Hi Douglas thank you

It’s the FX1 PAL i got so if i set it to output to 1080i PAL this will give the same quality as the original footage once rendered out?

Thanks

Okay I did my own test. Edited a footage both in Vegas. I used the same footage. One used with the camera doing the conversion and the other using Vegas to convert it. I burned it to a dvd and played it on a good old fashion CRT tv. It looks the same. I am doing this as a hobby and majority of you are professionals so maybe its just me. I am not trying to question or diss you Mr Eagle or anyone here but I am just sharing infos and putting my contributions on these boards.

I guess both have pros and cons. Did I already mentioned how I don't like how Vegas didn't include the scene detection on HDV??

Thanks

Assuming you keep everything clean in your color correction, etc...yes, it will be the same.

Fred,
I didn't take your post as a dis...but I also can't see how anyone can possibly not see the difference.

http://www.vasst.com/streaming/HDV_downconvert.mpg is a single stream, standard def file at low resolution compared to avi. The difference is huge. The first half of the file is HD all the way til it's rendered to the mpg file, the second half was converted with the camera.
FWIW, my last name is "Spotted Eagle", not "Eagle." :-)

Was the digital zoom from the camera or or the NLE? I noticed the difference when you zoomed in to the duck.

Like the titling says, it's a digital zoom, performed by the NLE. However, you can see the artifacting immediately on the duck head in the camera convert file, long before the zoom occurs. It only becomes more visible in the zoom.

Based upon everything I've read in several forums I see absolutely no reason to let the camera downconvert your HDV footage. Just capture the HDV and get the best resolution possible and then and only then start messing with it. Of course this assumes your original footage is not 24p or 25p or something like that. I have the HDR-HC1 and two options - HDV M2T or downconverted AVI capture.

DSE - Would you agree for the most part on this or can you identify a situation where lettiing the camera down convert is the best option? ph

Well...If you're using FCP and don't have any scaling plugs...then I'd let the camera downconvert. FCP5 is better, but it's still not the greatest scaling tool out there...I haven't had an opportunity to play with my Avid Express HD yet to comment on whether that might be better as well.

I forgot to mention that I am using Sony Vegas 6.0c. With that certainly capturing the HDV first seems the best way to go. ph

Hello

why would anyone want to go from HD to SD? the benefit is?

Because there is no HD delivery method for the masses at this time. In a few months, yes. Today? No.

You mean the blue ray thing? But why don’t people just edit there footage then record it back to the camera? then just connect the camera to the TV and watch it.

Well....if the masses all had HDV cameras or decks, you're right. Why not just dupe a few thousand HDV tapes and send them to your friends?....
But the masses don't have HDV decks/players, so the currently most common means of delivering media is on DVD. And there is no way to deliver HD on a DVD to the masses right now. Therefore, a good recipe for downconverting HDV to SD is fairly important.

How is it that you're delivering HDV to clients?

Hi

i don’t deliver to clients i just use the camera for personal use and some fun stuff and effects. So you mean when you go from HD to SD this reduces the file size and quality or just the size and keeps the same quality?

The reduction is "Global"...

The idea of the tricks that are advised if you check some of the threads on converting HD/HDV to SD/DVD, is to minimise the amount of degredation to the SD final during the render process.

That's why Cineform CFHD format or Gearshift's proxies are so important. If you still manage to achieve less than desirable results with downconverting to SD while using either a CFHD or Gearshift proxy Vegas project... you need to double check the settings for the template you are rendering to.

For yourself: this may not be so over-ridingly important, but for others it's important they come to grips with understanding the workflow philosophy behind what may appear at first like a recipe for brown smelly cookies, rather than improved renderred video quality.

Hope you're getting to learn some stuff along the way though!!

Hi Steve

Yes I am learning slowly but it is taking me time there is so much to learn and when people don’t explain 24p 25p 50i 60i and this that and the other it makes it very difficult for me to understand what they are talking about. Before my fx1 i never did any editing effects at all or anything i just recorded and watched the normal footage back on the TV.

but this is a great site and with the right help i am getting there

Thanks

Jim,
FWIW, "explaining" 24p, 25p, 50i, 60i literally could take a book.

