1080i60 to 480i or 486i for broadcast delivery
by Craig Seeman
on
Jun 29, 2008 at 6:38:22 pm
I had been shooting my broadcast spots in Standard Def until now. I've been using HD for corporate and digital signage.
I've finally decided to move my spot clients to HD productions. Rather than experiment I'm wondering what the workflow might be for SD broadcast delivery (I use DGFastchannel, not tape).
I shot 1080i60 XDCAM EX1 HD
I'll be editing in FCP 6.0.4.
Creating MPEG2 Program Stream in Episode Pro 5 for DG delivery.
I'd like to edit in an SD timeline.
Not sure if it'll be letter box or center crop yet since.
1080i source is upper field and I'd like to avoid filed flipping issues.
I'm wonder what timeline settings I should use.
Re: 1080i60 to 480i or 486i for broadcast delivery by David Roth Weiss on Jun 30, 2008 at 2:16:18 pm
[Craig Seeman]"Any suggested workflow?"
Easy!
1) Open a new timeline.
2) Change the sequence preset to whatever SD format you prefer.
3) Cut and paste your edited sequence from the HD timeline to the new one.
4) Edit away. The fields are automatically shifted for you. Unless you created an anamorphic SD timeline the video will start off letterboxed, but you can resize and reposition at will.
Pretty easy huh?
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW's Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
Re: 1080i60 to 480i or 486i for broadcast delivery by Chris Poisson on Jun 30, 2008 at 2:31:40 pm
Hey Craig,
What David says. The beauty of doing it this way is you can tilt, zoom and pan your shots, very handy. BTW I shoot 30p for nearly everything and fields become a non issue.
Re: 1080i60 to 480i or 486i for broadcast delivery by Craig Seeman on Jun 30, 2008 at 2:46:12 pm
Chris, normally I shoot 1080p30 for my corporate work. Since the video is sports oriented (fast action) and for broadcast and wanted the ability to use as an HD spot, my choices were 720p60 or 1080i60 (by my thinking).
Many of the channels the client will advertise on are HD but they still only accept SD delivery for advertising locally though. I'm sure that'll change soon as even the local cable stations are moving to HD.
Obviously I want to edit this on an SD timeline for the reasons you mention. If there's a need for an HD version we'll recut since we won't have the "framing" tricks available.
BTW I shot 1080i over 720p60 because ultimately I wanted even greater flexibility to repo the framing as you allude to. Not sure if this will create havoc with fine lines though.
Re: 1080i60 to 480i or 486i for broadcast delivery by Chris Poisson on Jun 30, 2008 at 4:01:54 pm
Hey Craig,
Sometimes I will build my projects at 720p with the 1080 footage, sort of get the best of both worlds. It's easy then to let Compressor take it down to SD or put that in an SD timeline.
Re: 1080i60 to 480i or 486i for broadcast delivery by Craig Seeman on Jun 30, 2008 at 2:37:50 pm
[David Roth Weiss]"The fields are automatically shifted for you"
Thanks David, This is one of the things I was unsure about. I wasn't sure I could trust FCP "field flipping."
DGFastchannel prefers upper field first (although my experience tells me that's not required).
If I decide to work in 8 bit Uncompressed or Apple Pro Res I'm wondering if it's "safe" to set fields to upper. One concern I have, as an experienced DGFastchannel customer, is that they seem to be "prone" to finding judder/interlace issues where there seem to be none. Their QC procedure is a mystery.
As you might note I'm a forum moderator for Telestream Episode and the single biggest "off list" complaint is DG rejecting spots for judder. It's not an Episode issue. I can confirm that. So I'm ultra cautious about field/interlace issues.
Re: 1080i60 to 480i or 486i for broadcast delivery by David Roth Weiss on Jun 30, 2008 at 4:54:54 pm
[Craig Seeman]"If I decide to work in 8 bit Uncompressed or Apple Pro Res I'm wondering if it's "safe" to set fields to upper."
That's a good question Craig. When I tested this workflow myself I was doing just the opposite, making absolutely certain that the fields were lower dominant.
Here's a good idea for you... Do a short test and cut an paste a clip with lots of motion into the 8-bit timeline as I suggested. Now, duplicate that clip on the timeline and drop the shift fields filter on it. Render the timeline and watch your broadcast monitor when you playback to see if detect a difference.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW's Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
