Need Help Outputting And Downrezzing!

[John Rivers]

Hey everyone,

I have been looking through all of my manuals, online forums, etc., and I am going crazy trying to figure this out (and I need to get this project to my client ASAP, so the time limit looming over my head doesn't help).

I shot this wedding using my HVX200 at 720p60. As the ceremony and reception rooms were tiny, and the lighting was not TOO bad, I figured I could shoot at HD, bump up the whites and mids in Final Cut, then when I downrez it to SD, the grain and such would not be nearly as visible. However, my project's output looks terrible, as if I shooting in the HD format didn't make any difference. I really don't think I'm doing this correctly.

Basically, I want to take my 720p60 footage, up the IRE range using Final Cut's Color Corrector 3-way filter, and downrez the footage without distortion to fit in a 4:3 frame (I know I'm gonna have to do a pan and scan with that, I've no problem with that).

Any ideas on how to make my footage look as nice as possible?

Thanks everyone for your help in advance, I've been going crazy with this. THANK YOU!

 

[VaricamLife]

We've been doing this for a 90 min piece (still in progress, so not cc'd though). I just let compressor do all the down conversion lifting. So from your finished timeline, just go to Export using compressor. Choose the 16x9 preset. Your resulting file with play 16x9 on TVs/DVDs that support it but 4x3 letterboxed every where else (which I think is better than 4x3 full frame pan-n-scan).

If your client demands pan-n-scan, then I guess I'd drop the HD clips into a DV 50 timeline and then do the pan-n-scan there. Then do a compression from that (just using the 4x3 preset).

cheers.