switching from 1080/24p to 720/24p?

A

arnowjo

New member
Hi, I've been shooting a documentary on a the hmc 150 and I've been using 1080/24p. I'm having second thoughts now about whether I should start using 720/24p instead. I did some tests and the footage on 1080 looks slightly better to me, although it is 35% to 50% larger and I know file size is going to make editing difficult. I know there have been some older threads about this, but I was wondering if there is more of a consensus now? I'm also pretty new to avchd and if anyone has advice about resources regarding post-production for this format, I would much appreciate it (I just ordered Barry's book, but am needing to start setting up a final cut workflow before it arrives). Thanks!
 
The file size is exactly the same... are you concerned about file size?

Or are you talking about FCP's log 'n' transfer file size?
 
Yes, I am concerned about the file size. When I transfer the footage into Final Cut and look at the capture scratch folder, the 1080 files are a lot bigger...should this not be the case? Also, why do people say 720 is easier to edit with than 1080 if file size is not the problem?
 
Yeah, Final Cut ignores data rate and looks purely at resolution when it transcodes to ProRes. So your 1080p Quicktimes are going to be considerably bigger than 720p ones. For that matter if you shoot on the lowest quality setting those files will still be considerably larger than the highest quality 720p because all Final Cut sees them as larger 1440x1080 files.

Certainly in FCP 720p files are easier to deal with because they are smaller in size.
 
I've moved from 1080i to 720p now for this reason as well as the excellent slo-mo from conformed 50p footage.
 
okay, thanks. I guess I've been finding that people generally go for the 720 over the 1080, maybe I should too...
 
I guess what's really at the heart of my concern is that there's a benefit of using 1080 over 720 that's noticeable on the big screen but not on my small monitor.
 
Color rendition is going to be better when shooting 1080/24p since it gathers more chroma info. In my workflow, transcoding with cineform has the option to scale the transcoded footage to 720p, I don't know if log/transfer has the same option.
 
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