Using After Effects to get deinterlaced SD from HDV?

[Jamie Roberts]

Hi all

I have recently bought a HDR-FX1e camcorder and have been messing about with the video to figure out the best way of working with it. Rather than use the cameras onboard down conversion, I have captured some video as HDV and have been looking at how best to deinterlace. I prefer to work with deinterlaced vid and usually edit in Sony vegas 7. I also have after effects7. I also think I might like to edit in SD at this stage as I am a 'film look' buff and tend to render out several versions using huffy codec in attempting to get the best look.

I tried a process today using AE that I have used before with SD and would like some feedback in regard to whether I am needlessly processing vid I dont need to etc in order to get good quality deinterlaced SD or if theres other ways to acheive the same? Basically I imported two versions of the HDV file into AE, intepreted one as upper field and one as lower field. I put the upper field file on top with opacity at 50%. I then rendered out to a huffy file using the 'pal widescreen resize template' in the AE render settings option. I rendered out a short file and must say I think it looks great!

I guess I am wondering if its ok to do the same thing with a mpg2 file that was ok with an avi file? Another thought is editing as HD project in vegas using the 'blend deinterlace' option in vegas before rendering out in huffy and then completing color correction etc as a SD project. What are other users doing? Would love to hear some 'food for though'!

Excuse my post if its 'newbie' but I am new to HD and am trying to learn a few 'tricks of the trade'!!

cheers

Jamie