HDV - ProRes protocol?

Hi Ken and gang,


I've got a 90 minute movie to cut. 2/3'rds of the original material was shot with a Sony HDV camera 60i. The other third is Sony XDCam (HQ), also 60i.

I'm trying to figure out a protocol.

The film is aimed at some kind of theatrical distribution, festivals for sure, possibly a network airing. (It's an engaging subject, and very nicely shot, despite the older format).

Anybody done this? And might you have some recommendations?

Do I 'optimize' on my import? I notice FCPX optimizes the HDV to ProRes 422 (not HQ), but at 60i. Is there a way to set a different optimization? Might I be better off optimizing to 'progressive'?

Should I bother with a proxy when the original was only HDV (now being optimized to ProRes on import)? The edit system I have at hand here seems to be fairly robust.

Or. Should I edit the HDV original? And then just output in whatever codec seems appropriate (when I've done some more research)?

I'd love to be able to do SOMETHING to the HDV footage to get rid of the 'video' look (interlacing etc.). It actually looks like it was shot on film, in terms of lighting and colour, very clean, and yet nuanced. It's 90 minutes, so whatever effecting I do has to be subtle.


Any suggestions would be most appreciated.


Ben

Hi Ben,

I agree working with interlaced video always has been a drag and I really wish in these modern days people would stop shooting interlaced at all. But as this is what you will need to work with you have different options:

1. Edit natively and use the HDV footage as a reference to set your project settings. If you have a fairly robust system you will be able to edit comfortably using the native formats and only the XDCAM footage will require rendering. When the edit is locked you can export a ProRes master file, which will be interlaced, and then you can decide if you want to de-interlace the master file externally to get rid of the interlaced look.

2. Edit natively but set your project settings to 720p or 1080p. The footage will get deinterlaced on your timeline, giving you a much better idea of what you can do to achieve the final look you want. But everything will need to be rendered before you can see the real quality of your edit.

3. Convert all your footage externally to ProRes progressive and import only the converted footage in FCP X. If this is for theatrical viewing you might consider using ProRes(HQ) to maintain the highest output quality. The biggest advantage of this is that all your imported clips will have exactly the same format, you will edit more comfortably with ProRes, and while editing you will see the look of your video exactly as it will be exported. But depending on how much footage you have this may also take a lot of extra time and drive space. If you feel the quality of the subject and the footage are worth it, this would be my preferred workflow.

If you should decide to convert the interlaced video to ProRes progressive externally, this can be done in many ways. If you do this using Compressor make sure to set the deinterlacing method to "Better". This will be slower than the standard setting, but the result will be much, much better. No matter what application you use to do the conversion I would first do a test with a small piece of footage using different settings and compare the final quality vs the conversion time. Also make sure that your output size is always full frame HD (1920x1080 or 1280x720) and NOT the same as your original video (which for HDV is anamorphic).

Best wishes,

Ronny