Just wanted to get a feel on the general consensus on how fellow wedding videographers film their weddings. Do you:

1.Film in full HD downconvert to SD in post?
2.Shoot in 30p or 24p?
3.Edit in full HD?
4.What AVCHD/H.264 converter do you use?
5.What is your conversion workflow?

Thanks,

Kren
Vertical Video Works* Winnipeg Videography (http://www.verticalvideoworks.ca)

We always shoot at 1080P/24p for weddings. We use MPEG Streamclip to convert the files and we do edit in HD. Not all of our couples are choosing Blu-Ray delivery, so for those that don't we simply down-convert during compression using compressor.

Hi Kren

Just to be different, I shoot at 50i (we are in PAL country). However I convert using NewBlue's Upshift down to HDV from AVCHD as my little DuoCore doesn't handle AVCHD too well!! During the conversion to 50mbps MPEG2 I also let it convert to progressive which makes life a lot easier in my NLE when rendering out to SD for most brides.

I haven't got around to trying 25P yet with the new cameras....should I???? What's the advantage ????

Chris

Hey Kren...

I'm shooting 1080p at 30fps...
I used to shoot 1080i, but the extra work involved with proper downconverts took up way too much time.
Plus it looks nicer for web output..
Since i'm working with CS4, i allow Adobe Media Encoder to create both SD and HD versions of my work.

I haven't worked with 1080 at 24fps, only because i'm in a run'n'gun situation, and my output tends to be long form. My clients aren't requesting for the cinematic feel...

1. We film in full hd. Since DSLR's barely resolve 720p, we downconvert to 720 with no loss in IQ. This gives us the ability to refine our crops, add movement to our timelapses, stabilize mediocar footage, etc. We also deliver SD.

2. We shoot in 24p.

3. Per above.

4.Use premier so no converter. Looking into cineform, but don't know if we will incorporate it to our workflow.

5. Still not happy with out SD delivery. Will probably try below next time around,
TmpgEnc Video Mastering Works 5 Tutorial for downscaling Edius HD to SD (http://www.videoproductions.com.au/html/t5-hd-sd.html)

We are shooting with two Sony V1U's. I started out shooting 24p but have one camera on a steadicam or spider mount and the famous CMOS jello effect caused us to switch to 30p.

Our style of Wedding Videography is documentary so we achieving a film look is not a huge priority for us at this time.

1. We film in full hd. Since DSLR's barely resolve 720p, we downconvert to 720 with no loss in IQ. This gives us the ability to refine our crops, add movement to our timelapses, stabilize mediocar footage, etc. [/url]

I've read that 720p gives the ability to crop easier. I'm a bit new to HD, so would you mind explaning why it is easier to crop 720p than 1080p. It seems to be it would be the opposite. Thanks, Geoffrey

When you drop your 1080p footage into a 720p timeline it will come in 150% bigger than the viewable window. You can either reduce your image to fit the 720 frame, or you can move it/adjust it to a better crop.

So no reason to output it into 1080p, video being in 720p is good enough. Also put the 1080p on a 720p timeline and if you dont need to crop just shrink the footage to fit the screen and no loss in quality?

That's the way I understand it, and have experience with my testing. Things might be different for the big screen for example, or for Panasonic cameras. For Canon dslr's this is what I've been told.

Kren, it seems to me that the detailed answers to your question are going depend on your NLE and the quality of the material you're editing with, however in general my advice would be to edit at the highest quality you can and down-convert when the programme's completed.

Not only does that protect your quality but it also means you have a proper HD master to archive against the day when the client comes back and wants a Blu-ray disk version. Then it's good business as well.

One great advice, i received was when i was still using PPro CS4, was to convert our DSLR footage to 720p and treat that as the master editing file...however as you mentioned we just upgraded our NLE to PPro CS5 so we can now edit natively. When we also downconvert to SD quality for DVDs its not as bad as we thought it would be...problem solved!

Cheers!

Kren
Vertical Video Works* Winnipeg Wedding Videography (http://www.verticalvideoworks.ca)

i wonder,
why would you shoot digital 24p for the web and DVD\BD delivery, 24 fps is not natural motion for human eye , we all know why it is 24, and not 23 or 25.

if creates the film look everyone wants.

Agreed, people want their weddings to be magical, not natural, IMO.

