Mixing different formats - Best settings for sequence?

Hi everyone,
Just a quick question you may be able to help me with. I'm wondering what is the most efficient and best quality setting to have my sequence set to when I am mixing XDCAM EX 30Mbps 1080i60 footage with HDV 1080i50 footage. Currently I just set it to which ever I have the most clips for that sequence, but mostly it's pretty much half of each.

Any advice much appreciated!
thanks
Duff

Use a PRORES sequence. Mixing GOP formats is icky.


www.shanerosseditor.com

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And choose a broadcast standard. 1080i60 is NTSC, 1080i50 is PAL. Figure out which standard you'll need to finish in and get the non-conforming footage converted.

Andy

OY! I didn't notice the PAL and NTSC mixing! WOW. That can pose ugly problems.

Choose the standard and Andy says. If you have SMALL AMOUNTS of one camera, you can use the STANDARDS CONVERTER from www.nattress.com. But if it's 50/50...oy vey. Do what Andy says and convert one format to another. Terranex, or Compressor (Talking days here if it is a lot of footage).

Avoid this when possible. Mixing frame rates in FCP is ugly. Or go get Avid 4.0 and use that. Mix and Match is EASY, and the software alone can capture via firewire, and import XDCAM EX natively...and mix both frame rates on one timeline rather flawlessly. I demo'd this at the last LAFCPUG meeting.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Why is it half PAL and half NTSC anyway? Is that a typo?

thanks for the help so far, much appreciated.

Our main camera for this project was our EX3 - part way through the project we needed to use a smaller miniDV as a 2nd unit (almost entirely b-roll). We had already been shooting at 1080i60 on the EX3, but the miniDV was only PAL. For now these are only being 'broadcast' online.

So - using a ProRes sequence at 25fps is a bad idea? I thought maybe FCP would do an ok job at converting the ex3 footage to 25fps .... ? Rather than trying to put the PAL footage into 60i timeline ... ?

thanks again
duff

No - PAL and NTSC are different sizes, frame rates, colours - everything. You'd get much better results converting one to suit the other before editing.

>PAL and NTSC are different sizes, frame rates, colours - everything

Close, but to be more specific, it's just frame rates these days. Most formats in HD are standardized, so both standards observe similar black and white levels, field dominance, and frame sizes (except for DvcproHD).

But FCP is pants at formats conversion. Avid wasn't much better until MC4.

But never mix frame rates in FCP. FCP does a very basic frame rate conversion- it simply discards the frames it doesn't need, resulting in stuttering playback.

Convert everything to the format you need. If you're situated in North America/Japan, I'll convert everything to an NTSC frame rate in ProRes (either off the Teranex or Compressor), and work off a ProRes timeline. The XDCAM footage will not give me full quality playback, but that's ok during the offline. I'll recompress it to ProRes during the online with Media Manager. But that's how I'll work.

If you have less patience for transcoding, then convert everything to the XDCAM EX codec and work off an XDCAM timeline, setting renders to ProRes. Basically when you work in a long GOP format, the time taken for export will sting, as everything needs to be rendered/conformed back to the long GOP structure on export.



www.strypesinpost.com

I don't mean to piggy back on the OP's thread but I may be in the same boat looking for the same answer. However if I may ask: When I input the video from the JVC GY-110 HD cam it seemed that every other tape required me to change the format within FCP HD.

One tape would make the cam flash 50/25 and the next tape would make the cam flash 60/30.

Now it wants to render 90% of the video.

I'm I in the same boat as the OP?

Again, not trying to hi jack the thread.

Oh, you're right Strypes - had a synapse skip there. Both 1080. But still yeah, convert before import.

Mayhem - erm ... it does sound like a problem - does the camera op know anything about this? Was it different ops? Two cams?

Yea, after further review I have 10 tapes in total. 5 at 50/25 and 5 at 60/30. I'm told that means I have too take the 5 pal tapes and get them converted at a dub house somewhere for something like $80 a pop.

Yea, 2 cams were used for the event. Don't know how I missed the settings. I could swear I set both cams up to be exact.

Just to think I did this for damn near free. Big loss.

Anyone know of a good dub house around Culver City. I heard of a place called Lighting dub but can't seem to find it.


EDIT*

Unless some one here can help me with this issue.

You can convert to NTSC on your Mac. Here are some options : Compressor conversion or buy Nattress' convertor which is faster here : Nattress Standards Convertor

thanks for all the help - I have so so much footage that I think it is best I will just edit at a low quality settting and then only convert the footage I actually use in the edit.

Cheers

If you want to watch Shane's demo of Mix and Match you can find it at

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Dean

"When I see you floating down the gutter I'll give you a bottle of wine."
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