Comments on: HD to SD conversion: the Holy Grail

By: Phil Powell

Phil Powell — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:14:02 +0000

I’m not sure what you mean there Carlos?

By: Carlos

Carlos — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:27:30 +0000

I’m so sorry, but … I’m so sorry, but there is still one qoiutesn. When I click on( Deinterlace area based), what do I adjust than. what size?

By: lookas

lookas — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:01:04 +0000

THANK’S

By: Phil Powell

Phil Powell — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 17:26:42 +0000

Dave: sounds like FCP might be changing the sequence settings to those of your master sequence without warning you. It usually provides a dialog box, asking whether you want to convert to the same settings as the media you are inserting – if you’re not seeing that then it sounds like a “don’t ask me again” checkbox might have been checked at some point.

Also, might be down to the version of FCP you’re using?

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 13:49:47 +0000

Ok so what I did was create a new project and change the sequence settings to DV50 PAL 48 kHz Anamorphic. Then copy the master sequence into the new project. The DV50 setting are there but the frame size has not converted. WTF?

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 13:30:47 +0000

Hi. I’m encountering a problem at ‘step 10′. When I drag or copy & paste my master sequence into the DV50 sequence, there are no changes. I check the sequence settings and they automatically revert back to the same settings as in my master sequence.

Every time I change my DV50 sequence settings to that of ‘step 6′ (DV50 PAL 48 kHz Anamorphic), they don’t actually change. Does anyone know why this happens?

By: graham

graham — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:03:26 +0000

Thanks very much, this works perfectly. I just couldn’t get a conversion that was good enough to use and I needed one for a professional project I was working on. Now the peoblem is solved.

By: Doug Morse

Doug Morse — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:28:23 +0000

Thank you all for your wonderful help. For those of you still experimenting, I want to sum up the workflow you see here because you’ll probably need to experiment. But here it is:

Step 1. Get out of LONG GOP HDV into Pro-Res, DVC Pro HD, or DV 50. Even outputting same as source might do it. The intermediate frames are best calculated BEFORE compressing. Otherwise they are calculated DURING compression and that seems to throw things off.

Step 2. Compress to MPEG 2. If you have interlaced footage, you’ll need to apply a deinterlace filter in compressor. You should turn Frame Controls on and set deinterlacing to ‘better’

My own workflow was Export as Quicktime a 93 minute HDV movie to Pro Res 422 HQ. This takes around 7 hours and the file is well over 100 GB. (Some people say you don’t need to use the HQ version. Up to you)

Then I went into compressor, set VBR at 6.3, two pass, turned on Frame Controls and changed deinterlace to better (I left everything else the same) This encode takes just over 24 hours!

I use a 2.8 iMac using clusters to take advantage of the dual cores (you can google how to set this up) Otherwise it might take 48 hours! With audio encoded as AC3, you fit it all on a DVD-5 at 4.6GB (but no other content except a simple menu)

The quality is AMAZING. using FCS 2. Frame controls on is the key.

By: inso

inso — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:21:17 +0000

Thank you ! Thank you ! Thank you for this post!

Im working with Canon 5D and Sony EX3 and this is the best way to get the quality on DVD!

Good idea to do some sharpening after blure on SD sequence! Wery good result!
Channel blure from “Chanel” menu is much faster to render that channel blure from “Blure” menu, but channel blure from “Blure” menu gets better quality!
Sorry for English!

By: Pete Ray

Pete Ray — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:16:50 +0000

Hi Phil, and thank you for all the help in clarifying these issues, to me you are, in fact, a god…. Anyway, and even though I know it is very late in the thread I hope you can shed some more of your very bright light on one issue I’m having. Which is, when I create the DV50 sequence, and setting it up as described, after dropping the edited HDV clip on to the timeline FCS 2 invites me to again change the sequence settings to match the clip settings. If I decline, the clip (1 hour 5 min) becomes unrendered and also zooms in on itself considerably. If I accept, it of course reverts to the HDV seq settings which defeats the purpose. Is is probably worth mentioning that my clip was originally shot in 1080i50 and i have converted it to 1080i60. Subsequently I have been using all the NTSC equivalent settings. (the aim here is to create an all region playable DVD which I’m led to believe is best achieved in DVDSP by making an all region + NTSC DVD) But as we all know ‘only the best pics will do’… Thanks again for all your guidance, it has enabled me to go for a beer every so often…
Pete

AIM HIGH, WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG….