720 vs 1080

[directedition]

24pA = pure 24p progressive frames when edited on a 24p timeline in any major NLE (except Avid). 24pA was designed specifically to ease the editing process. If you want a filmlike look, and are editing on anything but Avid, 24pA has significant advantages.

I'm not sure I understand this. 24p uses 2:3. And it is my understanding that 24pA uses 2:3:3:2 instead. How does this make editing smoother?

 

[David Jimerson]

Because it's easier to extract the original 24p frames from it. All you have to do is blend the field pairs together and then drop every resulting fifth frame. For 2:3 pulldown, you have to reconstruct the third frame (out of four) from two different field pairs, so you can't just blend and drop.

 

[Barry_Green]

In 24pA, every frame of "film" is copied to a "frame" of video, and then for every group of four frames there's a fifth "padding" frame that's added to "round out" the sequence. So four frames become five, and if you do that six times, then (6x4 = 24) becomes (6x5 = 30). That's how they turn the 24P into 30 "frames" per second, is by just adding a padding frame.

NLEs know how to just ignore that padding frame. So you don't have to uncompress the footage and split apart fields and recombine frames, the way you'd have to with normal 2:3 pulldown. Instead, the NLE just ignores every fifth frame and ends up with a pure original straight-up 24P chunk of footage.

Frankly I think the whole notion of "2:3:3:2" unnecessarily complicates it and makes it harder to understand. Ignore all that and just look at what it's doing: it's directly copying four frames of progressive video out to four frames of recorded video, and then it "creates" one "padding" frame (by taking a field from the last frame and a field from the next frame, but frankly who cares how it does it since the NLE is just going to discard that frame anyway?)

 

[Jacob Eichert]

This may be a dumb question but does it matter what format you shoot in if you're going to downgrading to SD after you complete editing? My film school is using the hvx200 but they choose to not buy any blu-ray or HDDVD encoding software are request us all to export our final product to SD in FCP after we finish editing. So again I wonder if it matters what format I shoot in. I've been thinking 720 24p because I like the look.

 

[majormorgan]

Just to throw another question into the mix. I prefer to shoot 1080 over 720 unless I need slo mo, but if I were to shoot DVCPRO 50 ANAMORPHIC SD 25p would I see less noise in my picture compared to 1080 and 720?

I ask as most projects are SD that I end up on and I've been shooting HD for best possible quality of image and flexibility in post. But sometimes the noise can be too much and I'm wondering if DVCPRO 50 is less noisy.

Thanks
Richard
The Major

 

[NorthernFilmMaker]

Yes, EDIUS and Premiere Pro CS3 and Vegas/Raylight and FCP can all strip out 1080/24pA pulldown, on the fly.

PPCS3 can actually do it from 1080/24p footage too, which was very handy when we accidentally shot some stuff in 1080/24p mode... I thought we might be hosed, but David found out that Premiere Pro does just fine with removing the pulldown. Nice surprise, and kudos to Adobe for that!

I believe Michael Phillips said that 1080/24pA pulldown removal was slated for the next big release of Avid software? Might want to search through his more recent posts for that.

Barry, I just recently got an HPX500, I've been editing with PPro 1.5 Collections until now.... so, now its time for me to get something that will cut DVCPro HD. based on your personal user experience with PPCS3 and Edius..... what would you upgrade to and why? I am leaning towards these two, and have FCP in the back of my mind as well.... but if i go FCP i'll have to buy a Mac Pro ($$$) anyways, would like to hear what you think. Thanks

 

[Barry_Green]

EDIUS is a great little editor, with excellent P2 integration and it's fast. But it is very different from other editing packages and so you'll have to decide how much you value your time vs. the learning curve.

PPCS3 really seems to have a lot of momentum. The new CS3 packaging gives you AfterEffects and PhotoShop basically for free, plus they're fully integrated with Premiere Pro. If you already basically know Premiere you might find the learning curve to be a lot shorter with CS3, and the suite of apps is pretty darn robust.

Both have excellent P2 integration.

 

["JM"]

Just to throw another question into the mix. I prefer to shoot 1080 over 720 unless I need slo mo, but if I were to shoot DVCPRO 50 ANAMORPHIC SD 25p would I see less noise in my picture compared to 1080 and 720?