I shoot 1080/24p and then import using log and transfer to Final Cut Pro, which converts the footage to ProRes for me. Then I edit in HD, and then export HD for HD delivery and uploading to the internet so that the clients friends and family can see what was shot, then if they want SD delivery I use compressor to down convert to an SD format.

Hi Kren

My wedding season has a break for 6 weeks while we have our short wet and cold Winter so it's "play time" for me as I have a break.

I shot the entire season in 1080i then transcoded to HDV (and de-interlaced too) in VAAST Upshift and provided the end result on DVD.

Now I have the time to experiment again with Progressive ...it seems a better option as far as resolution goes (especially when de-interlacing) but sadly Upshift doesn't handle 1080 25P well at all....all complex scenes have bad pixellation so I have now gone to using the Canopus Converter that comes with Neo Booster (got the install packages free with my cameras) ... Shooting progressive and transcoding to a Canopus HQAVI file gives a great result (AVCHD and the HQAVI switched around on the timeline look pretty much identical to me!!)

So the hopefully NEW season workflow will be 1080 25p (or should I be using 720 50P ???)
Transcode to HQAVI and then deliver a PAL SD DVD. (I'm sure I read somewhere than 720 downsizes better to SD than 1080????)

I shoot doc style so 24P isn't really needed!!

Chris

if creates the film look everyone wants.
really?
I'd say 24fps is the last in line ingredient to create film look, standing ritgh after selective focus and proper color correction, but I might be wrong :)
Agreed, people want their weddings to be magical, not natural, IMO.
Agreed,
60p slowed down to 50% looks magical, how's 24p slowed down to 50% looks?
;)

With our HMC40 and T3i we shoot 720 30p. Our HMC70 only shoots 1080 60i.
We convert the AVCHD footage with Cineform and deinterlace on the HMC70. It all matches up pretty well on the CS4 timeline.

Hi Adam

The HMC70 makes life easy doesn't it??? No progressive modes to choose from.

Any reason that you shoot 720 30p??? Why not 720 60p or 1080 30P ???? The manual doesn't tell you very much about progressive modes and what mode is best for which scenario.

Chris

Hi all,

Just to add my two bobs bit for what its worth. I shoot in 720 50p (PAL country) @ 100 fps and find this to be ideal for us shooting weddings. Editing is done in Vegas 10 in HD and then move to Architech Pro and downsize to DVD or stay in HD for Blu-Ray.

Works for us

Hi Ray

I must admit that 720 25P makes a lot smaller files if you transcode like I do to HQAVI BUT you do have that odd bit of blur now and again on fast action. 50P is awesome for slomos though!!! In Vegas 9 I find that 50P footage takes twice as long to render as 25P

I have found that shooting at 720 seems to produce a lot better 720x576 MPEG2 than I can get from 1080 and even in HD a 1280x720 looks as good on screen as 1080 footage!!! My renders from 1080 tends to look a bit soft once it's in SD but 720 seems to retain more detail...no idea why????

I shoot documentary style so I haven't yet needed to venture into the 24P bracket but 25P is pretty close anyway!!!

Chris

Hi Chris,
I find that with my aging eyes its hard if not impossible to tell the difference between 1080 and 720. Yes I do love the slo-mo's that shooting in 100 fps @50p brings with it. I never shoot interlace always progressive.. don't like interlace......once you progress u never regress.....Yes you are right rendering does take some time but I just let it go over night.

As I said that format works for us and the end result be it DVD/Blu-ray or Utube is very nice.

Hi Ray

Many thanks for that!! Do you find that 720 50P does a reasonable downsize to DVD as well??? I often get disheartened when you are editing pristine footage and the end DVD ends up looking decidedly soft!!

I have heard/read somewhere that 720 does a better job of downsizing than 1080!!

I think I also need to think about a computer upgrade !! I normally need to transcode any AVCHD as my little DuoCore battles with native footage!!!

Your information is indeed useful!! I'll try some test shots at 720 50P later

Chris

Hi Chris,
Yes I do find also that downsizing to DVD from 720 @ 50p is clearer then 1080 but that's only my opinion.

As I said this format works for us and we deliver 99% of our work on DVD.

