Call me Crazy but I want to mix HDV footage with an HPX500.....BUT....

Don Schechter

Don Schechter

Active member
Long story but I did a multi-camera shoot HDV (long story why we wasted good filming with HDV) and I also shot with the HPX as well...knowing that it may be too hard to mix them well and that the HPX footage might not be used....

I shot the HPX at 1080i in order to match the HDV cameras.....what did I not do because:

1 - when I try and mix the footage the HPX footage is automatically scaled up to 112.5% to match the hdv stuff....(My sequence was HDV)....

Can anyone explain this gap in my knowledge? When I create a dvcprohd 1080i project it's obviosuly fine...i already edited half of this in the HDV sequence and don't want to muck with it...but anyone have any suggestions?

It's all getting bumped down to a SD DVD so I'm not sure the 12% increase bothers me THAT much......for this pay......

TAANKS!
 
Don Schechter said:
Long story but I did a multi-camera shoot HDV (long story why we wasted good filming with HDV) and I also shot with the HPX as well...knowing that it may be too hard to mix them well and that the HPX footage might not be used....

I shot the HPX at 1080i in order to match the HDV cameras.....what did I not do because:

1 - when I try and mix the footage the HPX footage is automatically scaled up to 112.5% to match the hdv stuff....(My sequence was HDV)....

Can anyone explain this gap in my knowledge? When I create a dvcprohd 1080i project it's obviosuly fine...i already edited half of this in the HDV sequence and don't want to muck with it...but anyone have any suggestions?

It's all getting bumped down to a SD DVD so I'm not sure the 12% increase bothers me THAT much......for this pay......

TAANKS!
Click to expand...

You are shooting ntsc, right? That increase is due to the fact that the DVCPRO HD NTSC codec is 1280x1080, vs HDV's NTSC Codec which is 1440x1080. This sounds like DVCPRO HD is inferior, but that is not true. The fact that it went for lower resolution was to maintain image quality on movement, as well as the 4:2:2 color space.

And those numbers do not translate into the camera's capabilities of REAL LINES of resolution. For Example, the Sony z1 has about 600 lines of resolution, which is inferior to the JVC's HD100 700 lines of resolution- and the JVC is a 720p camera!

Also, you wont notice any perceivable loss on the edit. However, I would suggest you edit and conform all the material NOT on an HDV timeline, but ratter on a DVCPRO HD timeline or even Prores 4:2:2 if you're on Apple. Edit in these codecs and you may get much better results than editing on native HDV.
 
One more question about mixing formats.
We are thinking to do a historical documentary and we will do recreations of historics moments. We will use for this ones 720p as we are thinking to shot in 50p (PAL) some of them.
Our documentary will also have interviews. The question is:
Is it worth to shoot in 1080/25p and then to convert in the NLE of CS3 everything to 720p or we dont care about that and we shoot everything in 720p.
Thanks
 
Don I would work in a DVCPro timeline as SPZ mentioned, but due to the GOP structure of HDV the render times can be painful. DVCPro is heavier on the disk space, but compared to HDV on my MAC pro its much faster to work with.

Pablo my general rule of thumb - acquire footage at the highest res available to me.
 
Go 1080 25p. Shoot your variable frame rate shots in 720p, but shoot mainly on 1080p. Like ncje said, shoot in the highest res available for future proofing and for the best result in quality.

If you're shooting Pal, the DVCPRO HD codec for 1080 is a no brainer: its similar in resolution to the HDV codec (1440x1080), but its intraframe, 4:2:2, and with less compression.
 
Thanks everyone...I shot 1080i/60..and I'm using Final Cut....so I shouldn't be too worried about anything it sounds like. Since I have most of it edited I want to just copy and paste the contents within the HDV sequence into either a DVCProHD or ProRes sequence. What do I need to do to make sure it all goes in right because copying and pasting isn't enough....? THANKS again. You guys are great.
 
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