Down res of HD footage to 480 SD

[kidwoo]

I bought an hv30 to use as a POV camera and am trying to figure out a way to match some native SD DV primary footage.

What I'm trying to do is crop the sides, then resize down.

I can get the hd clip in an SD timeline with letterboxing and I can take a central 720 x 480 chunk out of the 1080 footage but neither of those is working too well.

I'm sure this is a repeat but searching terms like 1080, resize etc. is ridiculous.


Any help would be GREATLY appreciated at this point.

I'm also working in premiere pro but figured AE is the way to go on this one.

Thanks for any insight.

[kidwoo]

So no one is going to hold my hand on this one :D.......

I'm messing around with the crop and stretch functions in the output module section of the render queue but nothing looks right.

So how about this.... Can anyone explain to me if there's an effective way to convert 1.33 HD pixels into a useable 0.9 SD aspect ratio?

[rook]

Have you thought about importing the HD clip into a SD comp placing it where you want it to be and exporting?

[kidwoo]

Have you thought about importing the HD clip into a SD comp placing it where you want it to be and exporting?


I end up with a 720 x 480 'chunk' that constitutes the center of the 1080 frames. Not quite what I was looking to do.

Unless I'm missing what you're saying by "placing it where you want it". I've tried the region of interest feature. Not so precise for an export.


I'm trying to figure out how to get a 4:3 display ratio without warping the individual pixel aspect ratio, at the moment...... I can get something 'almost' usable by stretching, then cropping, then changing the 1.33 native to square pixels.

[rook]

-Let me get this straight.

You want to take a 1080 clip that is a 1:33 and in a 16:9 shape and turn it into a full frame 4:3 720x480?

If you can handle it being letter boxed just convert it with a standard video converter like mpeg stream clip to fit the frame size you want. I do this quite often on corporate projects when I have a million different frame sizes and codecs.

[milksac]

Use the presets and and interpret your footage properly and AE will handle the rest. Start with an HDV comp with the footage interpreted as HDV. Drop the HDV comp into a DV comp and scale it to 45% - this will give you a center cut. Change the position to (320, 242) so you don't mess up the field order if you're rendering with fields. Give this a shot. You should avoid the stretch and crop functions in the output module. As you've discovered it tends to screw up the footage on the way out. Nesting comps your best bet when down converting.

[kidwoo]

If you can handle it being letter boxed


And therein lies the problem......... I don't want the letterbox. I guess I should have been more specific about what I'm doing. I'm shooting primarily with a dvx, and bought an hv30 to use as a helmet camera and as a capture deck. I make mountain bike videos and would like the hv30 footage interspersed fairly seamlessly with the dvx footage. There's very little good POV/helmet camera footage out there shot with non-film cameras in my opinion. I figured starting with higher res footage would at least help give some sharpness that I'd never even start with using an SD cam shaking around on a helmet. Just needed a way to format it well.



Use the presets and and interpret your footage properly and AE will handle the rest. Start with an HDV comp with the footage interpreted as HDV. Drop the HDV comp into a DV comp and scale it to 45% - this will give you a center cut. Change the position to (320, 242) so you don't mess up the field order if you're rendering with fields. Give this a shot. You should avoid the stretch and crop functions in the output module. As you've discovered it tends to screw up the footage on the way out. Nesting comps your best bet when down converting.

And then milksac came along :D

Thanks man! If you were within tossing distance, I'd make sure you had a beer in hand right now.

That worked. I've got some funky field interpolation issues with the pulldown but I'm pretty sure that's a different issue. I'm used to working with 24PA from the dvx so I've got to figure out the hv30 24p thing but I would have spent many more hours with the crop and stretch mess before trying this.

Much appreciated.

-Kevin