best preset for multiformat.

I'm starting a project which is multiformat. SD MiniDv (from DVX100), footage shot on Sony EX3, Canon 7d, Panasonic P2, and most likely a little AVCHD from a Gopro as well. The director wants the final product to be in HD (should this be considered as well). Any suggestions on which Preset will cause the least amount of complications down the road?

If you're onlining ? that is to say, if you're not offlining, and if you're offlining, you're already acutely aware of it ? then your timeline format should always be your delivery format. "In HD" is not a delivery format. Even if you haven't been given detailed delivery specs, your show is still obviously going out in some form or fashion; let that form or fashion be your guide.

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Any suggestions on which Preset will cause the least amount of complications down the road?

Given your laundry list of source formats, I deeply regret having to tell you that that ship has sailed. If it were me, I'd spend the first mumble-mumble days on the job just converting everything into whatever my working format is; see previous graf. Others have different preferred ways of working, though, so I don't pretend to speak the whole-and-utter truth on that one.

> let that form or fashion be your guide.

The two things that determines a format are input format and expected output format. If most of your show is in DV, you can uprez it to 4K DPX and go for a film out and still it will look like crap. Your job is to advice the client on what will be expected.

I know we're in an age where "HD" is a marketing term and some producers will do all it takes to push out something in HD, even if they try to justify it by saying "it's not full HD". Heck, you have quarter HD. That format is called SD. It makes little sense to spend days converting half of your show from DV (or an SD format) to HD, simply because you don't have that resolution to start with.

As Jeff mentioned, the ship has sailed. What you do is, to look at the format of the show, and see what constitutes the bulk of the show. And if most of the show is in SD, you work in SD and convert everything to SD. If most of your show is in 720p, everything goes to 720p. Same for 1080.



www.strypesinpost.com

Thanks for all the sound advice. But it seems that the director is set on HD. He is in the process of converting everything to Apple Prores 422. Right now he's putting all the SD through the AJA Kona LHi card for HD uprez. Is this a bad idea.

It's impossible to answer that, since you haven't told us what your delivery format is. If your delivery format is SD DVD, just to pick one random example, then upscaling all your SD footage to HD is, yes, a bad idea. More specifically, it's a waste of time that will degrade your source footage.

Then again, trying to intercut DV, P2, XDCAM and 7D footage in the first place is the bad idea to end all bad ideas. So at this point, you've gotta ask yourself if anything you do to the footage is really going to make it that much worse.

"Is this a bad idea."

it's probably the simplest approach to up-resing,
and the good news is it will also yield good results, second only to some fancy hardware conversion.

so most likely (depending on your delivery format) its a good idea.


nick

You need to look at what you have, and what you are going out to and decide. If you have 20 clips in your timeline, and all of them are SD clips and only one of them is an HD clip, and you're doing what you do now, that sudden burst of HD clarity will stick out like a sore thumb. In those cases, I would down convert that HD clip to SD, so I lose resolution on that clip to match the rest of the footage, but then again, as Jeff mentioned, you've a laundry list of formats there, and try as you may, it's not going to match up too good.



www.strypesinpost.com

Yikes! Not to mention that it's not just sizes you are dealing with, but the fact that these are different frame rates. IMO that is what really screws you up. I think people forgive blurry picture sometimes, but stuttery/jittery/strobing stuff is the worst.

Make sure when you transcode you put it all into a compatible frame rate. I don't know how you shot the DVX100 stuff, but hopefully it's in 24p or 24PA and you can use an advance pulldown to get it to the right frame rate. Not sure about the other formats...

I would get everything into ProRes, HD, and go from there. I hope you are editing on a system with a broadcast monitor so you can monitor playback.

Best of luck!

----------------
"What do you mean there's no undo?"

Matthew Celia
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www.fcpguru.com