Editing a Documentary Trailer

[rubberbandito]

Question
I have three formats:
1. 1440 x 1080 30p from HDV camera (35% of footage)
2. 1280 x 720 60p from gh1 35%
3. 1920 x 1080 24p from gh1 30%

Editing in FCP.
Going to use Voltaic for 24p pulldown and for 60p files that cannot be log & transferred because of lack of file structure. (I have full file structure in 80% of GH1 stuff, but I deleted the other 20% early on).

Voltaic also seems to use smaller file sizes then Log and Transfer.

And I'll follow tutorials here on dvxuser for frame rate conversion.

But is 108024p the ideal output given what I have.
Perhaps its better to go with 1080 30p and only have to retime the 24p files?
I'm making a trailer which I will then shop around at A&E, HBO, and a few other outlets. Have about 60 hours of footage for a documentary. I am lawyer by trade so mistakenly shot all these different formats being a newbie but have a very compelling doc story.

I'd be willing to talk anyone that can fully inform me on this in regards to a credit, etc.

 

[Lpowell]

1. 1440 x 1080 30p from HDV camera (35% of footage)
2. 1280 x 720 60p from gh1 35%
3. 1920 x 1080 24p from gh1 30%

I'm making a trailer which I will then shop around at A&E, HBO, and a few other outlets.

Since you're aiming for broadcast video distribution, I'd edit in FHD 60p and output to interlaced 60i. In detail:

1. 1440 x 1080 30p - Upsample to 1920 x 1080 and duplicate each frame for 60p.
2. 1280 x 720 60p - Upsample to 1920 x 1080
3. 1920 x 1080 24p - Conform to 60p

The main advantage of this workflow is that you avoid sacrificing resolution of any of the source material. Working in 60p also eliminates any telecine issues with the 24p material. For your final 1920x1080 60i video output, half the scanlines of each 60p frame are extracted to render each 60i field.

 

[rubberbandito]

Hi ipowell

I tried sending you a private message but dont think it worked. I would like to ask you about this and proposal. I'll try to send another private message.

 

[omnidecay]

lpowell, wouldn't upscaling the smaller formats create softness/noise? What is the advantage to using the higher resolution vs down converting? A majority of house hold televisions are SD anyways...Why not shop it around with the smaller/cleaner image and then let the company who buys it worry about the upscale?

 

[tonpole]

Im afraid this isnt the sort of thing you can learn in a book, and asking strangers for help is really a last resort. The method for figuring this out is to know what your final format needs to be, ie what your customer wants, but also to put things into perspective. If your 60p footage only comprises a small percentage of your total footage, then why interpolate the rest of it when the added data can only slow you down? Going from 60p to 60i (throws away half the data) can cause more problems than 30p to 60i (which uses all the data). Consider that there are two ways of 60p to 60i, given that your source is 30p (i assume):

1. Motion interpolation - your software guesses at what the inbetween frame might be and creates a morph.

2. Frameblending - half opacity of the adjacent frames combined into one.

Going from 60p to 60i on the former will leave you with super smooth motion (digital like), but can introduces some very noticeable and odd artifacts depending on the speed of the scene (think T2 bad guy); and the the latter will potentially leave you with half a field of which is essentially of two different frames. I cant say what that looks like because i never tried such a thing, but 60fps, p or i, makes everything look digital, which typically isnt the look serious documentarians go for.

Chances are you shot 60p because you wanted to do some slo-mo. If not, convert it to 30p and leave it at that. The 24p can be converted to 30p easily (1,2,3,4,4,5,6,7,8,8, etc..). You shouldnt bother converting to 60i because its not the filmmakers job to conform media to whatever format they want. You give them the master, and their tech's cram it into a little box.

 

[rubberbandito]

I decided to use Sony Vegas Pro 10 as FCP is an extreme headache since all my footage imported in Vegas already.

I will run some tests on the 30p. Its probably best best IF I can get the FHD footage from its 60i wrapper to 24p up to 30p. So far I have used cineform to pulldown the 60i wrapper to a big 24p avi file. So I would stick that on a 30p timeline and disable resample in Vegas.

That would be my understanding, unless I can unwrap the 60i wrapper direct to 30p.

Thanks everyone. Yes, I don't want to ask strangers but I am out here alone on this project, learning it all from scratch.

 

[tonpole]

I decided to use Sony Vegas Pro 10 as FCP is an extreme headache

I can attest to that. Crapple raped one of my projects. Did things to it no NLE should ever have been able to do.

That would be my understanding, unless I can unwrap the 60i wrapper direct to 30p.

In a perfect world the camera would simply take its 24p sensor feed, add a frame every 5th, then interlace that, but panny's pulldown method is so f'kd that the only way to retrieve the data is as 24p.

Thanks everyone. Yes, I don't want to ask strangers but I am out here alone on this project, learning it all from scratch.

As are the rest of us. I went to film school for a year yet 95% of what i know is what i taught myself.