HDV output for Color Grading? Help!

Oh, dearest LAFCPUG, again I come to you on my knees to ask the advice of people that are way smarter than me.

I'm currently going through my first attempts at using HDV footage, which i had classically shunned before, but recent demo's changed my mind and I decided to give it a shot. I'm shooting on a Canon A1s, and I captured at HDV for cutting. I tried capturing as Pro-Res 422, but upon comparison i noted that they were pixel for pixel near about the same, but with a huge hit in drive space, so my reasoning was to capture and cut at HDV, then output the cut project to Pro-Res 422 (HQ) upon completion and color grade that.

The problem is that the output QT's from the really nicely shot project that looks lovely in HDV look AWFUL. I was shooting in the Canon 30f mode (i don't like the motion in 24f), and captured the same, but there's a weird artifact in the output movies that make it look like it's interlaced, broadcast rez footage - it looks terrible.

I tried several other codecs, but found my options quite limited, and the best looking one was the XDcam 422, 30p - and that looked PRETTY good - but once i built a project with the output QT and tried to export to Color - Color refused to see the XDcam media!! WHA??

I'm stuck!

This is probably 101 for you old HDV folks, but any help would be greatly appreciated, and met with sturdy compliments! ex. "Nice tie!"

Thanks all!

Josh

COLOR will not work with any GOP format. It needs to be DVCPRO HD, ProRes or Uncompressed. The best option would be to change the RENDER settings on your timeline to ProRes, render it out, then take it into Color.

How are you currently outputting HDV to ProRes? Makes no sense that it would look bad. And now you see why capturing HDV as ProRes from the get go is smart. Avoid the hassles of conversion and trying to get it to all just work. But yea, drive space is an issue.


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>... now you see why capturing HDV as ProRes from the get go is smart. Avoid the hassles of conversion and trying to get it to all just work.

Same same but different. Whether you convert on input or output, the conversion is exactly the same .., but deep down inside you know that already*


>Makes no sense that it would look bad.

See.*


Josh, as advised, check your export workflow ... if its coming out "wrong" then the settings must be hosed somewhere. Try File > Export > Quicktime Movie ... but instead of leaving the Setting popup on Current Settings as per usual, change that popup to Apple ProRes 422 1440x1080 30p 48khz. Or alternatively open the sequences settings window, click on the Load Sequence Preset button at lower left and then choose the Apple ProRes 422 1440x1080 30p 48khz preset, then use File > Export > Quicktime Movie w/Current Settings.

Hope it helps
Andy

Thank you guys for generously taking the time to answer my questions!

I have actually not tries to change the render settings in the timeline, I'll try that this morning. SO then instead of using "Quicktime Conversion" as I had been doing, I will try changing the settings from Export "Quicktime Movie". Thanks for your time, i'll give it a shot!

Josh

jmlpost,

What version of Color are you running? If you are up to date (I believe 1.0.4 is the latest) you can use HDV and XDCAM media to go into Color, but what you render out of Color when you are done grading has to be ProRes or Uncompressed.

You could also use the Media Manager to transcode all of your clips from HDV into ProRes so that way you still have discrete files, as opposed to exporting one big QT movie, which will making grading in Color easier.


-A

Hello, oh ever helpful friends! I apologize for taking so long in replying, i got buried in some projects today and was only able to get back around to this just now.

So i tried changing the settings of a newly duplicated sequence to the sequence preset for Pro-Res 422 (HQ), and i have exactly the same result - but i've now noticed a detail!

when the image is playing, it looks blurry, compressed, and interlaced (there's a guy with a shirt that has diag and horiz pinstripes, black stripes on white like a grid so it's perfect for analysis - and the lines swim around and moray like interlaced footage on a progressive monitor) - BUT - when i STOP playing, the image instantly sharpens to look perfect. I've rendered everything so it's all the happy light blue color - but is FCP downconverting the footage to a data rate that my 4 year old machine can handle and THAT's why it looks crappy??

I'm going to try exporting something smaller from this project and see what it looks like...

any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks guys!