Need Help - Matching Footage / Settings from 2 HVXs

[John J.]

Hi Guys,

I need to edit together footage from 2 separate HVXs using FCP6. Would appreciate suggestions for best settings for all footage to match and look as "even" as possible (as if it was all shot with the same camera/settings).

Here's the footage infos:

HVX#1 - DVCPRO HD 720P60 / 59.94fps / 960x720 (1248x702) Normal size 1280x720

HVX#2 - DVCPRO HD 1080i60 / 29.97fps / 1280x1080 (1888x1062) Normal size 1920x1080

The end product will be for SD DVD. Thanks in advance for your input!

- J

[David Jimerson]

I'd probably edit as 720. As for matching settings, would need to know what they were. :)

[John J.]

Thanks David,

Yeah I'm looking at a 720 sequence in FCP. Thing that sucks is from each HVX I've got about 2 hours of footage. Individual clips run between 2-4 minutes long, so when I layer clips from both cameras atop each other in FCP, the render time per section is like 14 minutes - my client over my shoulder's gonna hate me!

Would I be doing damage if I had to spend a day outputting all of this footage from both cameras to one format? "Take care" of the rendering ahead of time so the editing will not eat up time? Thanks.

- J

[David Jimerson]

It's going to end up rendered one way or the other before your final output. The good news is that converting 1080 to 720 gives you good 720.

The only disadvantage I really see is that if you're using 1080 in a 720 timeline, you've got some room to zoom in some without a quality hit. But then again, not THAT much room, so it's probably not much of an issue.