My computer is an Intel Core i7 930 @ 2.80 ghz with 6gb of RAM and it crunches AVCHD files no worries... dont need to put them thru any intermediary first. I mix AVCHD an MXF on the same timeline... often fading out in AVCHD and back in with MXF. As I said before I stay in HD till Architech Pro then downside to DVD.

Thanks Ray

I found that Vegas actually reports 720 25P and 50P both as 50P (Double PAL) However due to my slow computer I'm transcoding to Canopus HQAVI and when those files are brought in, Properties show the 25P as having a frame rate of 25 and 50P has a frame rate of 50 ... sorta more correct!!!

After editing the 720 25P seems to render to SD pretty close to realtime or faster and 50P is a lot slower but still much quicker than rendering the MTS (on my machine about 12 X realtime)

Thanks for your link and sample...your slomo is really super smooth at 50P .... maybe I'll shoot bridal arrivals at 50P and cos I use a stedicam on the photoshoot and often slomo sequences, 50P would be great there too!! Probably get away with 25P for the ceremony as there is virtually no movement!!!

Thanks again for all the input

Chris

When you shoot and edit 720p do you encode it for DVD as a Progressive MPEG or interlaced?

I am finding that on some screens DVDs made with a Progressive MPEG show what looks like field jitter. If I make an interlaced MPEG the jitter is not there but the image resolution is lower.

Hi George

I have always rendered my edited footage out to Sony Vegas's preset DVD PAL which is always Lower Field first and interlaced. Incoming footage shot at 1080i is made progressive before edits ...obviously 720 is already progressive.

Excuse the ignorance, but I was unaware that domestic DVD players could handle progressive SD DVD's I always thought they had to be interlaced as that's what the player expects!! You would, of course, get a lower resolution with interlaced but seriously I doubt whether the bride would ever notice it!!!

I think we tend to get paranoid about IQ nowdays... I shot 5 x 10 sec clips of my street directory today...in 1080i, 720 25P, 720 50P, 1080i transcoded to HDV and finally one in good ole DV-AVI.....I rendered each clip into an MPEG2 and then imported all the SD files back into Vegas and rendered them into one MP4 high quality file and played it thru my media player onto a big screen TV. Result???? They all looked much the same to me, even the SD one!!! If you really look hard you can see a few artifacts but the average person couldn't really tell them apart.

All I was "attempting to do" was prove to myself that I should be shooting at 720 50P rather than 1080i ...so far the results are inconclusive but I'll probably do the new season at 720 either 25P or 50P where I need good slomos (so far that has been the only plus along with the ability to grab decent stills)

Chris

Thanks for that very useful reply Chris.
Your explanation is the same as my observations and limited knowledge of DVD players. I had been advised to keep 720p footage Progressing all the way and that DVD players would do the interlacing if necessary. In my experience that did not work though the source of that advice (not on this forum I'd add) is adamant that it should work.
I usually let Encore do the encoding which, looking at the preset, does by default make a lower field first MPEG. The problem arose when I let AME make a Progressive MPEG then mixed that in a project with interlaced MPEGs.

Seems I should just leave Encore to do the encoding.

Do you know if I'd be able to turn an already made Progessive MPEG in to an interlaced one, or do I need to go back to the source footage and re-encode it as interlaced?

Hi George

I suspect you need to re-render the MPEG2 file so that the end result is interlaced with Lower Field first which is the norm for SD clips.

Just for interest do you shoot at 25P or 50P...it just worries me a little that at 1/50th shutter speed 25P might have a bit of motion blur if there is any fast movement...like the dancing when the party hots up???

Ray in Australia does everything at 50P and a shutter of 1/100th which solves any movement issues but is a bit restrictive at a low light reception. I do notive with my cams at 1/50th in 25P mode when you pan the camera the EVF staggers a bit which it doesn't do at 1/120th (my doesn't have 1/100th which seems weird for PAL cameras)

Chris

"Just for interest do you shoot at 25P or 50P...it just worries me a little that at 1/50th shutter speed 25P might have a bit of motion blur if there is any fast movement...like the dancing when the party hots up???"

I have been shooting 720p 50fps at 1/50th but just lately I've started to shoot at 1/120th or even 1/250th in bright sun, instead of using the ND filter, as even at 50fps I can see that some of the footage has slight motion blur on any fast movement when shot at 1/50th. I couldn't use 25p as that exhibited motion blur that was very noticeable. In low light back to 1/50th I never shoot below that other than for a dream effect.

