EX1 + 720p to SD DVD question

craftech wrote on 6/1/2009, 4:55 PM
I was thinking of shooting my next project (dance recital) with my PMW-EX1 using 720p instead of 1080i.

Delivery media will be SD DVD.

I have never done this so for those of you that have, what are your Vegas Pro 8 settings for project properties, interlacing, rendering, etc; and are there any problems you have run into that you could share?

Thanks,

John

Comments

farss wrote on 6/1/2009, 5:24 PM
"are there any problems you have run into that you could share:"

Yes.
Make certain the camera has the shutter Off.
You might like to Detail down and Crispening up in the camera. Maybe not as much as you would for 1080p though.

When I get a chance I'll revist my post workflow. The last time I did this I was under time pressure and just 'did things' to get it out the door. I had to wrangle several issues including Vegas getting the field order wrong. I've had one more go at this since but I'm still not 100% certain if I'm not making things more complicated than they need to be,

What seems to work is editing on a SD 16:9 50/60p T/L. This project will handle the scaling issue. When done you nest that into a 50i project which handles the 50p to 50i conversion. At the time I did this I didn't have a CRT connected to check the field order. Certainly if you want to try this make certain you check the output on a CRT.

Bob.
craftech wrote on 6/1/2009, 5:59 PM
Thanks as always Bob.

That was really helpful. If you do get a chance to revisit your post workflow I'd really appreciate it.

John
apit34356 wrote on 6/2/2009, 4:33 AM
Bob, maybe John should put the 720p on the timeline and pan into the field as needed(cropping). This will kept a good pixel ratio and lower artifact.
farss wrote on 6/2/2009, 6:01 AM
I haven't thought about the slight difference in AR, I just ignore it mostly. The main thing I've found is to get Vegas to scale the frames and then convert the frames to fields. Maybe there's a way to do this in the one project but I haven't been able to crack it.

What I did end up doing because of the field order problem was to render the output to something, bring that into another project, flip the source field order and then render to mpeg-2. I think I also needed to do a wmv version for the client to email as well. Thankfully it was only 90 seconds long, just a shoot, trim, deliver job.

Bob.
craftech wrote on 6/14/2009, 7:14 PM
Follow-up:

I ended up shooting in 1080i instead of 720p.

Here's why:

Most of the dance recitals use very little light. This choreographer is a mole in that respect. A firefly is too bright for her.

According to Adam Wilt's review of the EX1:

Sensitivity

I felt that the extra light sensitivity of shooting in 1080i over 720p under dim stage lighting was worth having to downconvert in post.

John