Yes, I think so Leonard. The video behind my graphics always seemed to look pretty good, but then I never really looked at it that closely.

I have always found Bitvice much better than Compressor for DVDs. My current tests from HD to SD and then to mpeg2 - showed sharp text and nice sharp moving video from 1080p 30fps (down to 480i for DVD) from bitvice, where compressor on its best settings soften my text and added jaggies and soften my video to unacceptable levels. Plus Bitvice has great noise reduction that does not soften the image unlike most programs.

Good advice Greg. But BitVise is only a MPEG-2 encoder. It doesn't encode to any other formats. Looks to be a great product though, and they have a free demo you can download.

I'd say its more DVD Studio thats the problem. The burning is where we are getting aliasing and the dreaded jaggies!

Anyone had any luck with Encore?? I might give BitVise a go!

Mitchell,
If downconverting graphics is the big problem, why not cut in HD until you are ready to do your final graphics, then downcovert and finish in SD. Of course that's only relevent for something that doesn't need an HD version at all.

Our projects are so graphics intensive I might as well do the whole thing in SD.

I'm still not convinced there's a good solution. I've just put off testing until our equipment finally arrives....THIS WEEK!! (Tuesday to be exact)

It's going to be a VERY busy week though. Brand new camera, brand new 35mm adapter, old-dog cameraman who hasn't shot with an adapter before, first shoot on Friday afternoon. (cross your fingers)

I was disappointed with the final SD output from the EX3. Over Christmas I shot some family footage using both the Sony EX3 in 1440x1080, and with the Canon XH A1 using SD mode. When I put the two editied sequences onto a standard DVD the Sony footage stood head and shoulders above the Canon SD footage.

When I first started out as a stills photographer I was given the advice, buy a box of 10x8 B/W paper and use it all up in the darkroom, by sheet 45 you will know almost every thing about printing, by sheet 95 you will have perfected the technique. The same holds true for creating DVDs, buy a 100 stack of DVD + and burn short clips - 5 min max duration, and try every permutation. So far I have used up 55 discs and am finding subtle differences in the various settings. Keep notes of the settings being used. By disc 100 I hope the phone will be ringing from Steven Spielberg

Fingers definitely crossed for you Mitchell - you certainly are an optimist!

Good luck!

Hi greg, are you shooting in 60p, i have bitevice buy seem to find to no good, can youu let me know your bite vice settings,

rob.

Stop it Andy! You're not helping! :)

Well Mitchell, it took me a couple of months to get fluent with the EX1 - let alone an adaptor! (But then, I'm a 49'er . . . REALLY old)!

I hope you can get plenty of practice between the EX3's arrival tomorrow and the shoot on Friday afternoon!

Please let us know how you get on with it (them).

You deserve a medal for bravery Mitchell. I would have a spare camera with you ....... just in case

Hahaha. Good idea.

Well it's been a VERY busy last couple of weeks, but I thought I'd report back on my recent experience with HD to SD downconversion. I edit my 30-second commercials in AfterEffects because I find it easier to use for complicated multi-layered projects with lots of keyframes, so this won't apply if you edit in Final Cut Pro. The final rendered file was used to play back in Final Cut Pro to send duplicates to the broadcasters.

I shot this project entirely in 1080 30P. I imported everything using XDCAM Transfer. I then imported it into AfterEffects and edited the project using a 1080p (29.97) timeline. When I was finished here's what I had to do:

1. Edit the HD project as normal in AfterEffects and Save
2. Duplicate the AE Project and name one file HD and other SD (I like to be organized)
3. Open the new project named SD
4. Choose File>Remove Unused footage to remove all the footage not used in the project (this narrows down your footage to only the clips you ended up using in the project)
5. One by one, select each piece of video used in the project and type "Apple-F" to Interpret the footage.
6. Change the Separate Fields to "Lower" for each piece of footage used in the project (DV footage is always lower field dominant)
7. Create a new Composition that's the size of your SD format. In my case I chose standard DV (720x480 with non-square pixels).
8. Render using standard DV settings (720x480, DV codec, Lower Field First, etc...)

This worked great! All my graphics were clear and clean just like if I had edited the project in SD to begin with. The "key" was to Interpret the footage so that AfterEffects treated it as Interlaced (i) instead of Progressive (p). Before I did this, the rendered file had lots of horrible looking horizontal lines whenever I would fade between two pieces of footage. Interpreting the footage first fixed the problem (The AfterEffects help menu is a great asset!)

I'm wondering if I should just shoot future projects in interlaced mode (1080 60i) to make things easier in the future?

Next hurdle is to figure out how to do the same thing in Final Cut Pro.

Hi,

Interesting findings!

The ongoing debate about downconversion will go on longer I am sure.

I recently shot a music video in 720 25p with a shutter speed of 1/50. I was not looking forward to the downconversion as I knew the project would include a hell of a lot of subject movement. As for camera movement I am learning to shoot completely differently for progressive footage!

However the downconversion has been pretty damn good. Hardly any jaggies and the stuttery movement is not noticeable at all, however this is due to the right shutter settings and learning what you can and can't do with the camera in progressive mode.

There are some slight artifacts but I'm only seeing them coz I'm really searching for them. Others that have watched it on DVD can't see anything.

All I am doing is exporting to Compressor straight from the HD timeline to the 90 min DVD best quality setting.

I have used the frame controls with some anti-aliasing on but not sure if it makes much difference.

I am very picky about picture quality and therefore to get this good a result, I'm over the moon. Maybe you guys are even pickier, be interesting to swap some footage to see if all our expectations match!