I've have small Sony cams that I use for additional coverage. They shoot 1080i and because of the problem I had with the Prog/inter mentioned above I've started shooting 1080-50i on my main cam.

My cam JVC HM700 in native 720p and will do 1080i but only does 1080p at 24fps and as almost everything goes out on DVD I'm not even going to enter that arena.

Hey George

Here is the link to one of my tests

YouTube - ‪modetests.mp4‬‏ (http://youtu.be/eE5y42Ehw_k)

Ok it's just a static street directory but I was comparing resolution...basically all the AVCHD was rendered down to MPEG2 and for fun I shot a DV-AVI clip too (my cam can also shoot SD)
I then assembled all the SD clips and rendered them out to MP4 at a decent bitrate and dumped the clip on YouTube... None of the clips had any special treatment and I even transcoded one AVCHD with Upshift to 1920x1080 progressive so I could get a fair range of formats. I looked at this clip from my media player in HD and I really cannot say, with confidence, any one truly "shone"

Tell me what you think????? I can see the point of doing 720 50P or 25P if you want a special look but I think it just gets lost in SD!!! Admittedly I have shot my entire season at 1080i and then transcoded to HDV and finally rendered to MPEG2 and brides have been delighted..would they have been "more delighted" with 720 50P ?????

Chris

Hi Chris.

The reason I have been shooting 720p is that that is the native capture format of my camera, the 1080i is processed in camera from that, as is the down-converted SD.

I couldn't see any real difference in resolution in your sample except for the AVI; did you change the w/b on that as it looks distinctly warmer than the others?

I don't really have a problem with any of the of the formats when kept in the computer/internet domain, all my worries come from DVD playback. Further to what I wrote yesterday I have read that a DVD with a Progressive MPEG stream should play okay on a non Progressive tv as the DVD player will do some magic techno trickery (that is what I been told previously) to output it in an interlaced way, but my eyes tell me something different, I see it with field jitter, even though it plays fine on a computer or on the internet.

Hi George

Nope I left everything on auto ...I guess SD capture uses different settings in the camera (or confused it) the idea was purely to see if one resolution had a distinct advantage when resizing to 720x576... so far I'm not 100% convinced that 720 gives you a far better SD copy but I will continue testing with some "proper footage"

My NLE (Sony Vegas) allows me to set the output for a PAL MPEG2 destined for a DVD but it also has preset templates and all the PAL DVD ones apply interlacing if you are rendering progressive footage!! Remember even if I shoot 1080i I still de-interlace and edit it as progressive then purely let the NLE apply the interlacing on the final render.

Jaggies tend to show on TV footage if the file was, say, shot and edited as interlaced and THEN rendered out as a smaller size video.... Typical would be 1440 x 1080 interlaced being sent to a 720 x576 MPEG2 ..what happens is when the image is resized then the interlacing lines get messed up due to the resizing and show up on the TV .

Read this website and see if the images relate to your issue???

What is deinterlacing? The best method to deinterlace movies (http://www.100fps.com)

They explain the resizing of interlaced video very clearly (far better than me!!!!) If you are getting this then maybe your 720 clips are actually 50P clips inside a 50i wrapper so they appear as interlaced to the NLE

Does your NLE recognise your video as Progressive showing fields as "none" ????

Chris

Hi Chris.
It's not jaggies that are the problem it's as though it is playing the field order incorrectly. The HM700 chip is true Progressive capture and Premiere identifies it as such, editing is no problem. I can then encode it to MPEG2 for DVD. The presets offer a PAL Widescreen and a PAL Progressive Widescreen. The first is Field order Lower , the second is Field Order None. If I pick the Progressive as is the project the MPEG is fine it plays back without a hint of flutter or jitter, I put it to Encore and it's still fine, I make a DVD and play that back on the computer, still fine, put it in a laptop, still fine, but when I play it to a tv from a DVD player on any movement there's what appears to be the field order playing back incorrectly. which looking at it again is a slight de-focusing or ghosting. The DVD player is setup to output Progressive and the TV is indicating that it's receiving a Progressive input. I've tried it on two different DVD/TV combinations.
If I make the same DVD with a PAL Widescreen preset (i.e interlaced) it plays okay.

