HDV and DV mixed

Opampman wrote on 4/7/2010, 8:31 PM

I have a presentation to record. Most will be shot with a SONY A1U camera in HDV but there will be some inserts of the audience shot on a Panny 3 chip DV camera. The end product will be an SD DVD. What's the best way to mix the two cameras so the end results are in the same format? I can match the color but the format concerns me. New Blue esentials II has a SD to HDV conversion filter but not sure how to use it. Also, I would like to avoid the in-camera transfer to SD if possible and do it all in Vegas. Any suggestions would be appreciated...especially from someone who has already done this. Thanks in advance.

Comments

farss wrote on 4/7/2010, 8:36 PM

Is that 3 chip Panny camera 4:3 or 16:9?
Do you want to deliver 4:3 or 16:9?

Bob.

dlion wrote on 4/8/2010, 6:00 AM

i have an a1u, and imho, you'd be better off doing the down-convert in the a1u. i've used such footage successfully intercut w/100b and vx2000 footage and it matches quite well.

Opampman wrote on 4/8/2010, 6:57 AM

Bob - the Panasonic is 4:3 the a1u is 16:9 and the client wants 4:3 on a stamdard DVD

kairosmatt wrote on 4/8/2010, 12:24 PM

Set you project to properties to either DV (720 x 480).

Then click on the event pan/crop for an A1. In that box, right click and choose match output aspect.

Then you can copy, and highlight all the other A1 clips, and paste event attributes.

That last part will get messy though if you already have added other effects. In that case you would have to do each clip individually. One advantage to doing them individually is you can re-frame a little horizontally to get a better clip if you like.

kairosmatt

Opampman wrote on 4/8/2010, 4:10 PM

Thanks everyone for the suggestions....Now, however, the client calls and says he wants in all in 16:9 letterbox and NOT 4:3. (Why did I ever agree to shoot this????). So the Panasonic will shoot SD 16:9 but it crops off the top and bottom and lowers the resolution. What is the besy way to get 16:9 SD onto a DVD from the two cameras?

kairosmatt wrote on 4/8/2010, 4:52 PM

Well, if everything is 16x9 just put it on a 16x9 timeline and render out to the widescreen DVD template. If any of the stuff is 4:3, you will have to match output aspect and lose that extra resolution anyway, sort of like how the camera does it (of course you could reframe your shot vertically if you did it in Vegas and not in camera-if that even matters).

The final DVD will be letterboxed on 4:3 tv sets and still fit widescreen sets.

One thing you might notice on the computer is that when you render to that template from 16x9 material you get small black bars on the left and right side. The DVD template is actually a wee bit wider than 16x9, but most TVs crop it so it doesn't matter too much.

kairosmatt

Opampman wrote on 4/8/2010, 5:04 PM

OK. Thanks for the tips. I'll play with it tomorrow on a DVD-RW and see what I get.

farss wrote on 4/9/2010, 2:25 AM

I wouldn't sweat this too much. You said the B cam was only audience reaction shots. If that's the case then the odd cut into a lower res will very likely only be noticed by you. I did read somewhere that it takes around 3 seconds for the eye to 'resolve' a scene, so for 3 seconds you can get away with a lot.

Bob.

Opampman wrote on 4/9/2010, 6:04 AM

Thanks, Bob. That's what I was hoping for. My only real concern was keeping the format consistant. I use the VASST Celluloid to make 16:9 from 4:3 SD and it works great, sets the flag properly etc. I'll use that on the SD 4:3 inserts.