created in Version 5.1.4. (I just do On Lines!)
Re: DVC ProHD Round trips by walter biscardi on Jun 18, 2007 at 3:03:58 pm
[Sean Davison]"
Is any one successfully round tripping interlaced DVCProHD from FCS2 to Color and back. I keep hearing of people who have got this to work but I keep getting these pillar boxes when I come back into FCP. (Color works like a dream!)"
Will finally get a chance to test this today, probably this evening as we're scrambling to get a few other projects out the door. I'm capturing 10 shots in 10bit UC, DVCPro HD and ProRes 422 to test the same shots going round trip to Color. Will apply the same grade to each and add a ColorFX to at least a few shots in each timeline too.
Will report back tonight or tomorrow Sean.
Also, see the erroneous Shift Fields issue in my blog to ensure this hasn't caused any issues for you if you brought a project up from 5.1.4
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.
All Things Apple Podcast! http://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
Re: DVC ProHD Round trips by morgster on Jun 18, 2007 at 4:09:24 pm
Just did a DVCPRO HD 1080i 29.97 commercial last week. Kept it all in DVCPRO HD codec as was getting downconverted for local TV stations. Cut in Final Cut Studio 2... project started and finished in FCP 6.0, exported to color, color graded and sent back to FCP with no probs at all. Downloaded Natress film effects and used a few in the grade session... only problems were with speed effects in Color... Color identified ramped clips (speed effected up to 500%) as massively long clips.. Actually they worked and were graded in the timeline, just when we went to render them... actually when we went to render out our grades I think color wanted to render out the whole captured clip (which was around 15 mins)... anyway, we quickly got a work around by exporting the speed effected clips separately and brought them in that way. We exported the sequence back with a few unrendered clips which showed up as black and white in the FCP timeline... we thought this was great... don't know whether color/FCP 6 does this on purpose, but it was handy when dropping in the speed effects after the fact.
Actually had clients in the room while my color grader (someone who is a Final Touch owner) worked with the sequence...
Was very impressed with how it worked... Couple of the issues I had were to do with sending the timeline back to FCP... we had 2 timelines that we worked with... one of them, when we sent it back to FCP really slowed the system down until we closed color... the second timeline worked fine with color opened in the background... that's so minor, but there it is.
Re: DVC ProHD Round trips by Santiago Gutierrez on Jun 18, 2007 at 5:14:48 pm
I just finished a 1 hour DVCPro HD show that had over 1100 shots in it. Digitized in FCP 6 with the Kona 3, sent over to Color for Grading. I had to split up the show by act to send to Color because of the amount of edits. Color worked perfectly, not one problem in using the program. The only problems I encountered were with sending back to FCP from Color. If a sequence had more than 300 shots in it, the process would choke FCP and require a Force Quit. You couldn't even export an XML from Color and open that in FCP if it had that many shots (+300). It would crash FCP. So the solution was to break the show into Acts and do it that way. And once I discovered that, no problems the rest of the way. I was quite pleased with the performace of Color. I rendered to the Original Format which was DVCPro HD and had no problems with frame size or pillarboxing. Most shots had a primary in and 2-3 secondaries. My speed effects all worked, as long as they were constant. Anything variable speed was rendered correctly by Color, but reimported incorrectly by FCP into the sequence. So I just had to match back to the graded clip and re-cut the shot into the sequence as a constant speed clip. This was only 1-2 shots in the show that I deliberately left to see what would happen with variable speed clips. My only complaint is that Color seems to exaggerate any interlace mosaic artifacts that are present in the footage, such as an aerial shot of the NYC skyline and the fine details in buildings that have that mosaic pattern as the shot pans from left to right. These were MUCH more pronounced after Color grading than before. So much so that I cut in the orignal unprocessed footage and tweaked that to be legal.
This is the last show I'm going to do in DVCPro HD, I'm switching to ProRes so I won't have to worry about the stretching out of the footage to fill the full HD raster. At least you'll be 1920x1080 from the start. I suspect that's where the problems with the aerial footage that I'm referring to come from. This was a 1080i60 project.
Re: DVC ProHD Round trips by Sean Davison on Jun 18, 2007 at 9:26:10 pm
Sorry Santiago - three questions - are you having to manually stretch the frames out to full raster? This seems to be the problem I'm having - It seems that it might just be an issue with 1080i50 - It seems alot of people are OK with 1080i60. (Second Question) What frame rate are you working with?
Thirdly was your project edit in FCP 6.0 or 5.1.4?
There are loads of issues in tx a project up to 6 - I'm wondering if this is one of them?
Sorry to Carp on about this guys but it's really pissing me off!!!!!
Re: DVC ProHD Round trips by Santiago Gutierrez on Jun 19, 2007 at 12:26:16 am
Hi Sean,
No, there was no stretching involved. Everything rendered correctly and was properly imported into FCP. The project was edited in an AVID Media Composer and brought into FCP with Automatic Duck's Pro Import. And i was working at 29.97.
Santiago
Re: DVC ProHD Round trips - Test One, Poor. by walter biscardi on Jun 19, 2007 at 1:03:42 am
Ok Sean, I opened Color and brought in a 1080i/50 DVCPro HD clip to a timeline.
1 - The clip shows as 1920x1080 DVCPro HD and not 1440x1080 like it should.
2 - I cannot select DVCPro HD for the codec anywhere.
3 - I cannot set the Frame Rate to 25. It is greyed out in 23.98.
