Shoot in SD?

[Scott Brooks]

I'm considering purchasing the AX2000 ... possibly two of them.

Is there a big difference in the final quality of the DVD when you've shot your project in the AVCHD format and converted it to SD ... as opposed to just shooting in SD to begin with?

Maybe we could tell but it wouldn't be large enough for the client?

Thanks -

[Daniel Paquin]

Originally Posted by Scott Brooks

Is there a big difference in the final quality of the DVD when you've shot your project in the AVCHD format and converted it to SD ... as opposed to just shooting in SD to begin with?

Hello Scott,

I can only speak for the NX5U and I hope my comments will help.

In the end what are you going to do ? Are you going to perform video editing ?

If so, from my experience with AVCHD and the MPEG-2 file created by the NX5U I would say when performing video editing it is better to use AVCHD and perform a down convert to SD.

If you do not need to do video editing, using a tool like Toast Titanium - with "Never Encode" as an option will create a DVD that will have an image of an excellent quality.

I am a MAC User and found the transcoding of MPEG-2 file for video editing in Final Cut will not give you an image that will be of an equal quality for a DVD produced with Toast Titanium.

[Scott Brooks]

Hi Daniel ...

Yes, I'll be editing ... mostly weddings and stage productions. I also edit on FCP, but currently only have version 6.06.

I've never produced a final product in anything but SD. Sometimes it feels like we're more worried about the quality (because we KNOW it can be better) than the customer. I didn't know if it was a definite increase in quality.

Thank you for your thoughts.

[Daniel Paquin]

Lately, I've done two year end show with FinalCut Pro using AVCHD files as input.

I've used log and transfer with ProRess 422 (LT) as parameter for the files to be re-encoded in a format FCP will digest.

In shooting with two cameras the only way for me to perform multicam was to use ProRes 422 (LT). I've tried ProRes 422 and the system kept stopping "unlimited rt". The video files are way too big.

In the documentation, it says the quality is the same for LT then non LT.

Compressor seems to do a good job in performing down convert to SD. However, you sure need a lot of disk space.

Then to come back to your question, I would then shoot in HD and use Compressor to perform down convert to SD. Using the MPEG-2 files was really not the way to go.