Apologies to all if I seem to be moving this thread away from the original question.

Hi George

Very simple then!! Your DVD player cannot encode progressive video to interlaced for your TV..some can and some can't. Because with my luck, the very bride I deliver DVD's to has a non-compliant player so she will not think very much of me!!

I would use the PAL Widescreen preset so that you know you are safe... all my wedding footage is also progressive but I always render to PAL Widescreen so it's interlaced.

Chris

That's what I fear Chris and I have had one couple tell me they had this problem. It's reverting back to the days when I first delivered DVDs and had compatibility problems with some machines not recognising +R and some -R discs.

I'm a relatively new comer to HD having made the switch mainly because I needed to supply widescreen, and I've still never been asked for HD. I was not an early adopter of any of the HDV formats so a whole swath of technology passed me by and when I finally did come around to it the variety of formats and media came as quite a culture shock. I had been use to running a DVcam tape, editing it with Prem 6.5, letting Matrox encode for DVD and burning to a disc.That seems like spreading soft butter on warm bread compared to HD which is like wading through treacle with chains on my legs and blinkers on. Excuse the mixed metaphors.

I shoot in 30p on my XH A1 and my 5D Mark II. I dont convert anything. I export final progect to MPEG2DVD usually. But as soon as I import it into Encore, I notice stuff gone wrong. When I playback on a television, you can definitively tell the field orders are incorrect. When I playback the DVD footage on a pc, quality is amazing. Does encore not support progressive? it seems it transcode to either lower or upper fields. Any advice for me? I want to deliver a product in progressive without getting my fields out of sync.

Even if I shoot interlaced (which has an upper field first) I always transcode it so my timeline has progressive footage. Dunno about Encore but when I render out in Sony Vegas I render to an MPEG2 SD file and use their DVD preset (PAL in my case) The render properties show this always as Lower Field first plus of course the correct aspect etc etc.

That way I know I have the correct interlaced file to compile a DVD (for me in DVD Lab)

Play this on a computer and yes you will see the interlacing lines when you have movement... if your video looks absolutely pristine on the computer then you can be pretty sure that the file has no interlacing so a lot of DVD players will struggle with it!!

Chris

Guys,
Maybe you need to upgrade your computer. I shoot in AVCHD and MXF and it all goes straight onto the timeline in 720 50P in Vegas Pro10 nicely, my computer crunches these files all day.

I edit and then render to Blu-Ray specs (1080 X 1920 @ 25P). I then import the HD file into Architect Pro 5.2 put my chapters in and set it to burn either to a Blu-Ray or to a DVD. Depending on the time I either use a dual layer or single layer DVD and the program does the rest. I am more then happy with the result. I guess its a hang-up I have from the old days but I don't like going down a generation or two by converting even if it is digital.

Just by two bobs bit FWIW.

Chris. If you shoot interlaced what is the advantage converting to Progressive if it is then going to be interlaced again for the DVD?

Ray, Surely there will be a downscaling conversion of your HD Blu-ray spec file when Architect crunches it for a DVD.

Since posting about the 'field jitter' problem I've allowed Encore to encode my Progressive 720x50p timeline as Lower Field First (presumably that is interlaced) and now I no longer have the problem. It seems my DVD/TV set ups don't handle Progressive DVDs, even though the players are set to output Progressive and the TV indicate that they are receiving Progressive signal through HDMI. Very odd.

Hi George

I'm shooting in HD 1080 50i and therefore the interlacing is Upper Field first...I need to resize and out to Lower Field first eventually.

If you resize (from say 1440x1080 interlaced) down to 720x576 interlaced you also resize the interlacing lines and that throws them completely out of sync...that website I showed you 100fps shows you what happens. I have basically two options with interlaced...allow the NLE to de-interlace the footage which Sony Vegas can do automatically OR de-interlace before I import the footage which I'm currently doing with Upshift. The bottom line is that if you resize HD to SD you DO need to de-interlace the footage. If you shoot progressive then, of course, it has no interlacing.

I transcode the 50i in Upshift to MPEG2 HDV at 50mbps and also allow Upshift to make it progressive...I'd actually prefer to use the Canopus HQAVI Codec but that doesn't seem to have a de-interlace facility so then I would have to tell Sony Vegas to de-interlace it.

