Converting 720p to 1080i for delivery

This is all new to me. I'm on a show and the network requires delivery on HDCAM 1080i 29.97 and we are at ProRes 422 720p 23.98. What's the best way to create a Quicktime to be used as a dubbing element, which will be done at an outside facility? I see in compressor a 1080i Apple Intermediate Codec and I can switch the frame rate to 29.97. Is that the best way? Or is there a better way inside FCP?

Yes. There are 2 ways to do it, depending on your budget.

1. Send it through a Teranex for the conversion.

2. Send it through a capture card and add pulldown to tape. The AJA Kona 3 does this, not sure if the LHe does cross conversion. If you are going to tape at a post house, ask them what cards they are using and if they can perform the conversion for you on the way out to tape.



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Some around here said render it out to ProRes 1080i 29.97. Is a Kona 3 the better way to do it?

Rendering it in FCP will NOT add the proper pulldown of 23.98 to 29.97. Nor will it scale the footage in the best possible way. The Kona 3/Matrox MXO2/Decklink Extreme capture card options are your best bets.


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Both 2:3:2:3 and 2:3:3:2 telecine pulldowns accomplish 24p-->60i conversion but not beautifully. There is telecine judder. Moreover if the device displaying the 60i does intelligent deinterlacing the visual result can worse yet.
This might be a job for using optical flow software to convert 24p-->60p. Half the fields would then be dropped from the 60p yielding 60i. Optical flow transformation does yield screwy frames at hard cuts. You must work around this. Andreas Kiel recommends Twixtor over Motion frame rate change for yielding less screwy frames generally.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

>Optical flow transformation does yield screwy frames at hard cuts.

Only if you do not turn on scene detection.



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Really? How does one turn on scene detection in Motion?

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Sorry, I was talking about the Teranex and other hardware standards converters. Those give you an option to turn on scene detection.

I'm not an expert on pulldown, but in the short tests that I've done going from PAL to NTSC, a motion compensation based standards conversion does look better on motion than in adding a pulldown.



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