Sorry i won't answer your question, here, but since you seem to be mixing 1080 and 720 recording for your slow-mo, unless you're talking about 2 different projects, do you mind if i ask you how you do it in post. I mean there is a way to mix both format when cutting on FCP ? I'm learning the whole thing from scratch and would like to apologize if i sound silly, but thanks to this forum i was finally getting convinced to give up on the fantastic 720/24PN mode and shooting at VFR to actually make my HVX deliver what it does best: 1080, but maybe i'm wrong and can use both... if anyone knows the truth, please tell : )

 

[NorthernFilmMaker]

EDIUS is a great little editor, with excellent P2 integration and it's fast. But it is very different from other editing packages and so you'll have to decide how much you value your time vs. the learning curve.

PPCS3 really seems to have a lot of momentum. The new CS3 packaging gives you AfterEffects and PhotoShop basically for free, plus they're fully integrated with Premiere Pro. If you already basically know Premiere you might find the learning curve to be a lot shorter with CS3, and the suite of apps is pretty darn robust.

Both have excellent P2 integration.

Thanks, Barry ...another question, how does PPCS3 handle mixing different formats? i.e. 1080p, 720p, 480i all mixed on the same timeline? I hear that edius handles this pretty good. How does PPCS3 do in this regard?

 

["JM"]

Same here, Barry... Haven't opened FCP, yet, and i'm just starting to get familiar with the HVX, but would truly be amazed and oh-so-well set, if indeed mixing 720P for its slow-mo and 1080P for what it is, was actuallypossible on this system as well !

Thanks for all your help !

 

[drdimento]

Thanks, Barry ...another question, how does PPCS3 handle mixing different formats? i.e. 1080p, 720p, 480i all mixed on the same timeline? I hear that edius handles this pretty good. How does PPCS3 do in this regard?

I can speak for Edius and say that for all practical purposes it doesn't care about the format, it just edits away. Also, you can mix and match in multicam which being an Avid fan our version requires that all multicam be exactly the same format and if not we have to fuse each clip so that they are all the same (

Edius is neat! In fact, the only NLE we've used thus far that will allow us to just open a bin, grab a 1080 x 1920 and just drag and drop it on the timeline and within seconds we can begin editing. Of course it begins rendering in the background so if you're supper anxious power user, you maybe get ahead of the rendering but we haven't yet )

 

["JM"]

Hi Dr. D,
I can still return FCP and wouldn't mind getting my feet wet on another software, especially if more straight forward and making all these recording format compatible ! Problem is i'm all Mac and would never go back to PC, with all respect for Avid and Microsoft flexibility. Any 2 cts on that would be greatly appreciated, as i'm starting shooting a feature doc in a couple of months, and of course still hesitating between recording formats, cine look settings, etc. Anyway, thanks for sharing !

 

[drdimento]

Hi Dr. D, I can still return FCP and wouldn't mind getting my feet wet on another software, especially if more straight forward and making all these recording format compatible ! Problem is i'm all Mac and would never go back to PC, with all respect for Avid and Microsoft flexibility. Any 2 cts on that would be greatly appreciated, as i'm starting shooting a feature doc in a couple of months, and of course still hesitating between recording formats, cine look settings, etc. Anyway, thanks for sharing !

No problem. We actually had FCP Studio (I think that's what it was called) and two G5's and had nothing but issues. It would take forever for Apple/Mac to finally do something about it and in the end we had to pay for the repair because according to them we took it to an Authorized Repair Facility but not an Authorized Warranty Station or whatever terminology they wanted to label it the point was we got hosed. Both machines had issues (bought new at $$$$) and with each one the station rented us a loaner, each of which also had issues. The whole story can go on for days BUT here were our biggest reasons for switching to PC based editing:

1. The nearest reputable Apple/Mac dealer was almost 50 miles away
2. The size of the Apple/Mac support group both online and in our 1 hour driving time was very minimal compared to PC's
3. We don't have time to waste "waiting" on solutions, our clients cut us deals on jobs and they want them tomorrow . .literally! One called us one evening for a commercial to start airing the following evening at 7p with no script and no actors yet and yet we made it!
4. There are at least 50 PC repair and support stations withing the same 50 mile radius I mentioned earlier and probably more like a 100. In fact, we have on occassion had a "solve" by Best Buy and a 12 yeard old kid.
5. Even our former "Apple/Mac" diehard said, "let's get some PC's and get rid of these G5's" when we went through out nightmare.
6. I read an industry figure in 2005 which said that 96% of all Primetime television and Hollywood movies were edited on Avid.

