First the question and then my reasons for asking:

The question:    Why would one want to put an HD clip into an SD Project?

Reasons for my question:  Recently there has been a lot written and debated about how bad the quality of HD clips put onto SD timelines in MC is.
I have never tried this before, but out of curiosity I had a go at it.

Now if the reasons you would want to do it are that you want to produce a DVD with material gathered from both formats - I have found an easy way to do that in MC -  with excellent quality on the DVD.
BUT I am taking the approach that in today's world DVD-players can output a 16:9 picture and that most households have at least 1 TV (I am not speaking about HDTV's, or even Flat screen Plasma) that can display a 16:9 resolution picture in SD.
Please shoot me down about the 16:9 displays if you need.

But mainly please give me reasons for wanting to add HD material to an SD project. Stone cold facts.

Regards,
Douglas

Although I haven't done it, I know people that are updating existing SD projects/timelines with newly shot HD footage.  Most of the project, as well as the end product, is still SD (output to Betacam SP or whatever) but they need to integrate the HD footage.

Hoh:

Although I haven't done it, I know people that are updating existing SD projects/timelines with newly shot HD footage.  Most of the project, as well as the end product, is still SD (output to Betacam SP or whatever) but they need to integrate the HD footage.

Thanks for the reply, Darin.

Do you know if the "people" are having problems doing this, or if they are happy with the results?

Douglas

Douglas,

I just confirmed with my "people" and I misunderstood.  They ran tests early on and decided to downconvert to SD coming out of the camera (JVC 250).  They found the footage looked slightly better if they let the camera do the downconvert instead of Avid mixing the footage.

Sorry I couldn't be of any help.

-Darin

Darin, No need to say, "Sorry", you helped me with one bit of the puzzle!

I had a thought along those lines too. Why don't people who have HD footage and want it on an SD project (as 4:3 SD) not do the downconverting in the deck/camera?
Seems like your "people" do it that way.
Thank you.

Douglas

drbgaijin:

Why don't people who have HD footage and want it on an SD project (as 4:3 SD) not do the downconverting in the deck/camera?

If I have the HD as online media it is much quicker to downconvert shots for SD than finding all the tapes and spooling through them. Especially as the HD footage may be from all or some of the following P2, XDCAM EX, XDCAM HD, HDV, HDCAM and or HDCAM SR. Then take into account the various frame rates that footage may have been shot in. For me software conversions and downconverts are therefore often the much easier option.

Thanks for your input, Andrew.
I am with you on that one.

You may have noticed I specifically mentioned SD 4:3.
Why?
Because I have found that when putting SD and HD together, it is much more logical to use a 16:9 aspect ratio setup rather than a 4:3.
I have a tutorial waiting in the wings (due to some technical problems on the Video section of the Community I cannot upload it yet.... maybe it will be another 24 hours before I can).
The tutorial show a very quick and simple way to use the 2 formats with excellent quality in a 16:9 SD environment.
The reason for my interest in showing this is to defend MC against accusations that it does a bad job of "marrying" SD and HD in an SD environment. This is just not true.

But until I can get the tutorial online we will just have to wait and see.

Regards,
Douglas

drbgaijin:

You may have noticed I specifically mentioned SD 4:3.

4:3 is still important to us as we broadcast to the community. 70% of the TV's (old in Hotels and Motels etc) are 4:3 and predate having automatic 16:9 sensing.

4:3 stetched horizontally encourages us to diet and looks better on new 16:9 screens than skinny 16:9 stretched to 4:3 on antiques

(In the process of setting up triple broadcasts to facilitate HD, 16:9 and 4:3 markets.)

AndrewAction:

4:3 is still important to us as we broadcast to the community. 70% of the TV's (old in Hotels and Motels etc) are 4:3 and predate having automatic 16:9 sensing.

That is an extremely valid point, Andrew.

Looking outside of that big group of customers, would you say that in NZ homes it is likely or less than likely that there would be a TV capable of displaying 16:9 (again I am not looking at HDTV in particular).

Regards,
Douglas

drbgaijin:

would you say that in NZ homes it is likely or less than likely that there would be a TV capable of displaying 16:9

A lot of marketing people would love to know the answer and trends involved with that!!

