advice please....

ushere wrote on 6/14/2012, 8:49 PM
ok, it was a balls up. hdv cu camera had back focus problem, however, the wide shot on a 170 (pretend 16:9) to be used (originally) as a 'handycam' style shot looks good, even if it doesn't have sound..... the two shot cu hd is good too.

the only really good thing was the audio, curtesy bob (farss), who kindly lent me a couple of pzm mics that did an outstanding job. pity the program isn't going out to radio ;-(

so. one sharp hd, one soft hd, one sharp dv. end product is dvd.

question, what tl should i work with? there's going to be a lot of text as well as talking heads....

Comments

JasonATL wrote on 6/15/2012, 7:49 AM
Leslie,

I understand your question "what tl should I work with?" to mean what project properties, SD or HD. If I have misunderstood, please disregard the following. I'm not worthy to give advice to you, but I'll share my own experience with such a situation.

Even when my primary target result is DVD, I shoot and edit in HD, render out to DNxHD, rely on Handbrake to scale to 480p, then bring back into a widescreen 480p project in Vegas to render out a 480p widescreen file(s) for DVDA.

I had a situation quite similar to this about 6 months ago. I had three HD cameras for an event (my daughter's school's holiday music program). A minute into the program, I realized my main cam (a Sony EX1) was having focus problems. The resulting footage was simply out of focus. An unsharp mask on this cam and more reliance on my "B" cams in editing resulted in a DVD that everyone thought looked great. No, to me, it wasn't as good as if the camera had been in focus. But, in the final output to a DVD, it was pretty good and I wasn't ashamed to put my name on it. The unsharp mask applied on an HD timeline made a difference. I couldn't have achieved that on an 480p timeline.

My guess (I haven't done the experiment, but I have played around with upscaling and then downscaling) is that bringing SD footage into an HD timeline and then eventually downconverting back doesn't lose too much. When the benefit of preserving as much from the HD cams and having nice, crisp text are considered, I'd probably opt for SD.

Again, I might have misunderstood the original question/scenario and, if so, I apologize. I hope more experienced folks will share their thoughts, as I'd be interested to learn more about this.
TeetimeNC wrote on 6/15/2012, 11:02 AM
>Even when my primary target result is DVD, I shoot and edit in HD, render out to DNxHD, rely on Handbrake to scale to 480p, then bring back into a widescreen 480p project in Vegas to render out a 480p widescreen file(s) for DVDA.

Jason, what HD format do you shoot? I am wondering if you are using this approach because your HD is 1080i60 and Vegas has problems downscaling interlaced footage? I ask because I am getting ready to do an HD shoot that will go to DVDs. I am considering shooting 720p60 and then downscaling to widescreen 480p in Vegas. I am interested in hearing your insights.

/jerry
JasonATL wrote on 6/15/2012, 1:43 PM
Jerry - I shoot in 1920x1080 24p. I find Handbrake to do a far superior scaling of HD to SD than Vegas. Though I've not needed it for the de-interlacing purposes, it is also my understanding that it is far superior in that regard, too. That simply isn't the reason I use Handbrake.
ushere wrote on 6/15/2012, 6:38 PM
thanks jason - you were quite right - i'm not sure what tl to work with.

it's literally years since i had any sd to work with, and on the odd ocassion it did crop up, if it was 4:3 i simply ran it over a blurred enlargement of itself (al la news), or if 16:9, with a 'handycam' mask over it....

the sd footage in this project looks surprisingly good, better that the soft hd ;-(

so, as you gather, i'm in a quandry. end product will be dvd, but also mp4 for net - and i don't know as yet what they're expecting from that - sd or 720p.

again, thanks.