hd to sd problem w/ clips to test

A

Adam Forgione

Active member
okay ive been pulling my hair out over this horrible issue. this is what ive found. ex1 and fx1 footge looks equally as bad when 60i footage is down converted to sd.

so im convinced my issue is not ex1 related.

i watched 30p footage downconverted to sd and it looks awesome

so im convined my issue is interlaced related. everyone shooting only progressive cannnot see what im seeing.
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Here are some raw hdv files straight from the cam. i had to wait ofr it to load and then control click save as source (on mac):

http://pennylaneprod.com/1.mov
http://pennylaneprod.com/2.mov
http://pennylaneprod.com/3.mov

if your game, use your specific system to encode and let me know your results.

i use fcp, compressor, and dvdsp
Here are the same files already compressed with compressor (m2v):

this is what jpivideo (on vu) saw at my studio and agreed it did not look good. we played his a1 footage wihtout changing a thing on my setup and his stuff looked much better:
http://pennylaneprod.com/163_0046_01-mbps8.m2v


this is what mr. ed (on vu) burned and said looked great when he played it on his setup on 37" plasma, on my setup it wasnt good. He came over yesterday and saw it at my studio and agreed it looked bad.
http://pennylaneprod.com/163_0035_01-MPEG.m2v


this is an example showing store signs. the signs look horrible and digitized.
http://pennylaneprod.com/163_0013_01-MPEG-2.m2v


now i will say when i watch all these clips on the link from my computer they look stunning, go figure.
 
Sumfun said:
Did you try field shifting? HDV starts scanning on odd fields, while NTSC starts on even fields.
Click to expand...

yes i tried that. it just makes the interlaced footage look progressive but defeats the purpose of maintaining the quality of the interlaced footage. i guess what im getting at is if i play hdv footage from an ex1 on an SD timeline in fcp through a matrox mxo box into an lcd HDTV or apple cinema display, i see the end result : an interlaced downconverted SD clip - cant get any encoding to look that good ever. ive tried every recipe ive read on the interenet including ones from ken stone, VU, dvinfo, dvxuser, creative cow, etc i think i ran about 65 tests so far (all different). im becoming convinced there is no method to maintain decent quality from 60i footage of sony ex1, z1, fx1's (maybe other cams to). i just know that a friend showed me 60i footagr from a canaon a1 donwconverted and it looked way better than any of the tests i ran on the ex1, fx1, or z1. its very frusterating, ad the worse thing is most people cant relate because they are shooting 30p or 24p and they dont have the problem. progressive out of the cam downconverted looks good, but for reasons, i have to shoot interlaced.
 
Adam Forgione said:
yes i tried that. it just makes the interlaced footage look progressive but defeats the purpose of maintaining the quality of the interlaced footage. i guess what im getting at is if i play hdv footage from an ex1 on an SD timeline in fcp through a matrox mxo box into an lcd HDTV or apple cinema display, i see the end result : an interlaced downconverted SD clip - cant get any encoding to look that good ever. ive tried every recipe ive read on the interenet including ones from ken stone, VU, dvinfo, dvxuser, creative cow, etc i think i ran about 65 tests so far (all different). im becoming convinced there is no method to maintain decent quality from 60i footage of sony ex1, z1, fx1's (maybe other cams to). i just know that a friend showed me 60i footagr from a canaon a1 donwconverted and it looked way better than any of the tests i ran on the ex1, fx1, or z1. its very frusterating, ad the worse thing is most people cant relate because they are shooting 30p or 24p and they dont have the problem. progressive out of the cam downconverted looks good, but for reasons, i have to shoot interlaced.
Click to expand...

I have bothe the EX-1 a d the FX-1. For several years I have shot everything in HDV2 on the FX-1 and converted it to SD with great picture quality. The Sony has a 14bit down converter and has a choice of croping or letterbox. I like the letter box since titles and text can be edited above and below the picture and gives me great artistic leverage. I edit in SD brought in through the Fire_wire. The FX-1 gives a great "look and feel," visually, a cross between film and video. The EX-1 can output directly to my Sony M25U tape deck, either live or post from the SxS cards via Fire-wire. I can then downconvert it to SD out to my editing computer. Unfortunatly, the M25U deck does not have the option for letter box, thank you Sony, but the image is even better in SD. Why even use the EX-1 with all this work to get to SD, the lens and chips are of $30,000 quality and it show spactacular on SD video. Your problem may be elsewere if I am not missunderstandiing your cry for help. Maybe the incompatability is somewhere in your flow, converter, HD monitor conversion; try watching your footage on a CRT monitor to see if there is a internal conversion problems with your hi tech monitor. All I know is if you use the SD (not to be confused with standerd definition) 1080i60 on the EX-1 out converted to SD like I've mentioned, the picture qualiity is super. There is no advantage to go HQ xxxx and have problems, I don't.:violin:
 
Carl Marxx said:
I have bothe the EX-1 a d the FX-1. For several years I have shot everything in HDV2 on the FX-1 and converted it to SD with great picture quality. The Sony has a 14bit down converter and has a choice of croping or letterbox. I like the letter box since titles and text can be edited above and below the picture and gives me great artistic leverage. I edit in SD brought in through the Fire_wire. The FX-1 gives a great "look and feel," visually, a cross between film and video. The EX-1 can output directly to my Sony M25U tape deck, either live or post from the SxS cards via Fire-wire. I can then downconvert it to SD out to my editing computer. Unfortunatly, the M25U deck does not have the option for letter box, thank you Sony, but the image is even better in SD. Why even use the EX-1 with all this work to get to SD, the lens and chips are of $30,000 quality and it show spactacular on SD video. Your problem may be elsewere if I am not missunderstandiing your cry for help. Maybe the incompatability is somewhere in your flow, converter, HD monitor conversion; try watching your footage on a CRT monitor to see if there is a internal conversion problems with your hi tech monitor. All I know is if you use the SD (not to be confused with standerd definition) 1080i60 on the EX-1 out converted to SD like I've mentioned, the picture qualiity is super. There is no advantage to go HQ xxxx and have problems, I don't.:violin:
Click to expand...

forgive me if im not understanding this post, but it seems you are using the camera to downconvert, correct? i dont want that, i want to edit in HDV so when they get a bluray player 3 months later, i can just give them th ebluray version toop, so i want to use FCP, compressor, and DVDSP to downconvert to SD but with that work flow using 60i, i get horrible results on LCD screens, my friend downconverted canon A1 footage to SD on IDVD (surprisngly and i tried this for kicks too) and his SD downconvert blew mine away from the ex1, so i feel there has to be a way to maintain quality by downconverting 60i HDV footage from ex1, z1, and fx1 cams through apples software and have it look good on LCD HDTV's. i posted this problem on 5 forums and no one has been able to create a good quality SD burn yet, so im starting to lose faith in this, hopefully someone can point something out im doing wrong.
 
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