downconverting for broadcast
 

I am working for a big NBC affiliate station in WPB Fl and they want me to shoot some stories on the Canon A1 hdv camera . They want to have SD and also a 720 P for a test with their new HD broadcast. so do I do this in Final cut pro and will the results be better than my JVC 5000 with SD or should I use both cams and give them two diiferent looks ?

Doug

I don't know much about FCP but I think you might be missing the point of the test. I think they want to be able to shoot HD and then downcovert the HD to SD to compare the brodacast of both. There wouldn't be much point to shooting with two cameras.

I use AspectHD which creates a Cineform AVI that downcoverts to SD with amazing quality. I'm guessing that's what they really want to know. Can they shoot HD and get as good or better SD than they get now.

You should be able to do this with FCP. Whether this will give the best looking results or not is another matter. The few examples I tried it on with the XL=H1 looked awful but that may just be that SD looks awful when seen within moments of HD.

Another option (on the XL-H1 at least) is to capture twice: once in HD and once in SD using the camera's built in down converter. Don't know if that is available on the A1 and no guarantee that it will give better results than FCP but I would think it would be worth trying it both ways if you can.

JVC 5000 is a nice camera, but I'm pretty convinced you're going to get a better image out of the A1 for SD.

Personally I would shoot the whole lot in HDV, edit on an HDV timeline...

How do they want the finished productions delivered? HD or tape?

Thats interesting that they want 720p. I thought all NBC stations were 1080i.

Be carefull when you create the 720p video. Chances are if you are shooting 60i then they will want the 720p to be 720p 60p. Usually when you deinterlace or scale down you will end up with 720p 30p which may not look good to them. You will have to bob the fields and turn the 60 fields into 60 frames to give you a 720p 60p video.

Why not just shoot and take the cam to their live truck or their station and feed them, let them do the conversions on their end or downconvert to SD in the cam.

thank you for all suggestions
 

Well I wilshoot on Hd and they want it rolled off to regular SD on the DVC Pro 50. So I will do that right from the Mac Pro to component DVC Pro 50 Deck.
They broadcast in 720 p dont ask me why thats what they have. They are not at this time running Hd tape only broadcasting their news in HD and SD .

Doug T

You can playback from the camera downconvert into their SD deck, so that will be quick. But 720p?

If you edit in hdv in FCP, you can simultaneously output from Compressor's advanced conversion into sd NTSC and into a variety of 720p formats -- it will take a while though -- I don't think that's the right solution speed-wise for a news product. I'm not sure, but I think you're looking at render times no matter what to get 720p from the Canon? Maybe shoot 30f?

Are they going VJ or what? I hate to say it but the JVC HD250 would be better for a 720p station.