Current LCD/Plasma pricing has tempted a lot of folks but a similar number were tempted into really cheap end of line CRT's into what is optimistically a once a decade purchase. (replaced my mothers 25 year old CRT with HD a couple of years back)

Hi Douglas. You ask why mix the resolutions on the timeline: We are cutting a documentary series using two Sony HD pencilcams fitted to a vehicle's dash, one looking at the driver and the other looking straight ahead out of the windscreen, with a roving cameraman in in chase car using a DigiBeta camera. The footage from the pencilcams goes through two different processes: the one looking at the driver is connected via a DVI to SDI converter to a Convergent Design Flash XDR recorder, which gives us HDCAM-type files, stored on flash cards, downloaded to hard-drive for input to the Avid MC 3.5. The other canera records directly on Sony's own flash card in the camera control unit and produces an AVCHD (YUK!) file, which we convert to an HDCAM-type file in Sony Vegas. Both these files are then imported into the Avid at 1080i resolution because, if we import at 25i res, the result is poor. The DigiBeta obviously is digitized at 25i. The project is cut with the mixed res and will then be consolidated to hard-drive to go to a post facility where it will be colour graded and then output via their hard-ware based MC or via an external converter to SD DigiBeta tape for broadcast. Down-rezzing the HD to SD in our software-version of MC just gave us terrible results. I am hoping that the way chosen will give better reults. BTW, the choice of the Sony pencilcams was forced on us by the Health and Safety Regs that exist in Australia. We are New Zealand nased and don't have such problems here!! Any comments re the method? Cheers, Stu.

Great stuff, Stu

Thank you for that

Regards,
Douglas

As Stu said: "Down-rezzing the HD to SD in our software-version of MC just gave us terrible results."

And that has been my experience and I am surprised at this coming from Liquid which did a very good job of down-rezzing.  And it has nothing to do with 4:3 format. Makes no difference if the SD is viewed in 4:3 or 16:9, the HD material is unuseable on the timeline from what I can see.

Thank you, Lew

The way I have discovered depends on the viewer having a TV capable of showing 16:9.
I must strees that I don't mean and HDTV - these are still few and far between in most countries.
I am talking about the older CRT TVs that appeared quite a few years ago.

Outputting the mixed timeline to a 4:3 SD aspect ratio, without the degradation you and quite a few others are meeting, is possible according to one of my contacts.
There is a strict order of procedure that must be done correctly for it to work.

BUT..... and I am honest enough to admit it - I have only once gotten it to work!
Then I couldn't repeat it.
The Tutorial I will upload will show the 16:9 approach.
The 4:3 approach is still just out of reach for me........ but I'll crack it yet.

By the way, when you see the "degradation" are you seeing it in the Record Monitor or your client monitor or both?
If you are seeing it in your client monitor -  is your client monitor HD or SD?
Also, have you output the result to a DVD and checked the quality on an SD TV monitor?

Regards,
Douglas

I'll jump in on the NZ resolutions thing - the major broadcasters in NZ are all 16:9 in Standard Definition now. However there are a few ways to watch those 16:9 signals that complicate matters. For viewers using standard over-the-air VHF/UHF tuning, they get a 14:9 letterbox version. But there are also two digital platforms on which people can watch the free to air channels. They are Sky Digital (a pay TV operator) and Freeview (free digital satellite) - both require set-top-boxes, which are capable therefore of coverting aspect ratios.

The set top box thing complicates it all. Most Sky decoders only offer full 16:9 or 4:3 center-cut. Meaning many Sky viewers opt for a 4:3 version. Newer Sky boxes also offer 14:9. I'm not sure what Freeview boxes do.

So for NZ broadcast a 16:9 programme is required, but it could be viewed as full 16:9, or 14:9 or in many cases even 4:3. It's a pain.

As for your question about HD - we incorporate HD into SD programmes fairly often, as we sometimes have footage from the Sony 700 XDCAM HD422 camera, or from EX-series cameras. For EX we're dealing with file-based format, so a SD capture isn't an option. For the XDCAM HD we sometime capture as SD, but more often we treat it as files also.

While we don't do 4:3 programmes, I did use 16:9 footage in 4:3 projects a few years ago, and we had no major problems. Better results scaling 16:9 to fit 4:3 than the other way around. Obviously more often now we're doing it the other way around, 4:3 into a 16:9 project - we deal with that in a variety of ways.