4 - What rendered out was a 10bit uncompressed 4:2:2 file. I could not render out a DVCPro HD File.
Now for this test I simply brought in a single clip, I did NOT export a timeline from Final Cut Pro. BUT I should be able to work with a single clip or clips correctly in Color without having to come in from an FCP timeline. So at least for this test, poor performance from Color. I'll try to send a small timeline from FCP and see what happens next.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.
All Things Apple Podcast! http://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
Re: DVC ProHD Round trips - Test Two - More Problems by walter biscardi on Jun 19, 2007 at 1:22:38 am
Ok, this time Send To Color a 45 second timeline from FCP. 1080i/50 DVCPro HD timeline.
Frame Rate - 25
Frame Size - 1920x1080, this is still wrong. Should be 1440x1080
Render out the project and Send To Final Cut Pro.
Frame Rate - 25
Frame Size for the clips - 1280 x 1080. This is wrong, that's the 1080i/60 Frame Size NOT 1080i/50. Should be 1440x1080 and in fact, the Sequence that opens up in FCP IS correct 1440x1080. The clips are rendered wrong.
Image Quality - I'm seeing bad rasterization on any vertical or horizontal lines and an overall degradation in quality from Color. Video has taken a bad image quality hit in the Render from Color most likely due to the incorrect frame size.
Looks like Color doesn't know what to do with 1080i/50 material when going back to the DVCPro HD codec.
Test Three - Export to ProRes (HQ) coming up!
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.
All Things Apple Podcast! http://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
Re: DVC ProHD Round trips - Test Three - So So by walter biscardi on Jun 19, 2007 at 1:56:09 am
Same as above, but this time Render out Export to ProRes 422 (HQ)
The Sequence that opens up in FCP is a 1080i/50 DVCPro HD Sequence. This is strange because I chose ProRex 422 (HQ) as the export / Render option.
Clip Properties - 1280x1080. Still wrong. If I'm in a DVCPro HD 1080i/50 timeline, then this frame size HAS to be 1440x1080.
Pixel Aspect - 1280x1080. Wrong.
Image is squished left to right so it fits right inside the Action Safe area. Appears this way on the Kona 3 playback as well. I checked the Distort in the Motion tab and it's set to 0 so no distortion is being applied to the clip.
Playback is very clean and sharp, but the frame size is all wrong so it's useless. Scaling it out to 112% and distorting it just screws up the image.
Now Sean here is the only thing I can see to even get Color to work remotely with DVCPro HD 1080i/50
Render out from Color to the ProRes (HQ) format.
Send To Final Cut Pro and open the new timeline in FCP.
Create a New Timeline and select the Apple ProRes (HQ) 1440x1080 Preset.
Change the Frame Size to 1280x1080
Change the Aspect Ratio to HD (1280x1080)
Change the Pixel Aspect Ratio to HD (1280x1080)
Say OK.
Copy All from the timeline from Color.
Paste into that new Modified Timeline.
Select All Clips in the new modified timeline.
Remove Attributes > Distort
That removes a 12% distortion on all the clip and at last you see your clips in regular 16:9 resolution, albeit in the wrong frame size, but there you go.
Ah, but you still need to re-render the entire timeline before you can output to tape because I see green "Preview" line above my entire timeline.
Or just don't use Color at all for DVCPro HD 1080i/50 material at all......
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.
All Things Apple Podcast! http://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
Re: DVC ProHD Round trips - Test Three - So So by Sean Davison on Jun 19, 2007 at 10:27:29 am
Thanks Walter...Your a Star! - Exactly the same as I'm getting.
How do we let Apple know about this as no one else seems to be mentioning it on any of the forums?
I bet 1080i60 works!!!!!
Thanks for the work around - sadly my client wont let me use pro res till it's been OK'd by the Broadcaster so I'll have to keep on admiring my nice Tangent controller as just an expensive piece of desk furniture!
Re: DVC ProHD Round trips - Test Three - So So by walter biscardi on Jun 19, 2007 at 10:36:07 am
[Sean Davison]"
Thanks Walter...Your a Star! - Exactly the same as I'm getting.
How do we let Apple know about this as no one else seems to be mentioning it on any of the forums?"
I have sent it directly to my contacts at Apple but they do read monitor all of these forums very regularly so they are seeing your problems and my posts. The thing with Apple is they are not going to jump all over one issue and release an update right away. They try to cover as many bugs as they can in a single update and then release it. So it could be a while.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.
All Things Apple Podcast! http://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
Re: DVC ProHD Round trips - Test Three - So So by walter biscardi on Jun 19, 2007 at 10:45:51 am
[Sean Davison]"
Thanks for the work around - sadly my client wont let me use pro res till it's been OK'd by the Broadcaster s"
Dude, you need to talk to your client and ask to petition the network. If the network likes DVCPro HD they will also like ProRes. That last render I did with ProRes was absolutely pristine. That's what we did here with a few networks was petitioned them to accept DVCPro HD by sending up a full tape for a QC test. Do the same with your network if the client will allow.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.
All Things Apple Podcast! http://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
Re: DVC ProHD Round trips - Test Three - So So by tcurren on Jun 20, 2007 at 1:48:07 pm
[Sean Davison]"Thanks for the work around - sadly my client wont let me use pro res till it's been OK'd by the Broadcaster"
That's classic. If you are starting out with DVCPROHD, there is no way the Broadcaster is ever going to be able to discern that you used ProRes in the workflow. The compression artifacts they can find are already there with DVCPROHD. ProRes won't add to that.