So we got rid of our Apple/Macs and went Avid/PC and haven't regretted the move. Avid has been good for us and even gotten us work where on the odd occassion a client has said they in particular want native editing and not compressed MPEG. Strange we never knew it till they said that but then tested our color bandwidth and then realized that we had more width than we had with our macs. Hmmm. Out of the mouths of babes because that client didn't know beans about editing and video but somewhere he had heard that and it was our advantage.

We've used Avid Liquid and Liquid Chrome but have stayed with Liquid for the most part. We've had Xpress Pro come here for a week or two when a competitor had a machine outage (they have but one machine we have three) and also Media Composer (I love this one!!!) and again a similiar arrangement, install, used with the dongle, then uninstalled. We had an editor that had former experience on Xpress Pro and an editor who had experience on Media Composer in Hollywood. However, both are gone and only recently had we discovered that Liquid will not handle P2 .mxf 1080 24p which put us in a delima especially when we contracted to shoot and edit a major national music star concert under our contractors name then came the surprise when we found that we had all this HDD data and no way to edit it without upgrading some $4000 and the gig wasn't worth that much even with the jib crane.

So, we trialed Edius and found that it worked like a charm. To this end we use it for all our HD projects and it does well. Like PP CS3 which we are looking at also it has some idiocyncricies that we do not like as compared to our easy to use and fun Liquid . . but as far as we are concerned at the present, Avid is either sitting and watching the TV to see what the market is going to do or they've found their niche and aren't going to move from it because we just don't feel they are keeping up. Again, that's our opinion and maybe slighted because they announced last fall that they aren't going to support our product any longer and that the replacement NEXGEN wouldn't be till sometime next spring . . not 2008 but 2009 . . WHAT? I could be out of business by then. Edius on the other hand just put out version 4.5 something or other and within a few months a free version that had the patches. Liquid 7 came out and it took nearly a year and half to get the patches straightened out to where people could actually make good video without problems and it nearly cost us our business. Some of our weddings took 7 months to finish. That's not good!

Well, there's a bunch of rambling on about the ins and outs for our situation and hope that it helps see the flavor of what we feel is happening. We will get Media Composer if we can afford it and IF we feel it will work on our HP XW8200's and if not we may not. Edius has run on every computer we have including a 7 yeard old Athlon 3200 eMachine with an old ATI 128K video card, less than a gig of ram, and an old soundblaster sound card along with older technology IDE slooooow hard drives and it worked! In fact, that was what we edited that concert on becuase we didn't want to risk one of our high end machines that had just gotten straightened out from the "verion changes" and not a hitch. Canopus did not recommend the machine but it didn't matter it worked. Rest assured that Avid products WOULD NOT work on that machine. Moreover, loading Liquid on my laptop took about 10 minutes (no exaggeration) for the app to open ) But I wasn't surprised. Now comes the real test . . I'm going to install Edius on my old Toshiba with less than a gig, on board video, on board audio, and been worked so hard and long that I'm not sure it will be able to even find Edius ) But we'll see.

There ya have it. Any other questions just let me know either here or feel free to PM.

 

["JM"]

Waow, you sound like someone who's got something against Mac, but after reading your wonderful expose, i can't blame you ! But what am i gonna do, now that i just bought a new G5 ? guessing that Edius only runs on Unix or Microsoft, right ? which i think might actually today also run on Mac since their Universal system runs Pentium processors. So, i hear you and can relate to your frustration, but while you might be right at 75% in regard to the whole network being on Avid, which i believe mostly is because a whole system did cost less and was easier to pick up back in the days when people were making the non-linear transition, i worked on many low-budge films (as a stunt coordinator 2nd UD) and for i'd supposed indie community loyalty or any other reasons, they were all cut on FCP.

So now that i'm stuck with a G5 my very own concern is (still) the 1080/720 format compatibility, because that's really the last question i have, at the moment, given that i've chosen the HVX over any other camcorder, especially for its VFR recording capability, which in feel and smoothness is (from what i heard) comparable to a Varicam... As such, more investigation i'll make, before even opening the software box, and if anyone has more to say about the above, please feel free to fire away !

PS: i'm based in "Hell A" so Mac stores are everywhere... but that's not what influenced my choice for a system over another. Just always thought that Mac was like Nikon and Panasonic, always at the top if not just there to pioneer technologies, while the others are just trying to catch up. I mean look at the DVX100 or even just iMovie HD !

 

[drdimento]

Yeah we never wanna get back into that proprietary software world again if at all possible. With Liquid and when we were running Xpress Pro there were so many plug ins AND we could just go into the Avid file archetecture and ADD .exe files and Boris would populate as a usable filter and when we applied it, the thing would trigger straight away . . same for Adobe. That doesn't happen when the machine and the app are the same guy. But that's good that you're satsified with it and maybe you'll have better luck.

I think Barry pretty much pointed the 1080/720 out wherein I think he was saying that the camera actually captures in 1080 and if you have it set to 720 then it down rezz's the footage to 720. I'm not a fan of down or up anything. As a former industrial scientist who hit computers at IBM 360 days with IBM keypunch cards and stayed with it all the way through, compression means in all reality . . something is lost. Think about it . . if you have 20# of stuff and you have to put it all in a 10# bag unless it is compressable air how do you do that? Correct, get rid of stuff. That was one of the features we didn't like about FCP, we found that a lot of the control width was missing although we never knew it till we got the 1st Avid system and as I was saying above it was because of the down compress on the way in and it was a customer that pointed it out, none of us knew it . . not even the die hard Apple guy )

BTW, did I tell you that in our tests on SD material Edius out cooked Liquid by 2:1? That is, the render out to burn was half the Liquid time. Why? I haven't a clue but maybe someone could shed some light on it? When we first looked at Edius they said that their encoder engine was the best on the market and we have no reason not to believe them for as I pointed out earlier, their NLE was the only NLE we could get to even "see" the concert material we shot (btw, did I mention we recorded that material on an FS100 and accidently selected Firestores DVCProHD format which is their own proprietary codec and not even THEY use it? Had it not been for Edius's ProCoder we'd been in a heap of trouble BUT it worked and on that old machine )

 

[John Froton]

Thanks, Barry ...another question, how does PPCS3 handle mixing different formats? i.e. 1080p, 720p, 480i all mixed on the same timeline? I hear that edius handles this pretty good. How does PPCS3 do in this regard?

Premiere does a good job of it. There is some background conforming of files that are not native to the timeline format that you choose, but once the conforming is complete, you are good to go.

 

[ProfessorU]

Edius is a dream for multiple file types on the timeline. It makes it easy to shoot in 1080p and then cut to 720p slowmo without conversions. I find that output from Edius to non-original resolutions is crisper-looking than that from Premiere, although if it were super-critical, I'd still pull the shots into After Effects and tweak them there.

 

[NorthernFilmMaker]

When delivering to SD DVD, which gives better results....Premiere or Edius? I'm leaning more towards Premiere though, well for one it has output to Blueray (Encore) and I am pretty used to using premiere, so the upgrade makes alot of sense to me...anyways, how does the two compare in this regard?

Thanks

 

[TedRR]

Edius is neat! In fact, the only NLE we've used thus far that will allow us to just open a bin, grab a 1080 x 1920 and just drag and drop it on the timeline and within seconds we can begin editing. Of course it begins rendering in the background so if you're supper anxious power user, you maybe get ahead of the rendering but we haven't yet )

SpeedEDIT does this as well with no converting of files. SpeedEDIT even allows you to natively play the clips IN the file bin. Hold shift and it plays the clip at 5 X's speed which works great when trying to find the right cut in a bin full of files.
I'm not sure about EDIUS, but with SpeedEDIT you can toggle between timeline and storyboard editing as well.
So far I haven't had a client that wasn't impressed with SE compared to anything else they have seen.

NOTE: Of course, every edit system has advantages over others. The key is to figure where most of your revenue comes from or where you would like it to come from.
Then see what works for your productions, check out all options and be happy with your choice. For us it was SpeedEDIT.

 

["JM"]

Geez, a Mac lover, with everything i'm hearing - and thanks to Dr. D for all that input and living experience - i'm really starting to lose faith in Final Cut Pro. Also, SpeedEdit and Edius does sound like the perfect 24P compagnion, but i'm guessing there is (of course) no way to make any of these two NLE software work on Mac platform, right. So should i really get rid of my G5 or someone knows someone who's actually having a love affair with PPCS3 or FCP HD ?

And i had finally decided to shoot my feature doc in 720/24P instead of 1080 to keep that sweet VFR option since really bringing something else, but with the above and oh-so-convincing Dr. D down-rez demo, i really don't know what to do, anymore. Anyone with THE answer(s) - Please tell : )