Settings for HDCAM ingest

[Jack Kelly]

Hi there,

We've shoot a project on a Sony F900R HDCAM camera shooting 25PsF. When we come to ingest the tapes by connecting an HDCAM deck to my Decklink HD Extreme, should we use these settings in NEO HD HDLink (I'm on WinXP Pro SP2):

1920x1080 10bit
progressive scan
don't de-interlace
quality = high

To take each one of these settings and my thinking behind them:

1920x1080 10bit
HDCAM records 1440x1080 8-bit to tape which would, at first glance, mean that ingesting as 1920x1080 10-bit would be overkill. However, the HDCAM deck up-converts from 1440x1080 to 1920x1080 to send over the HD-SDI pipe. So I'd rather not do a second spatial conversion back to 1440x1080 in the computer. Am I correct to assume that converting from 1920x1080 back to 1440x1080 would harm the image?.

I'm eager to use 10-bit because we're going to do quite a lot of grading which might mean several trips back and forth between various applications and banding is a thing of the devil.

progressive scan
The camera is set to record 25psf so I assume I should tell HDLink to ingest as progressive scan.

don't de-interlace
I've experimented with ingesting 25PsF HDCAM footage either with HDLink's de-interlacer on or with it off. It seems that the footage ingested with the de-interlacer off is a touch sharper. Is the de-interlacer throwing away some vertical resolution?

quality=high
HDCAM is really rather "lossy". I assume that using a higher quality cineform setting than "high" is unnecessary because HDCAM has lost a fair bit of information. Of course, if we were shooting direct to Cineform then we'd pick Filmscan 1 or maybe Filmscan 2. Also, we shoot with a Pro35 adapter which slightly softens the image so there isn't a huge amount of high frequency detail. Oh, and we're not going to be doing any green-screen although we might do a little bit of motion tracking when we come to do the grade.

Any thoughts would be most welcome!
Many thanks,
Jack

[David Newman]

You understand the setting pretty well, you are doing the correct thing.

The deinterlacer is only for 50i or 60i matterial, you don't need it. Some vertical resolution is lost, although a lot less in our deinterlacer than most.

High is fine for HDCAM. Yes keep the video at 1920x1080, and the 10-bit will help for your grading.

[Jack Kelly]

great stuff, thanks for the reply.

[Jon Shohet]

Sorry to jump in on the thread...
I shot a project with the V1E, in 25P, which, as far as I understand is also 25PsF.
I captured tapes as mpegs using CS3. The only native preset which works is 1080i, since the V1E always records at 50i.
I'm interested in Aspect/Prospect.
I really want to edit in a progressive timeline.
1. If I convert the mpeg files in HDlink can I also choose "Progressive" frame format and no de-intelacing and then edit in a progressive cineform preset?
2. 10-bit is really tempting because I need to do color grading. However, since I will only be using footage from the V1, should I leave the video at 1440x1080?
Is it true that Prospect does not have a 1440x1080 preset? Will I be actually losing some quality if I try to use 1440x1080 video in a 1920x1080 preset?
Should I be better off going with Aspect instead?

Many thanks in advance :)

[David Newman]

1.) Yes. The converted frame from V1E (and V1U) are progressive, now you can edit on a progressive timeline.

2) It is true Prospect HD doesn't ship with a 1440x1080 preset, yet it only takes 30 seconds to make one in Premiere. If you are not using an AJA card, than a 1440x1080 mode in Prospect HD works fine -- even Aspect HD preset file work. You can mix 1920 and 1440 media without issue. So the choice is yours. My thinking, if you are doing feature work, upres on capture, otherwise stay in 1440.

[Jon Shohet]

Thank you David so much.
Still not sure I understand about up-scaling.
If I would eventually intend to export a finished master of 720x576 for SD-DVD, wouldn't I be better not rescaling twice?
Wouldn't converting from 1440 to 1920 mean adding interpolated pixels?
Is there a difference between converting in HDLink to 1920x1080 and between just using 1440x1080 clips in a 1920 preset?

[David Newman]

If you intended output is SD, then 1440 vs 1920 does not matter. Using 1440 in a 1920 preset is fine. Upscaling in HDLink is slower on conversion, upscaling during playback will reduce some multi-stream performance. You best choice for mastering to SD is create a 1440x1080 preset.