Anything with "p" after it is "progressive scan" which is the future of all television displays. Anything with an "i" after it is "Interlaced" which is the current standard. Your FX1 only shoots "i" although it has some progressive qualities in the CF modes.
The number represents frames per second.
As far as 'explaining' the look of all of the above, it would be much more beneficial for you to test these out yourself so that not only are you seeing the diff first hand, but so that you understand the process. (and so that someone doesn't need to write a novel)

I'm just about to take the HDV plunge (Sony HC1 or A1), and have been reading this thread with great interest.

I'm not a pro... and it does seem easier to have the camera downconvert if the quality is still good.. but there is one point that seems important to me that I haven't seen mentioned as an advantage of working in HDV. If in a years time (or whenever) HDV production is more possible, I may want to reissue in a HD delivery format. If I work in Vegas in HDV, as well as creating my SD DVD now I can print to tape the edited work in HDV. So when a HDV delivery mechanism is available, creating a HD DVD (for example) will be easier. If I work in camera downconverted DV, I can't see an easy way to do this. Yes I'd still have the original HDV files, and I'd have the veg files, so maybe I could recreate the edits but I'm not sure how. Is this a valid point, or am missing something?

It is this reason, looking to the future, that I am planning to edit HDV (using one of the recommended methods).

Mark

"I may want to reissue in a HD delivery format. If I work in Vegas in HDV, as well as creating my SD DVD... Yes I'd still have the original HDV files, and I'd have the veg files, so maybe I could recreate the edits but I'm not sure how. Is this a valid point, or am missing something?"

Mark what you would have to do is recepture the HDV tapes in their native MT2 format and switch out the DV files for the newly captured HDV files.

What would be beneficial would be to purchase GearShift from VASST.
You can then capture your video as Mt2 file (No in camera down conversion) then have GearShift render out a proxy video or Cineform Internediary codec and edit like normal in Vegas.
Then when you are ready to render, either render to standard DVD MPEG2 or have GearShift (Switch Gears) back to the original Mt2 files. Since you would have the original Mt2 files you can have Vegas and GearShift do this at any time down the road.

If you would rather, there is also Cineforms Connect HD, which will allow you to capture and convert on the fly to Cineforms Codec (keeping teh same resolution and color space as HDV, and thus, also avoiding having to capture and convert). However be warned, that the Cineform Interediary Codec is much larger than the original HDV of Proxy files.

Gearshift
 

Michael,

Thanks - I've downloaded Gearshift (and I don't even have my camcorder yet, ordering that today).

Mark

Mark, good luck. And. BTW can you post your findings when you have your camcorder. I don't have a HD camcorder yet (A1 in the next couple of months), so i was curious how various systems do with editing usig GearShift and Vegas.

I know about the workflow, from a lot of reading, and preperation to go HD.

Michael,

Yes, I'll post with how I got on after I've completed my first edit (or most likely when I need help with it!).

Mark

Gearshift troubles..
 

Well, I just tried Gearshift with a 45 second clip (148 MB m2t file). I told it to shift gears to create a proxy. It did 2 renders - the first created a 5.8 GB (!) avi file, the second created the DV proxy file (177 MB), which is what I was expecting. I don't understand why I got this first huge file. It says it is Sony YUV codec. Any ideas?

EDIT: Sorry, I think I see the problem now - under HD files something was set, rather than "none". Never mind.

Mark

Yup Mark, you go it. You probably had HD 1080-60i YUV selected under the HD Media dropdown which is the default. For anyone else reading this, if you only want a DV proxy, remember to change HD Media option to (none) and it won’t render that file anymore.

~jr

JR,

Thanks - got it.
Seeing that you are developer..... -) one other small problem, when I run Gearshift it is hard to see, like it is missing half its "skin". I sent you an email with an attachment. Any ideas?

Mark

Mark, Got your email. Oh my! GearShift is NAKED! I have never seen anything like that before. It certainly is missing its skin entirely. I’ll work with you off-line on this. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.

~jr

So, let me get this straight:

I capture .m2t files from the HDR-HC1 using Vegas. These are in HDV format.

I use Gearshift to create DV proxy files for editing in Vegas. This is to increase speed and keep things moving along.

The DV proxy files can be used to create a DVD in regular DV format using Architect.

Gearshift can then make a .m2t file of the final product, which Vegas can play back to the HDR-HC1, so I'll have an HDV master when bluray finally comes along.

The part I'm fuzzy on is the creating a DVD in regular DV format part. Plus, does Geareshift work with the Vegas DVD Platinum Edition?

