Dylan,

Thank you for the further information about the NZ scene.
The jungle is thickening but I see a clearing ahaead!

Regards,
Douglas

Thank you all for the feedback.
A strong input from New Zealand

Together with the information and tips from you and a few others who were in direct email contact with me, I think I have understood how things work.
I will double check my workflow tomorrow, and if all is well with it, I'll get to work on Tutorial number 2 on the HD/SD timeline "problem"

I was able to do a digital cut in SD from the mixed timeline. The quality of the clips was the same on the final tape.

Thanks again,

Douglas

drbgaijin:

Thank you, Lew ............................................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?................
Regards,
Douglas

Lew, could you let me know your answer to the above question. It is important for me to know this when comparing your results with my own?
Thank you,
Douglas

On the record monitor. It looks totally out of focus while the SD material looks fine.

LewS:

On the record monitor. It looks totally out of focus while the SD material looks fine.

Thanks, Lew.

This is where we differ. Iam not seeing any noticeable degradation on my record monitor. I would expect some as it is, after all, HD being squisshed into a much smaller space (?)
When you are capturing or importing HD from other bins it is very important to check that the Format tab in the Project window has the correct format selected (for NTSC you will be shifting from 30i to 1080i as the situation requires.)  But that will become apparent when you see the 2 tutorials.
Hopefully I will have them online later today (Japanese time)

I do, however, see a degradation on my connected HDV TV, but I see that in the SD also.

I have now finished recording 2 more tutorials where I can show that the final SD output to tape is not degraded.
The HD and SD clips are equally good.

Before I get back to editing the tutorials I was wondering - why don't you just downconvert the HD to SD as you capture? Then work with everything in SD. Wouldn't that solve most of the issues?

Regards,
Douglas

On a closely related note, I had a major workflow issue when trying to mix HD and SD using a multicam edit and ended up doing it all in Liquid (which is not ideal as you can't mix formats for multicam).

For background info, I've got a 2-camera shoot, one SD and one HDV, both shot at 16x9. What I want to do is to use the HDV material in a couple of ways. First, I use it as-is downconverted. Second, I need to to do pan-and-scans and zooms. This gives me 2 shots from the HDV camera (wide and medium or medium and close) along with the shot from the SD camera.

I couldn't figure out how to make this work. The Pan-and-scan filter has to be applied on a timeline basis, but the multicam timeline has to be mixed SD with the HD. And it's unclear that I can zoom into the HDV without degradation (as described earlier in this thread).

So the question is, what does a workflow for this look like? Ideally what I want to to create the multicam between the two cameras first, and then add pan-and-scan or zooms into the various HDV clips as I see fit afterwards.

Check out this thread:

http://community.avid.com/forums/t/71524.aspx?PageIndex=1

mr difficult has the best workflow i've seen by using Avid (Boris) FX.

DStone:

On a closely related note, ...............................So the question is, what does a workflow for this look like?

Closely related it may be, Dave...... but it is not the question.

The question was posed in my first post in this thread, and it was:

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

(interesting that I said "Stone" cold facts...... )

Dave, Do you mind starting a new thread for your question, as it is a very important one and will probably be the centre of a longer discussion with a different direction than the one I am pursuing here?

Regards,
Douglas

drbgaijin:

LewS:

On the record monitor. It looks totally out of focus while the SD material looks fine.

This is where we differ. Iam not seeing any noticeable degradation on my record monitor.

I am seeing the same bad resolution things as Lew, I also have to believe what you are seeing Douglas and in that case, a mojo DX is needed to be able to use this workflow.

mjolnarn:

drbgaijin:

LewS:

On the record monitor. It looks totally out of focus while the SD material looks fine.

This is where we differ. Iam not seeing any noticeable degradation on my record monitor.

I am seeing the same bad resolution things as Lew, I also have to believe what you are seeing Douglas and in that case, a mojo DX is needed to be able to use this workflow.

Tomas,
I have considered the MojoDX as being a factor in this. However I don't think it is involved in this part of the workflow.
You must also consider the possibility that, as both you and Lew are ardent Liquid supporters with an envious depth of knowledge on it and its many facets, you may both be making the same basic mistake by assuming that MC is doing things in the same way as Liquid.

It can also be that neither of us are correct.

My 2 tutorials on what I have discovered will be online within the hour!
Regards,
Douglas

we were shooting a 60 minute docu over 4-1/2 years, starting with Digital Betacam (16:9) for approx. 175 tapes and then switching to XDCAM HD for the last 10 discs. the client wanted to have a DVD (16:9). so I edited in SD (16:9) and in the end added the finals clips from HD (approx. 1 minute). as we imported the sequences from a XDCAM PDW-U1 drive, we had no chance to downconvert the HD material during ingest by the camera / deck.

switching to HD did make no sense to me. why upres the SD clips to downconvert them to MPEG2 for a DVD?
so the only way is to downres. the HD clips using transcode / export QT / BCC or whatever. but I didn't find a solution with a satisfieng time/quality/(save-for-future-batch-capture&import) optimized workflow. like others described, the downconverted shoots looked like out of focus with some motion problems on pans/zooms. don't know wether a Mojo DX would help - the old adrenaline BOB with an HD board didn't.

mjolnarn:

I am seeing the same bad resolution things as Lew, I also have to believe what you are seeing Douglas and in that case, a mojo DX is needed to be able to use this workflow.

Just an afterthought, Tomas

I don't see how having a Mojo connected would change the Record Monitor's picture quality.
At the Digital Cut stage I do not use the Mojo for the transfer.
I don't have a deck with SDI in or out yet.
So all captures and records are done through the computers firewire.
If you look closely at the Digital Cut Tool window in the 3rd Tutorial you can see  IEEE-1394 is selected as the connection, not the MojoDX.

By the way the Tutorials are now uploaded to the sticky at the top of the page.

Regards,
Douglas

drbgaijin:

mjolnarn:

I am seeing the same bad resolution things as Lew, I also have to believe what you are seeing Douglas and in that case, a mojo DX is needed to be able to use this workflow.

Just an afterthought, Tomas

I don't see how having a Mojo connected would change the Record Monitor's picture quality.
 

Not me neither but that is the only difference between your hardware and ours, we are all using the same software and mine Hd clips are unusable on an Sd tomeline without frirst exporting them to SD quicktime file and reimport them as SD clips, no big deal for me as I am working almost only in HD now.

drbgaijin:

mjolnarn:

drbgaijin:

LewS:

On the record monitor. It looks totally out of focus while the SD material looks fine.

This is where we differ. Iam not seeing any noticeable degradation on my record monitor.

I am seeing the same bad resolution things as Lew, I also have to believe what you are seeing Douglas and in that case, a mojo DX is needed to be able to use this workflow.

You must also consider the possibility that, as both you and Lew are ardent Liquid supporters with an envious depth of knowledge on it and its many facets, you may both be making the same basic mistake by assuming that MC is doing things in the same way as Liquid. 

Or, it might be that simple that, as we have seen what can be done with Avid Liquid, we have higher demands than many other users not knowing that this can be done in a very high quality way.

mjolnarn:

Not me neither but that is the only difference between your hardware and ours, we are all using the same software

Not true, Tomas.
You are using a Radeon 2900 card and Lew an ATI 1950, I am using a certified Nvidia QuadroFX 3700.

mjolnarn:

and mine Hd clips are unusable on an Sd tomeline without frirst exporting them to SD quicktime file and reimport them as SD clips

You lost me there, Tomas. Who is doing that?

Regards,
Douglas