Best way to shoot and export to SD

[Kent Nguyen]

Dear pros

I recently have some projects to be done in SD. Just don't know the best way to do it with my EX1. Has any one experienced this? I tried record in 1080sp and HQ then export the clips in NTSC squeezed mode with XD brownser 2.0. Honestly none of them looks good

[Doug Jensen]

Are you doing the editing yourself? If so, shoot in HD and edit with an SD timeline on your NLE. That's how I used do all my DVDs with Final Cut Pro and the results looked great. It's all a matter of having the right workflow and settings. You might find this page helpful. http://www.vortexmedia.com/XDCAM_UPDATES.html

Or you can do it the way I do it now and that is to shoot in HD, edit in HD, and then use Compressor to create an SD version for DVD. That looks good too, but it also gives me an edited HD master in case I ever need it.

[Ilya Spektor]

Originally Posted by Kent Nguyen

Dear pros

I recently have some projects to be done in SD. Just don't know the best way to do it with my EX1. Has any one experienced this? I tried record in 1080sp and HQ then export the clips in NTSC squeezed mode with XD browser 2.0. Honestly none of them looks good

If your project has to be delivered as a DVD, I'd shoot 720p60 or 720p30, edit it on a 720p timeline, render it to HQ .avi file, then bring it to your DVD authoring program...

[Doug Jensen]

He might think he only needs a DVD today, but can he be sure the raw footage he shoots won't have more value to him in the future if it is shot at full HD 1920x1080 instead of medium definition 720P?

I shoot everything at 1920x1080 (except for slow-mo) just to keep all my options open in the future. Some people think 720 provides better results for SD, but I have found that is not the case and I've never had anyone prove to me with a side-by-side comparison that 720 results were better. It's a myth, or else someone has the wrong workflow that makes it seem that way.

[Mark Williams]

Shoot 720p60. Edit with project settings for 1280 x 720 and 30fps. Export lossless .avi file (Edius). Encode to mpeg2 using Tmpge4 SD-DVD settings in photos below. Use CBR if under 1 hour and VBR is over an hour. Author in DVDlab Pro.

[Kent Nguyen]

Wow, thank alot, guys. I am kind of lazy to convert the sony footages to HD then again re-render it in SD timeline. But get it to edit in HD then squeeze it to DVD authoring is an option. I just had a little problem with this method in the past with footages shot with my 5D MII. But this might be different with EX1.

BTW I edit my video in MC5.

Again, great inputs. Thanks

Kent.

[Eric Olson]

Originally Posted by Kent Nguyen

I tried record in 1080sp and HQ then export the clips in NTSC squeezed mode with XD brownser 2.0. Honestly none of them looks good

If you already have a smooth EX1 HD workflow, I would suggest keeping it. Take your HD render and drop it into TMPGENC or another high quality DVD mastering program and you're done.

[Doug Jensen]

Originally Posted by Mark Williams

Shoot 720p60. .

And then what are you going to do if the client wants a full 1920x1080 version a year from now? Or what if you captured some great footage during the project that you want to sell as stock or use it in a 1920x1080 production of your own some day? Now you've got substandard materials to work with, even though you had the capability to shoot it right in the first place. There's no valid argument I can think of for not shooting 1920x1080 100% of the time if you have a camera that can do it.

[Garrett Low]

I shoot everything 1080, edit through in HD. I use Cineform so it's an easy conversion to SD and keep the quality level up. I output an HD AVI and when I have to deliver on DVD I use Cineform to convert to HD as it does a better job of scaling than most other programs. I then create a DVD compliant MPEG2 file so my authoring program doesn't rerender.

Quality level ends up very high and on most of my projects I end up also producing BR's and if I don't it always gives me the option to later.

Unless the contract required it I wouldn't shoot in anything other than 1920x1080 with the EX cams.

As always that's just my way of doing things and others may have a different approach.

-Garrett

[Mark Williams]

In my experience and others 1080p does not downsize for SD-DVD as well as 720p does. Also, if your camera only shoots 30fps in 1080p then you can not get good slow-motion like with 720p60 in a 30fps timeline. When shooting for stock I usually shoot both 1080p30 and 720p60 when good slow-mo is needed.

1080 in my opinion is not the "ultimate" format everyone should use. It depends on what the end product may be. In special situations I have up-rezed 720p with a little tweaking and it looks just fine. If you follow the logic of always shooting in the highest HD format then maybe we should all be using 4k cams.

[Alister Chapman]

All you need to do is anti-aliase the 1080 footage before down converting, maybe with 3 pixel blur and you'll get fantastic SD. If you just do a straight down convert you run the risk of getting aliasing as your starting off with too much resolution. A good down conversion algorithm should do this anyway, but not all do.

[Zoran Vincic]

I've found that I get the best results shooting in 720 50p (PAL land), editing in 720 50p sequence and exporting directly to SD (either to 25p or 50i, depending on the destination) with Premiere Pro and CUDA supported card (I use GTX570).

I've tried editing the 720 material in SD sequence and that gave me aliasing when it's downconverted to SD.

And everything I wrote above I tried with 1080 both 25p and 50i. The 720p always looked the best to me.

[Olof Ekbergh]

I find doing everything in 1080 I or p, depending on how it was shot, then I export a ProRes and use Bitvice to make the audio and video files for DVDs to be the cleanest way to go.

I use either M100 or FCPX for all my editing now. This works fine with FCP (I still have some legacy projects in 7) or AP as well.

If I have slomo in 720 I upres it in the timeline M100 does this on the fly.

Bitvice is fantastic. It is from innobits.com - It is all about visions.

[Les Wilson]

Just to pile on, I spent an unreasonable amount of time experimenting and pixel peeping with variations of the various workflows. I found that shooting in 1080, editing in 1080 and exporting in 1080 then running it through compressor was as good looking as anything else and the easiest workflow. It may not be the case with other cameras but it is with that stellar EX1 image.

Think about it in terms of film. Film was the highest quality version of your film. That's what you store and make copies from be it VHS, 16mm or whatever. So shoot your stuff in the highest quality you can and make down-rez copies from it.

[Eric Olson]

Originally Posted by Doug Jensen

There's no valid argument I can think of for not shooting 1920x1080 100% of the time if you have a camera that can do it.

I expect the argument against 1920x1080 is that some people don't like working with interlaced video.

The frame rates of 24p and 30p are suitable for different applications than 60i and 60p. In particular, neither 1080p24 nor 1080p30 are reasonable alternatives to 720p60. The only possible alternative is 1080i60. Now 1080i60 is 12.5 percent more data than 720p60, but interlaced requires additional filtering to prevent interline twitter. This means the information content of both 720p60 and 1080i60 are about the same. In particular, it is mostly a matter of personal preference which mode to shoot in.

While an SD downconvert of similar quality can be obtained from either 1080i60 or 720p60 source, in practice, many workflows seem to work better with 720p60 source.