Jason,

Almost but not quite. The proxies are for ease of edit, but you don't want to render to DVD from them. You do your edits on the proxy, when you are happy with it you "shift" back to the m2t files. You then render to DVD from these m2t files, you can also print back to the HD cam from these as well.

Mark

While you could use the DV proxy to print to DVD, you probably want to shift gears back to the M2T files and create the DVD MPEG2 from that. It will be slightly better quality.

Unfortunately, GearShift does not support Vegas Movie Studio because Movie Studio does not support the Vegas Script API that GearShift uses.

~jr

This thread saved me so much grief this week. I used Steve's settings for MPEG 2 compression with 2 pass VBR and it yielded tremendous results. All the other input was extremely useful as well. I'm burning DVDs of my brother's wedding that I shot on the FX1 and as my family is not yet in the world of HD they will be very pleased with these SD DVDs. Thanks to everyone on this thread. Good stuff.

Yes, I also just found this thread and it has been extremely helpful. How do you list all of the people on this forum in your credits!

I think this is what I am having trouble with. From the supplied Cineform codec I render straight to DVD architech and the quality doesn't look smooth. I'll try switching the files back to the m2t and see what happends. Thanks guys for a great forum!!

Fred,

You can certainly try switching to do the render from the original m2t file, but my comment was about using DV proxies. Rendering to CineForm as an intermediate, then from this to SD-DVD should result in quality indistinguishable from rendering the m2t. If you are seeing poor quality from a CineForm to SD-DVD render there may be something else happening, like the settings used for the mpeg2 DVD render? What template/settings are you using?

"Houston, we have a problem" Seems like I was doing it correctly but some how its not coming out smooth. Just the slightest pan you could see "pixles". Even in certain shades of color you see "pixels:
Templates: NSTC DV
Field Order: Progressive Scan
Pixel aspect ration: NSTC DV
Render Quality: Good
Motion Blur: Guassian
Deinterlace method: Blend

Can someone tell me what I may be doing wrong?

Thanks

When rescaling MPEG 2 in particular, you want to use BEST as your format.

Perfect..it came out perfect. Thanks a million to all. Now I just need to learn how to use dvd architect.

kev, very nice thread =). thx for starting one! this has been very helpful!

i shot a wedding on XL H1's 24F mode. i put together a rough cut and rendered the entire project using the methods described in this thread. i want a progressive DVD, so i went with 24p widescreen. i noticed that there was a 2:3 pulldown process. i've also tested this with a normal widescreen render.

i noticed the following:
-the 24p render has more haze/blurriness to it.
-the non24p has a lot of interlacing.

how do i manage a balance of both?

do i need 2:3 pulldown for XL H1's 24F?

i've done a few tests with very short clips of 'm2t's and i wasn't satisfied with any of the set footage from the templates. is there anything else i'm missing? do i have to apply a filter to adjust the image?

to: XL H1 owners, how do you render a nice pro looking DVD with 24F?

HDV 16:9 to cropped SD 4:3?
 

I've searched the forum but cannot find the answer yet. Here's what I would like to do. Shoot in HDV widescreen. Capture as HDV. Then have the option to either leave it in 16:9 or to convert it to SD 4:3.

The issue is that I want the image to be cropped on the sides and still fill out the screen from top to bottom in SD. I know that if I take an HDV 16:9 image and put it in a 4:3 timeline - what I am getting is a letterboxed image - sides cropped like I want but bars added at the top and bottom.

I don't want letterbox - I just want the sides cropped off - you know the same as you get when you have a widescreen image converted/croppred to full screen on a DVD. How can you do this? tks

If using Vegas, then open your Pan Crop window for the clip, right click on the clip and select match output aspect ratio. Thsi should enlarge your video to you can scale down accordingly, to match 4:3 DV fotage.

Then why shoot SD??
 

It worked fine. I opened the pan/crop and selected the 4:3 mask and then output it to to SD NTSC using the render. It will now play on a 4:3 TV screen I presume just fine.

This being the case then if you have a HDV Camera - why shoot in std DV? You can always capture as m2t transport file and then crop to 4:3 if you need to for whatever reason but you have the original in the best resolution as you possibly can?

Am I missing something here? Please advise-I see no reason to shoot SD.

That's basically correct: there are very few reasons to shoot in SD once you have an HD camera, and shooting in HD allows you to output both widescreen and 4x3 SD of the same material at full quality -- something you can't possibly do with any SD camera.