HD1080 easy setup?

Hi all, can someone explain to me what i need to setup in FCP 5 in order to start editing footage captured in HD?

There are easy setups to set for HD, is it as easy as going into my sequence "setting" and selecting the preset for HD?

Lastly, If I have already edited HD footage/scenes into a timesline that was set at my old setting, NTSC DV, does all this have to be redone or will the timelines just reset for the new setting? Make sense?

thanks for the help..

What flavor HD is the question. FCP doesn't care. You just need to pick the correct pre set in the capture and sequence settings and go from there.

What do you mean by editing HD in a DV sequence?

thanks mike, my question was probably not clear...

I am on a project where the HDV footage was downconverted and captured at DV NTSC 720/480.

I'm editing with a preset for that in a timeline set for that.

( i had originally posted my question thinking that I was editing HDV footage, not downconverted.)

If I am editing downconverted footage, how does the final feature output get delivered in the HDV in which it was shot? is this a simple post prod issue?

thanks

I dont use HDV but all you need to do is drop your DV sequence into an HDV sequence and render. Conform and out put to an HDV deck. Then what are you going to do with it? Basically all you can do is play it on an HDTV.

Great thanks, I think I get the picture now. I didn't know it was as easy as cutting in SD and then as you say dropping the sequence into an HDV sequence ( at a post house). Timecode is timecode, hi res or lo res right?

Ultimately, it will need to be output to film, which I assume a post house can do with the HDV timeline/output?

So in general, in cases like this, it is favored to edit in SD with downconverted footage, and then let a post house deal with it, rather than put an FCP system together that can handle editing/rendering in full HDV right?

If you are dealing with a post house to do final online you need to call them now and ask what they want. HDV is a different animal. Its not HD.

You might be better off editing in HDV. Wouldn't you lose quality if you downconvert to SD? If you hadn't downconverted to SD, then the final result would've looked better on film, I'm assuming. I don't think you can regain the HDV quality by converting back to SD. The post house would have to conform your SD edited movie to full HD for output to film. That's why Mike suggested you check with your post house first -- I think. If you have FCP5 then you should be able to edit natively in HDV. I'm curious about the answers to your question from editors who do this sort of thing.

filmman.

I think the whole idea is to edit offline in Sd and then re-import as HDV and FCp automatically updates your old offline SD files with new crisp HDV files.


I am curious as to why one would do this though.
HDV is approximately 3mb per second of information via firewire.
Mini DV is 3.5mb per second

So in fact, the footage is not downconverted, its upconverted.
(even though the frame size is bigger in HDV the quality is less)

Am I making sense or am I just confused?



Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

This makes sense to me. But I sure could use a 1 hour class on just HD/SD issues or a tutorial on what all the different resolution options and issues are.

thanks all for the feedback on all this.