best solution for screening reel with various formats?

[tchandler]

i've been given the task of putting together a reel of 4 people's pieces for an upcoming screening. the screening will be projected through a projector with VGA, s-video, and an rca composite inputs. my choices of output sources for screening are: laptop, dvcam deck, hvr-v1u hdv camera. i'm working in FCP 6. and have an aja kona lhe card.

two of the pieces are SD (DV NTSC 29.97), one is HDV 1080i, and one (mine) is DVCPRO 720p (shot at 24pn with an HVX 200). i've been asked to put them all in one file or one one tape so the screening can be seamless.

i figured my best solution was to downconvert the hdv and hd pieces to sd and throw them all on the same timeline. the 1080i downconverted nicely, but my 720p piece looks bad. i understand why and have taken steps to make it look passable, but i'd really like to screen it in it's full res state.

can anyone think of a better solution to screen multiple formats and frame rates in their native formats/resolutions (or as close as possible) in a more or less seamless way?

thanks

tchandler

 

[Andy Olson]

Does you 720p 24p look bad because you are downconverting or because of the frame rate it's playing at compared to the other footage?

You are on the right path converting everything to SD. It sounds like your final timeline with by 720x480 at 29.97. If so, your 24p footage needs to have a pulldown added to playback at NTSC. This gets a little tricky if you are planning on showing the footage off a computer or on a non-interlace display because the pulldown in the 24p footage can show up and look distracting.

Can you make a DVD and project that at the event? This way you could put the 2 interlaced projects together and on the same dvd as a separate video file have your 24p + pulldown and the dvd player could remove the pulldown and play it back at progressive.

Another option would be to convert the interlaced projects to 24p to have them all progressive with a program like DVFilm Maker, but this is an aesthetic choice so the other filmmakers should be involved in that decision. There is a demo at the site if you'd want to try it out and there's a 25% discount until Xmas.

Hope this helps,
Andy