EA-50 at 50P and SD DVD's

[Chris Harding]

Hi Guys

I'm interested to know how people shooting at 1080 50P are making SD-DVD's for clients since SD does not support 50P???

If you render 50P footage out to a 720x576 MPEG2 file ready for DVD every 2nd frame is thrown away and result doesn't look good at all. If you shoot at 1080 25P then all the progressive frames are used in the MPEG2 SD file but motion then becomes an issue.

Are you rendering your 50P timelines back to 50i when making the SD file or staying progressive and just losing every second frame?

Chris

[Paul Wood]

Chris,
I consistently shoot at 50p on my NX70 - drop into a 25p timeline (in FCPX) and produce DVDs with no issues - I also use the FS100, and depending on the shoot, may use 50p or 60p using the same workflow.

This gives me the chance to conform any footage I want to to half speed, and I don't see many motion issues - examples include events such as 15th birthdays, and outside footage of dressage,horses etc.

Give it a try!

[Ron Evans]

Chris if the project setup is an interlaced project it will just take a field from the full frame as if it was an interlaced source and motion will be the same. Temporal motion for 50/60P and 50i/60i is the same just interlace records fields not full frames. What NLE do you use and with what project settings? I mix 60i ( NX5U, XR500 )and 60p ( CX700 and NX30U) on a 60i timeline using EDius with no problems. Also works the same way with Vegas. I always use TMPGenc for encodes.

Ron Evans

[Chris Harding]

Thanks Guys

I was actually doing an enquiry for Chris Hewitt and yes we both use Sony Vegas. The workaround staying completely progressive is to set the project properties to 1920x1080 25P (Version 10 doesn't have 25P so I just use the 24P preset and change the frame rate to 25 (PAL) instead of 23.99 ??

If you drop the 50P footage onto the 25P timeline and then select all the media and disable resample it works pretty well.

Ron? are you saying that due to 50i and 50p being similar one can drop the 50P footage onto a 50i timeline ( I suspect setting deinterlace to "none") ... Would you still have to disable resample for all the media so it doesn't try to blend frames or not?

Chris

[Ron Evans]

Yes just use progressive file in an interlace project. Make sure Vegas doesn't change the project properties to match the progressive file if you are running Vegas 12. All my experience of course is NTSC but it should work the same in PAL. Most of my editing is in Edius and there I export a HQ file for TMPGenc to scale and encode much better than either Edius from the timeline and a lot better than Vegas or Premiere. I think for Vegas you would use the best export setting and 2 pass encode. Not sure about the resample.

Ron Evans

[Chris Harding]

Thanks Ron

Currently I also mix the EA-50 footage on an interlaced timeline with my GoPro 25P footage and it works pretty well so I'll try that ... I think the "disable resample" was to make sure that Vegas doesn't try to blend frames according to sources.

Just a small point with DVD's?? I can render my file to either a progressive or interlaced MPEG2 and obviously DVD's in a player with a flat screen LCD TV have no problems. Am I right in assuming that the DVD might not work if the player is still connected to an old CRT TV?? Our analogue TV signal here no longer exist but there still are a few old CRT TV's out there and people are using a set top box so they can receive digital signals. I'm pretty sure most clients would have a digital TV by now!

Chris

[Ron Evans]

I think DVD's would best be interlaced. I think the spec is interlaced 50i and 60i or 24p. All my DVD's are interlaced. The players will deinterlace and upscale for LCD and plasma.

Ron Evans

[Chris Harding]

Hi Ron

That's the way I have always done them anyway so I think I will stick with that too. I'm a firm believer in Murphy's Law " If it ain't broke don't fix it"

Much appreciated

Chris