SD or HD?
 

Hey,
If I know a project is going to DVD and not blu-ray is there any advantage to shooting HD and then downconverting in post or is it better to just shoot SD widescreen?
Thanks very much,
Randy

Given a choice, I always shoot at the maximum capabilities of the camera. Because I never know if the footage will be needed for something else later. IOW, one never knows if a client won't come back later and want that same "DVD only" project reworked for blu-ray. It's usually better to downrez than to uprez.

The cost of doing this is increased file sizes, and increased processing time which is often not that big a penalty with modern hardware.

I tend to always acquire in HD even when delivering in SD.
It gives me the option to resize the shot if needed.

By the way, I do a ton of voice work in Las Cruces.
Just wondering what it's like there?

Dave

I've see some HV footage edited on Premier that has downrez artifacts that match this article's explanation of what can happen when shooting HD and producing SD: XDCAM-USER.com Getting SD from HD and the problems of oversampling.

I use Final Cut Pro and an A1 and have been pleased with the downrezing. If your camera/NLE/DVD packages don't do a good job, your camera's DownConvert may do better. That way you can have the benefits of capture and archive at HD.

By resizing do you mean to be able to zoom in post?
Las Cruces, I absolutely love it except from mid July until late August, it's miserable because the humidity gets up to ...well, normal....however 90% of the homes here have swamp coolers and they don't work worth a crap when it's humid....wahhhhh...but then again it's very nice to be able to wear a T-shirt outside in January...I do own a leather jacket but only wear it because it makes me look cool.

Yessir, I've read to not downconvert in the camera

This is seriously a major topic especially for those of us agonizing over whether to keep our XL2s. Theoretically, if you squeeze 5 pixels into 1, which is in effect what you are doing when you are downconverting (PAL), however you do it, some pixels are going to go the wrong way, so you should be better off shooting SD. So why do Hollywood movies on commercial DVD look better than our DV footage? With the post downconvertors available to us, there are artifacts/shimmer, especially noticeable where you have straight edges. But to me overall my post downconverted HD footage just does look better than equivalent original SD. I'd also comment that I have tried shooting slightly softer HD to see if I could get better SD - the result was quite opposite (a slight blur in post as suggested in the article can help).

Les, what is your method within FCP? I shot an interview in HD on my XHA1s and exported it to much footage shot as 16:9 SD It took a while; but looked very good. Would be interested i finding a little quicker method

Import footage into FCP using HDV 60i
Export as Quicktime file
Master DVD with Toast, iDVD or DVD Studio Pro

Yes zoom or reframe the shot in post.

Just voiced two more spots for your market today.... I love working in Las Cruces!

"Just voiced two more spots for your market today.... I love working in Las Cruces! "

I would like to hear some samples can you send me some or have some online somewhere?
BTW, just out of curiosity who are you working for in Cruces?

Did Martin Tire the other day, and a couple for the Borman Autoplex today.
Should be able to hear me on the radio and TV there.

Dave

OMG, you're not the voice calling all the other car dealers chickens are you??!!!

We did those some time back.
The new pitch is $99.

I just took a look at your demo reel...looks very impressive...I doubt I could afford your VO but I'll contact you next time anyway.

I'm not sure why I waited this long to try it but zooming in post with HD (editing HD rendering to widescreen SD) is hardly noticeable at 15-20% (very cool!!!) on my 25" monitor. To really test it though I need to burn it to DVD and test it on our 42" HDTV in the living room.
Can anyone tell me at what point the degradation starts getting noticeable going HD to SD before I do though?
Thanks very much,
Randy

GR it's indeterminable, it'll be different every time 'cause it depends on a number of factors, the original picture quality, the capture, the NLE, render program etc.

Shoot HD the best you can, then through to SD, concentrate on refining that process.
Cheers.

Yessir, after I wrote that post I tried it on the B cam footage (shot with an HV40) which was a wide shot of the whole stage and it didn't seem to work well at all.
That said I'm very pleased with what I was able to do (get a little tighter and follow the talent's movement).
I could never get away with that in SD (at least without it being noticeable).
Thanks guys,
Randy

If you have an HDV camera (not just the XH-A1 but, I think, all of them) then when you select to "shoot in SD" all you are really doing is down-converting the HD signal from the chips to an SD signal on the tape, so all the debates about high-frequency "twitter" and similar artifacts apply, just as they do when down-converting in an NLE. My opinion is that, so long as your editing machine can cope with either the large file size of intermediate codecs or the high CPU load of native MPEG2 editing, it's best to stay in HD until the very last moment, and archive the finished project in HD, too. Your NLE will do at least as good a job of down-converting as your camera.

There are some very good HD-SD converters on the market, but nothing that's remotely "affrodable" (from my point-of-view). AFAIK, the only things that do a proper job are dedicated hardware devices that only broadcast networks and the like can afford.

If your target output is always and only SD 4:3, then keep your trusty XL2, XM2 or PD170 going for as long as you can. If you sometimes need SD 16:9 or HD, get an XH-A1s and accept that you'll either have to live with a little twittering or spend mega-bucks on serious conversion hardware. (Until ProCoder manages to reverse engineer those patented Snell & Whatsit circuits!)

Yessir after some more research and testing I'm convinced you guys are right and I think I have finally shot the last 4:3 I'll ever need (I had to to match a project that started in 4:3) which was not easy to do when I wanted so badly to shoot HD!
Thanks guys,
Randy