HD to SD conversion

[Qframe]

I’m currently using the NX with Edius 4.2 (PAL Aust.) and have finally got around to building some projects in HD (shot in HDV). With one TV commercial just completed and a half hour program in its early stages I’m a bit concerned with HD to SD conversion. Currently the TV stations will only accept SD and therefore I need to convert my finished projects to SD for delivery. There is also the need to provide content for DVD release.

My initial testing has been a bit disastrous. Any HD vision that I convert from Edius or Procoder to SD has lost sharpness, has color space degradation and bad interlacing effects. These are most notable on faces during IVs.

Is there a wrong and right way to do this?

Does a good conversion require extra hardware?

It would be good if my final product (after conversion from HD to SD) at least looked better than SD produced products.

[GrassValley_KH]

The best workflow (so far) is to switch the project to an SD preset and reposition any pixel-based effects (titles, region filters). Export that timeline to the delivery format of choice.

[Qframe]

I take this to mean that you would change the Project settings in Edius to PAL SD.

I have tried this and found the same results as my initial tests. Vision looks very disappointing.

Moments ago I recored a HD TV commercial to tape (in HD) and then did a component capture to SD through a Decklink card and Premier Pro (on another machine) and found that the finsished SD was amazing!

There must be a better way to do it without going through all this. I would prefer to edit with Edius and NX instead of using Aspect HD.

[Aristotelis]

Also within Procoder 2 (and 3) you will find some filters that do the color space convertion between HD and SD...Use them!!

[JimJulian]

We do conversions from HD to SD all the time using a Sony Z1.
1. Make an AVI of your project.
2. Bring AVI into a new project timeline that is 4:3.
3. You should be looking at a letterbox of your AVI.
4. Select the clip
5. Choose Fit to Height under layout.

This will blow the piece up a bit. We put dozens of TV shows on the air using this workflow in San Francisco with no discernable loss of resolution. Make sure your original graphics were 4:3 title safe and you should be fine.

jim

[xeberdee]

Hi Q Frame,

You didn't mention your HD attributes, progreesive 720 or 1080i etc?

Progressive HD material in a 576 50i project remains progressive in an interlaced project. Maybe you need to change properties to field first for each clip?

[antonsvideo]

all Australian stations prefer SD 16:9 over SD 4:3 (in fact they will soon ban SD 4:3)

so, all you need to do is change project from HD to SD 16:9 and you are done

no need to render a thing

simple

[xeberdee]

so, all you need to do is change project from HD to SD 16:9 and you are done

no need to render a thing

simple

Sounds good Anton but there is also the title issue amongst other things. Plus the fact that on NX hardware for example, it seems as if you can't just change from a HD to SD project if you want to have baseband outputs from the NX at 576i for tape etc. So you need to render to get the project out correctly and into an SD project. Qframe's using HDV - HDV M2t to whatever SD is a conversion that requires a render surely?

The workflow seems to be SD to SD with support for mixed formats & output, not HD to SD with support for mixed formats & output. Can anyone expand on this?

[antonsvideo]

yes, correct, titles need to be double clicked and closed in order to adjust for SD

the rest works fine here on SP card, have not tested with NX card but should be the same?

[xeberdee]

Hej great! - so it works with SP then?

NX is strange. I have the NX with expansion card where this seemingly doesn't work with Edius.

What I'm doing -

• Creating a 720P 50P project with the NHX-E1 at 50Hz DVCPROHD 720/50P.
• Import using DVCPRO HD P2 media at native format.
• Edit the content.
• Choose - Settings>Project settings>Output device to change the project settings.

In project settings I get nothing under NHX-E1 SD PAL. The output format is empty. I can choose OHCI SD if I wanted to output to firewire, but the only output formats there are HDV 576/50P 16:9 or 4:3.

[pjsssss]

It works with NX also. I am on the road for the next few days so I can't check the NX settings.

[SRsupport]

I could be wrong but I think 50p nx out will be added in 4.5. Maybe KH can answer this because I could be confusing things.

SR

[GrassValley_KH]

I could be wrong but I think 50p nx out will be added in 4.5. Maybe KH can answer this because I could be confusing things.

SR

Quite correct - 60p/50p for JCV (ie. 1280x720) make their debut with 4.5.

[xeberdee]

Sounds good pjsssss... and I think I've found out why. You're probably using PCIe and I'm using PCI-X. There's a difference in the capabilities of these cards I wasn't aware of at first glance. NX workstation does not offer 'Realtime HD/SD resolution conversion and output'

As far as 50p goes, the 2 Output Formats I have in my Generic OHCI SD PAL output device are.

• HDV 576/50p 4:3
• HDV 576/50p 16:9

[GrassValley_KH]

Sounds good pjsssss... and I think I've found out why. You're probably using PCIe and I'm using PCI-X. There's a difference in the capabilities of these cards I wasn't aware of at first glance. NX workstation does not offer 'Realtime HD/SD resolution conversion and output'

The only difference between any NX solutions, would be the daughterboard - the one included in the NX Express package has the MPEG-2/MPEG-4 encoder chip. Otherwise, all NX boardsets are created equal.

As far as 50p goes, the 2 Output Formats I have in my Generic OHCI SD PAL output device are.

• HDV 576/50p 4:3
• HDV 576/50p 16:9

This is correct. EDIUS can switch project resolutions. It cannot switch project frame rates. 50i is considered different a frame rate to 50p (see for yourself, look in the 'Description' area of each of the project settings and see the value for 'Frame Rate'.