Best way to make 1080i into 720p

[Trevor Allin]

Hi

I took about 3 hours of 1080i hdv which I need to sit on a 720p time line for a SD DVD final destination.

Anyone know what the best method of down converting the 1080i is? Is there a way of doing it without recompressing the whole thing?

I am using Final Cut Pro.

Thanks

Trevor

[Trevor Allin]

Related question.

Is converting from 1080 interlaced to 720 progessive and then burning an interlaced dvd the right way to go?

2/3's of my footage is 720p 1/3 is 1080i.

Thanks.

[Tim Dashwood]

Is your timeline 720P30, 25 or 24?

This process should be quite easy, but I need to know all of the format details. What your 1080i shot in normal 60i mode? Did you digitize natively with HDV codec or AIC?

[Trevor Allin]

Hi Tim

The 720 is 25p and the 1080 is 50i. Both were captured as hdv.

Thanks

Trevor

[Tim Dashwood]

Originally Posted by Trevor Allin

Hi Tim

The 720 is 25p and the 1080 is 50i. Both were captured as hdv.

Thanks

Trevor

That's great. This should be easy then, much easier than mixing 1080i60 and 720P24.

If you just edit your 1080i source into your 720P HDV sequence FCP will attempt to render it every time. That will work, but is undesirable.

Instead I would recommend using Media Manager to cross-convert your 720P25 media to 1080/25PsF, and then edit everything in a 1080i50 sequence.
This way your 1080i50 will still have the interlaced look, and your 720P will still have it's original look.

If you would like to de-interlace your 1080i50 so that it all looks similar you could go the other direction (as you indicated you planned on) and then apply a de-interlace filter to the interlaced material after you are finished.
If you shot the 1080i on a Z1 in 25CF mode, then that won't even be necessary and editing in 720P25 will be ideal.

I'm not sure how well recompressing native HDV into HDV again will work, so I would officially recommend transcoding ALL of your media in both formats to Apple Intermediate Codec (at either 720P or 1080i - your choice.) Media manager will automatically resize the video and should maintain the source frame rate (which is 25 in both cases.)


Either way, just select all of the clips you need to convert in the bin. CTRL-Click (right-click) and select Media Manager.
Select Recompress and choose your codec (HDV or AIC 1080i50, 720P30 - don't worry about the AIC preset saying 720P30, it will maintain the original frame rate at 25fps in both cases.)

[Trevor Allin]

Hi Tim

As usual extremely helpful. Many thanks.

Trevor

[Daniel Stevenson]

Probably too late now but next time you could capture as DV, do your edit, then run media manager and recapture as HDV.

Very clean and simple and albeit a little fiddling here and there quite time efficient.

[Daniel Stevenson]

Sorry, just re read your question, ignore my post!