The bottom line is that you DO need to de-interlace footage if you are going to resize it..if, of course, you are editing 1920x1080 and outputting 1920x1080 then interlacing is not affected ..only an issue with HD to SD!!! and my brides all need DVD's!!!

Chris

Thanks Chris, that explains it to me very well. I hadn't expected my migration from SD/DV to HD to be so tortuous, it seems I'm still learning.

I have been shooting Progressive 720x50p up until recently but because of the problem I'd had as I mentioned above I have shot may last few weeks at 1920x50i. I'm shooting PAL so presumably Upper Field First (that's what Premiere shows me). I haven't been deinterlacing, and as far as I know Premiere hasn't been doing it automatically, I set an 1920x1080 interlaced project. When I send it to Encore to encode at 720x576 for DVD it is doing that as Lower Field First yet I am not seeing any scaling artifacs or interlacing lines. The only time I've seen problems has been, as I mentioned before, when I've encoded Progressive footage to a Progressive MPEG and seen 'field jitter'

Very odd.

When a reasonable DVD player encounters progressive source flagged for pulldown, it should apply a low pass filter in the vertical direction to remove interline twitter before splitting the progressive frame into fields during playback to a tube television. This assumes you have encoded your video as progressive with soft pulldown flags and the DVD player is reasonable. On the other hand, if you encode your video using hard pulldown with 60i progressive segmented frames, the low pass filter needs to be applied before encoding. Better quality will be obtained using flags rather than hard pulldown.

Thanks Eric, but that's gone completely over my head. How/where do I apply flags.
I either send by Dynamic Link from Premiere to Encore, or encode with Media Encoder from Premiere, nowhere have I seen reference to pull down or flags.

Incidentally the jitter problem is on LCD & LED screens not CRT. But not when played on computers or laptops.

My guess is you currently have 60i progressive segmented frames or have connected the DVD player to the LCD using an interlaced output such as the yellow composite cable.

When 60i is played back on a DVD player to a LCD television the DVD player keeps every field and deinterlaces to 60p. This can introduce twitter unless the image has been low pass filtered in the vertical direction. When a computer plays the same footage it throws away half the fields and deinterlaces to 30p. This will not cause twitter.

Rescaling HD to SD using Premier can introduce aliasing as well as interline twitter. If you are worried about quality, I would recommend Dan Isaacs hd2sd scripts

HD to SD DVD – Best Methods | Creating Motion Graphics Blog | Blu-Ray DVD Authoring Menu | Precomposed (http://www.precomposed.com/blog/2009/07/hd-to-sd-dvd-best-methods/)

I'm not a Premier user so I can't comment on how to master 24p to DVD using soft pulldown flags. My recommendation would be to check your current results by inspecting the VOB files of the finished DVD with mediainfo to see if they are progressive with flags or interlaced. Perhaps someone else can give more information on Premier.

Thanks again Eric for taking time to answer me.
I'll just point out that I'm in UK therefore I read your 60i 30fps as 50 and 25, and I'm not using 24p it is 720x50p footage.

As you'll realise I don't have the technical understanding of how the MPEG is created with flags and pull downs, but I do grasp the difference between Progressive and Interlaced.

I don't have a problem letting Premiere or Encore do the scaling and compressing to encode the HD footage for DVD, it looks fine on the computer (if a bit softer than the HD), both as a Progressive MPEG or an Interlaced one. The problem I have is when I play the Progressive one on a DVD player. The Interlaced one is absolutely rock solid but the Progressive one jitters.

Obviously I don't have access to a huge array of DVD/TV combos, both set ups I've got show it as does one that I sent out to a customer, who returned it with the complain that I describe. I sent them an Interlaced one and they are happy.

I understood that the general wisdom is to keep progressive footage in a Progressive domain throughout, but this doesn't seem to be working for me and I'd like to try and find what I'm missing.

Mediainfo is available at

http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en/Download

If you author a 10 second long DVD and post the relevant VOB file from the DVD, I might be able to tell what it wrong with it. The file should be about 10 kilobytes long, so it can possibly be attached to a post.

Many thanks Eric.

I'm rendering out a wedding at the moment so I'll do what you've suggested when it's finished and send it to you.