Convert to SD

[John Lewis]

Has anyone compared the Anton method (VDub etc) to Firecoder Convert to SD option for quality. Shot 18 hours of Video (holiday in very cold Florida) and some family do not have blu-ray so i will also need to produce a DVD
Tried producing DVD straight from TL looks ok but some doubt. All footage is either Tape 1440*108oi or AVCHD from Panasonic HS300 also at 1440

[David Clarke]

I did using 1.02 drivers and thought the result was very good - although I think Virtual dub was a bit better. When I changed to using 1.11 I could not get it working properly and gave up and went back to 1.02 which did every thing I needed for now.

[John Lewis]

Thanks david
It doesnt look like many use Firecoder, sometimes i think i was sold a pup ?
Hope they sort it soon, Just really looking for the least time consuming. as Vdub way needs a new HQ file then VDub then to DVD as FC produces a file which is already re sized to 720*575 and ready to print to disc

[Bluetongue]

Thanks david
It doesnt look like many use Firecoder, sometimes i think i was sold a pup ?
Hope they sort it soon, Just really looking for the least time consuming. as Vdub way needs a new HQ file then VDub then to DVD as FC produces a file which is already re sized to 720*575 and ready to print to disc

Agree with you John,
FCB Works well or reasonably well going from SD to HD, providing you engage the "Super Resolution", (Not available for all formats)
You can still tell it was not HD but its acceptable if you have to use it but for HD to SD the virtual dub method is so far the best.
I use the "Lossless" codec, seems to looks just a bit better or I think so. Bigger files and takes a little longer
Regards Barry

[David Clarke]

when you say
Tried producing DVD straight from TL looks ok but some doubt.
Do you mean an edit off the EDIUS timeline? FCB only works in HD inside EDIUS and all the downcoversion I do is in the Firecoder software.
With the latest drivers (1.11 the ones I gave up on) when I chose export through disc manager it launches the EDIUS-style dvd writer and then when I went to write a DVD it seemed to do it all in software.

Its on my to do list to get back and try the later drivers again, although seen plenty of comments here where people have said stick to 1.02 as well.

I think FireCoder is great for what it is - I use it to speed up H264 from EDIUS and downconversion. I wish it did 720P, but then it would be great if EDIUS did 720P as well. Also does speed up AVCHD transcoding too which is really useful.

BTW when I say I use it for down conversion I will generally produce a large file and then re-encode that in a DVD program. I think the down conversion is good but not so convinced about the MPEG encoding quality. About 6MB looked ok but anything less I thought had artefacts.

[John Lewis]

Not edited
I first converted a comnplete tape in FCB 1.02 (likewiswe seen all comments on all other versions) which produced a new file Mt2s

[John Lewis]

Tried a test here is workflow and results look fine i think sometimes we are too critical and HD is now making SD look ancient and clouds our vision of what final output should look like

Use FCB to convert to SD (either tpe or AVCHD)
you will get a new file for tape or files in AVCHD all in AVCHD mt2s 720*576 possibly NTSC will give different resolution
Start new DV project in Edius- Edit - and Burn to Disc