HD to SD conversion - loss of quality!
 

I know that this has been discussed somewhere else but would like to dedicate a thread for this rather worrying problem.

I'm shooting with the EX1 with the 1080 50i format. The picture, needless to say is incredible (when seen via component out from camera directly to a LCD panel). However when I downconvert via pc to a SD DVD, the loss of quality is severe - the final SD DVD is worse than the DVD's produced from footage shot on a 4:3 SD Sony DSR-300.

I'm at the moment using PPro CS3 bundled with Matrox Axio LE which has been lent to me. I'm also interested in FCP with an octa-core Mac. I had been given a worflow to try and avoid this loss of quality but it's not enough. I want to produce same quality SD DVD's like I used to produce.

Am I asking too much? I remember when I had switched on to DVCAM 10 years ago, the edited material downconverted to VHS was much better than when I used to shoot directly with S-VHS cameras. It seems that this does not hold for the HD - SD conversion.

What is everyone doing? Are you losing quality? Have you found out a solution? The problem, in my opinion is so great, that I'm tempted to switch again to shooting with the DSR-300. I cannot give my clients such SD work. Can anyone help me out of this dilemma pls?

Brian, please upload a few seconds of your native HD footage. I will downconvert it to SD-DVD with Sony Vegas and mail it back to you as soon as possible.

are you ingesting the video 1 to 1 or 2 to 1 or hopefully not DV 25. Also are you editing it in its raw HD form or editing it in SD?? I've always been told shoot HD edit HD then convert to SD.

The only good way to do it i've found is to convert through SDI.. It looks better when converting with just adding HD material in the SD timeline but the movement is choppy and flickery.

I second Michael - shoot HD, edit HD, keep yo HD master; render out to SD when needed. At least from Vegas, the SD otput quality leaves nothing to complain about.

John I did not quite understand "are you ingesting the video 1 to 1 or 2 to 1 or hopefully not DV 25". I'm doing the following:

opening a project as: Matrox HD MPEG2 I Frame 50i

editing HD material (1080 50i)

then exporting finished edit as movie (having the following settings: PAL Matrox MPEG2 I Frame / Aspect Ratio set to 1.422 (so that 4:3 is changed to 16:9)

This will quickly render a widescreenPAL version from the HD timeline

Then I open a Matrox SD widescreen PAL project and import this movie and put it in a new sequence.

This sequence is then exported to Encore with SD DVD settings .

The end result is still producing a soft looking DVD - as if i did not focus well!

By the way, I need to do the same project both in HD and in SD - that is why I'm editing on a HD timeline and then exporting to SD.

Oyvind when you say "convert thru SDI" - do you mean convert footage to SD from SDI output? But then you will not be able to output to HD as well is it?

Michael will try to e-mail you a few secs.

Alright, mail to:
mann.michael@online.de