Best Sequence settings for DVD from HD & SD source

[Travis Wheaton]

G'day,

I am cutting my sister's wedding, destined for DVD, for which I used a Panny TM900 (HD) and Canon MVX430 (SD) as a static B camera.

Am I better off creating a HD sequence, and upsizing the SD footage, for it to then be compressed down to DVD quality...

Or should I use SD sequence settings, scaling down the HD footage, and being "native" size for the DVD?

Which will produce the best results?

Thanks very much


Travis

[Eric Olson]

Originally Posted by Travis Wheaton

I am cutting my sister's wedding, destined for DVD, for which I used a Panny TM900 (HD) and Canon MVX430 (SD) as a static B camera.

Here is one approach:

1. Load the TM900 footage into your NLE.
2. Digitally zoom, pan and crop the TM900 footage.
3. Render as widescreen DV-PAL format.
4. Start a multicamera project.
5. Cut the MVX430 footage with the DV-PAL footage created above.

The advantage to downconverting the TM900 to make it DV-PAL before beginning the multicamera edit is first, that you can do quite a bit of digital enhancement to the TM900 footage while downconverting, and second, that the subsequent multicam edit will be more responsive which allows for precice transitions and color grading.

[Travis Wheaton]

Thanks for the feedback, Eric!

As I haven't used multicam sequences before, I wont jump into that workflow at this point, though I'm certainly interested in learning how to use multicam. (Also, as my HD footage wasn't recorded in 1 continuous block, I'm not sure how easy it will be to marry the timecodes together.)

I have read that the correct Sequence frame size settings for a widescreen DVD is CCIR 601 / DV PAL (5:4) with PAL CCIR 601 pixels, and ticked the anamorphic 16:9 box. Looks like both lots of footage maintains its correct aspect.


Thanks again for your help. As I've said, although I am a film school graduate, we only learned the basics there, and I sadly haven't had any industry experience to hone these concepts. I really do appreciate the assistance.


Travis