Pre-Purchase Questions

[Chris Harding]

Hi Rick

I did a test a while back and shot in all 6 formats that my Panasonic offered and then also shot the same subject in SD (same camera) Just for fun I also took two formats (1920x1080 50i and 25P) and transcoded them to HDV MPEG2.

Now I took ALL the clips and randomly rendered them in Sony Vegas down to an SD MPEG2 clip and then dropped them onto a DVD....On an LCD TV I showed family and friends the clips and asked them to pick out what was good and what was bad ...the only one they could isolate that they felt was of lower quality was the SD file ...they certainly had no idea which format was better or worse but it did show that despite losses you still get a better SD DVD result if you edit in native format...I watched one of my weddings at a brides house (their DVD player was acting up) and the SD DVD played onto a 55" big screen TV blew me away.... Definately shoot in the cameras native format then you will have HD and SD choices...I don't think uprezzing is much of an option even if SD footage is really good!!

My renders also didn't go thru the fancy multiple render that TMPGenc has to go thru ..Just 1920x1080 on the timeline and render straight out to MPEG2 ready for a DVD...Check the quick way and the results too..it's certainly good enough for my clients so it might also surprise you??

Chris

[Eric Olson]

Originally Posted by Rick Miller

If I get the EA50, can I somehow shoot in HD, then downconvert before the edit? That way I have an HD quality copy of all my raw footage (like I do with my FX-1 on the HD tapes).

It is very reasonable to downconvert HD to SD before editing. Then your motion graphics will be rendered in SD and won't need to be downconverted.

Early HD cameras such as the HVX200 were essentially upscaled SD cameras and worked well in SD mode. Since the EA50 has a large 16MP sensor, even if you record in SD there is significant downconverting going on in camera. As Chris observed, the in-camera downconversion to SD is not that good.

While TMPGenc doesn't employ such sophisticated algorithms as the HD to SD Best Methods link you posted earlier, it still works well. Note that many NLEs also use good downconverting algorithms when run on GPU accelerated hardware. The other advantage of TMPGenc is high-quality 2-pass DVD encoding. Two-pass encoding makes a noticeable quality improvement when fitting 2 or 3 hours of video on a single sided DVD. For programs less than an hour, there is little if any difference.