Final Cut straight to mini dv

A

Alicia Ferrows

Member
Hello,
I would like to know if my method of printing my final cut pro timeline to mini dv tape is the most effective.

I often need to provide clients with a copy of their music video on mini dv which i have shot and edited in HD, and the way i have been doing this up until now is simply connecting a mini dv camcorder via firewire to my computer and hitting print to tape directly from my HD timeline. Final cut pro automatically down converts the footage and records it onto the tape in real time.

my question is this...am i getting the best SD result using this method as i have only ever seen people talk about first down converting there footage to SD by dropping it into a SD timeline etc. I have found absolutely no mention of using the method i use.

i recently saw some of my work on television and noticed the quality wasnt as i expected and this is why i raise the question. is printing to tape from a hd timeline better or worse than first converting your hd footage to sd?

thanks guys
 
I do lots of TV ads. Mostly I just drop the HD sequence into an NTSC sequence, then print to tape. It looks a bit fuzzy to me, but it's what the station (ABC Redding) does. I haven't tried yet, but you could make a final HD file - full quality (either self contained, or not if you want to save space) then use compressor to make an anamorphic NTSC file, then drop that into an NTSC timeline, print to tape. It MAY look cleaner, but I haven't done a test yet.

If anyone's got a cleaner way to go to NTSC from HD I'd like to know it. I don't like the HD sequence in an SD timeline solution that many use. It's passible, but it doesn't seem as clean as my VX2100 footage natively edited on an SD timeline.

As a note, I am happy with the results going from XDCAM HD to DVD using the compressor preset. That stuff looks very clean to me, especially with my up-scaling DVD player. It almost looks HD.
 
I also drop my HD sequence into an NTSC sequence first. Usually I have effects, overlays, and color corrections, so I would have to render first. Then I print it out to tape.

One reason that may be causing your poor quality is that FCP lowers that quality of the picture if it can't keep up with everything in real time. And conversion from HD to SD does take some processing power, especially if you have effects, etc. Try dropping your HD sequence into an NTSC sequence, then set the RT (real time) playback to safe, and the video quality to high. Then you'll see if you need to render or not.
 
with my method of printing straight to tape from a HD timeline it will render any 'unrendered' footage first anyway but as principle i always render everything in the timeline so i can play it back first to confirm the video is looking how i want it when printing to tape.

Its a tricky one i know but ive never had a straight answer of what is final cut pro doing differently to my footage when printing to tape from a hd timeline as opposed to converting my footage first to SD then printing to tape. The latter will take a fair amount more time to do so im just wondering if it has any benefits.

Chadfish, i confirm what you say about print to tape looking abit fuzzy when viewed on tv. The channel that i submit to only except mini dv (very low budget channel) but compared to the rest of the footage which i happen to know is shot on similar or less quality cameras, mine looks quite soft and sometimes (fuzzy). Im convinced its at the print to tape stage where im not benefitting as in the timeline and on monitoring solutions everything looks beautiful, even compressor converts to DVD look good.
 
Alica, Have you tried using compressor to make an anamorphic NTSC file? I have not tried that yet, as I FTP my files to the station, and I'm not sure they can use that. But possibly if you make an anamorphic NTSC file, plop that into an ntsc timeline, then print to tape, it may look better. It's not a long process. Maybe could you try that - print to tape, then again print to tape the way you already do it? Compare the 2 versions and report back?

Thanks.
 
Alicia Ferrows said:
with my method of printing straight to tape from a HD timeline it will render any 'unrendered' footage first anyway but as principle i always render everything in the timeline so i can play it back first to confirm the video is looking how i want it when printing to tape.
Click to expand...

Rendering in the HD timeline is not the same as rendering in the SD timeline. It still takes some processing power to convert from HD to SD, and FCP may not output the highest quality if your processor cannot keep up. Try putting your HD timeline in an SD timeline, then render, then output to tape.
 
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