HDV to DVCPRO50?
 

I was wondering if anyone has tried taking HDV footage and converting it to DVCPRO50? Any ideas on a work flow for this?

Thanks

Haven't tried it, but it would be easy enough if you had a DVCPRO-50 codec and a proper HD->SD scaler (like the one built-in to AspectHD). I'm not sure why you'd want to go to DVCPRO-50 though... it would be much more advantageous to go to pure uncompressed 4:4:4 SD.

I'm of the mind that you should capture and edit all HDV projects in HD, trying to restore as much of colourspace as possible and de-artifact in the HD stream, and then do all your down-conversion from an HD master.

Conversion to any DVCPRO codec, be it HD or 50, will simply result in a loss of resolution and more compression artifacts. That's okay when you're looking at delivery - but if you're talking about an editing work flow you're just degrading your image.

-Steve

Ok, so you're saying go from HDV to uncompressed SD, edit away, and then distribute according (dub in what ever format I need)....

So how do I go from HDV to 4:4:4 SD? Is this an option in Aspect HD? I would just capture and Aspect would convert on the fly?

Mostly I'm saying edit HDV (especially if you have AspectHD). Editing uncompressed SD is probably harder on your system.

At any rate:
To go from HDV to 4:4:4 SD - there are tons of ways to do it, and the trick is managing the fields. With AspectHD you simply "export->movie" and set the resolution to 720x480. If you then select an uncompressed/lossless codec, you'll end up with 4:4:4. Other codecs, i.e., DVCPRO-HD, Cineform, will discard some of the colour information and produce only 4:2:2.

Since you're discussing DVCPRO codecs though, I'm betting you've got a MAC. In which case, I'm unqualified for specific software advice... I'm a PC guy, operating PPro 1.5.1 and AspectHD - and [gloat]my workflow is painless![/gloat]

-Steve

lol.....

well, truth be told, at my main gig I use PPro, but I just picked up a side job that is FCP. Good guess. :)

Next question... so I've edited HDV on my pc, used AspectHD to kick out a full res clip. Is the only way to preserve a 4:4:4 master is to keep the clip on my hard drive? Because once I firewire it to a dvcam, or dvcpro deck I'm back to 4:2:2, right?

The only way to preserve a 4:4:4 SD clips it to keep it in that uncompressed/lossless format. Of course, you can backup that file as data on DVD-ROMs (if it's too big, split it up with RAR files), but you won't be able to play it back on a conventional DVD player or deck that uses a specific codec.

Basically, I just keep an HD Cineform master. When I'm converting to DVD, I simply export from HD to 4:4:4 uncompressed SD, check the file, and compress my DVD from that. Similarly, if I was going to DVCPRO-50, miniDV, or any other SD format, I'd simply do that by compressing the 4:4:4 SD master - thereby ensuring the compressor has optimal SD data to work with.

-Steve

thanks! your imput has cleared up a lot for me (and I'm sure a couple others)...