Mark II footage mixed with HVX footage

Hi,

I am editing a music video that will have both Mark II footage and HVX footage.
I am planning on converting the Mark II footage to the Apple Pro Res codec.
The DP is telling me that he will be shooting at a 30p frame rate.

The final delivery of this video will be SD and I was planning on down converting until after the color correct etc so that we can still have an HD final for web etc.

Should I create a sequence that is DVC PRO HD 720p60 at 30fps or Apple Pro Res at 30fps.
Or 29.97?

I would love to hear an opinion on workflow for this.

I have primarily been cutting my HD to match how it was shot and then it goes to the online people or After Effects. But this time, I am handling from beginning to end. Didn't realize how much I don't know...

Thank you!

You have a problem on your hands.

The 5D doesn't shoot "30p" in any meaningful sense of the expression. In real life, "30p" is shorthand for "approximately 29.97 frames per second, with a 1/59.94 shutter." But what the 5D calls "30p" is precisely thirty frames per second, with a variable shutter that cannot be manually controlled.

So the very first thing you're going to have to do is conform your 5D footage to the standard NTSC frame rate. At least in theory, you can use Cinema Tools for this. But since the 5D spits out H.264, you might have to transcode everything to ProRes first before Cinema Tools will touch it. I'm not sure.

Note that this is not a time remapping operation. You're just conforming the playback rate. This will result in slowing all your footage down very, very slightly. Since it was a music video, you probably don't have any sync sound anyway, but you'll still need to keep an eye on sound-picture sync, since your picture and sound are going to be playing back at very slightly different rates.

But that's just the first part of your problem. The second part is that you're intermixing two radically different types of footage. DVCPRO HD footage is horizontally subsampled, making it look noticeably softer than footage that's sample full-raster. Odds are, your 5D shots are going to look crisper than your DVCPRO HD shots, though the streaky motion blur from the pathological shutter may offset that a bit. If it were me, I'd transcode all of my 5D footage to DVCPRO HD before even bringing it into Final Cut.

The good news is that this is a music video, so all these problems ? which, frankly, might amount to showstoppers in a drama ? can be excused as "style."

As Jeff points out, the 5d2 shoots 30.00fps only, whereas video cameras shoot the NTSC rates, which are 1000/1001 of the integer frame rate, or approximately 29.97fps.

The second thing is that a video camera normally shoots at a shutter that is fully open, or, if trying to look filmic, half open. The 5D2 is geared towards aiming for a 1/30th shutter, which is the equivalent of fully open. It's also not under user control, so the camera will alter this as it goes along.

The sharpness one is a tricky one as a video camera uses all the lines on it's sensor(s) to make the image, whereas the 5D2 acts as if it skips rows, recording what looks like every 3rd row, giving it a very sharp and measurably aliased vertical resolution, and the horizontal subsampling from full sensor is crude horizontally, leading to some increase of aliasing and chroma artifacts.

I realize that the 5d2 will give me 30 not 30p.
But I am also bringing in HVX footage that will be shot 30p.

I am converting the 5d2 footage apple pro res

I am trying to decide if my DP should indeed shoot the HVX footage at 30p. He is not trying to match the 5d2 footage - it is just his usual preference. I am just unclear if it is the best choice.
The HVX footage is the majority of the material.

I will be combining it all onto one timeline and want to have the best looking footage.

You suggest that I convert the 5D footage to SD NTSC first. If so - then should I do the same with my HVX HD footage before editing? The goal was to stay in HD until the very end in order to have an HD and an SD option.

No, you're bringing in HVX footage that's shot 30p, the actual NTSC-standard 30p frame rate, not the 5D's not-really integer-30-frames-per-second frame rate. The footage you get off the HVX will say "29.97 fps" on it.

And I don't think anybody said "SD" at any point. Before you work with the 5D footage, you will have to convert it to a standard frame rate, like 29.97 or 59.94 or 23.976. That's irrespective of any scaling you might choose to do.

In this case, "best looking" is a pretty wishy-washy term. If you conform your 5D footage to the NTSC frame rate of 29.97, throw away the audio, and then convert it to DVCPRO HD at a resolution that matches what comes off the HVX, I believe you'll get it looking as good as it possibly can. But you're still intercutting two radically different types of footage, with radically different motion characteristics, and if you're picky like me, you'll still see the difference all the way through the end.

Ok - this is all starting to make sense. Thank you.
It seems like converting to DVCPRO HD is a great idea. I'll explore with Cinema Tools and Compressor...

Much appreciated - any other ideas?

"Test" is the magic word here. And make sure if you have any kind of standard-def delivery, you watch the tests and the footage on an NTSC monitor. I edited a spot last year that mixed Phantom HD footage (not even 60i -- more like 1500fps) and HDCam footage. Mucho colour correction, plus motion simulation on the Phantom footage to get them to match. And none of those motion issues were visible on a computer monitor.


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