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!

I think the problem comes when you try and go from an HD progressive format to an SD interlaced format. In my opinion if you shoot HD progressive and then go straight to MPEG-2 (for DVD) I think it might stay progressive so you won't have any major issues. If you tried to go from and HD timeline to DV (720x480 interlaced) then you'd have a problem using Compressor. At least that's been my experience.

Still trying to figure this all out. (at least I feel like I'm making some good headway!)

Seems logical to me - previously we've done the 'edit HD > then export to DVCPRO HD 720p then go to Compressor' route - but if we are making SD DVDs that will be seen on computer monitors or LCD screens, not CRT, there's no deinterlacing issue so can just go straight to Compressor, to a progressive mpeg2 setting, I guess. What do others think? We've yet to actually test this.

How can we accurately tell what monitor people are going to watch a DVD on?

In the case of the DVD we're about to make, by asking the client who'll be using it in accompanied training situations, in quality hotels - so anticipate LCDs.

Makes sense, Mark.

I was thinking of public use (which is our case).
It's a dilemma because some will have one, and some the other - but most probably couldn't tell you which they have!

I "think" this is a true statement:

"Watching the DVD on a tube (CRT) television = produce interlaced DVD

Otherwise, you're safe producing a progressive DVD. The only advantage with interlaced is smoother motion. For example, if you have a text crawl at the bottom of the screen (tough to do in progressive format)

The only question I have is about those progressive DVD players that came out a while back. Remember those? Does that mean that the older DVD players couldn't display progressive video? What about computer's? (Apple Quicktime and Windows Media Player) Can computers display progressive DVD's? I'm guessing they can.

Yes they can.

Progressive is the 'natural' state of things.

Interlacing is a clever, interesting but redundant workaround stemming from a technical limitation of early Cathode Ray technology. In the world of Plasma, LCD, projection, computers and mobile technology, it is anathema and an abomination. It is redundant and unhelpful on all but old cathode ray TV sets.

What you appear to gain in motion, you lose in resolution. Getting rid of interlacing robs you of 25% of your vertical resolution in a best-case scenario, or if you leave it until display time, it's 50% on a lot of cheaper displays.

How 50i and 60i got into the nomenclature of HD is a disappointing victory of marketing over common sense, as nobody I've challenged (including Sony, Panasonic et al) can tell me of a native HD display that uses native interlacing.

So it sounds like progressive is the way to go for DVD (and web for that matter).

My issue is that the darn local broadcasters are still only accepting commercials in DV format, so that means interlaced. (good think I've figured out progressive to interlaced AfterEffects work around that looks decent)

Progressive renders at almost twice the speed of interlaced. (at least in AfterEffects)