Creating 1920 MOV files from 1440 footage STOCK FOOTAGE

[spudgun]

Hello my learned and respected friends.
My camera produces fine 1440 X 1080 HDV. I am making clips for STOCK footage which have to be rendered as MOV files.

I am using the X5 version of Videostudio which produces a baffling array of options!!

Ordinarily, I would render out of Videostudio by 'Create file', 'HDV 720-25p', as I am shooting 25 frames progressive, here in PAL land. I would then use MPEG Streamclip to 'Export to Quciktime' to produce a high quality MOV file. The problem with THIS is that my footage is then 1280 X 720. as I do NOT appear to have an option to render out of Videostudio, keeping my original footage format, or even upscaling to 1920 which I would love to do.

My options to render out to 1080 are all INTERLACED.

My question IS, is there a workflow, to convert the native 1440 X 1080 footage into 1920 X 1080, or at LEAST keeping the 1440 aspect?? Would rendering OUT, using the interlaced options affect my footage??

As always, best wishes.

[BrianCee]

all very convoluted

in X5 when you get to 'create Video file'- just choose 'custom' and set up your own template for a .mov file - no need for any later conversion - see below

why are you worried about frame based - may well improve your output

you can set 1920 as shown - but isn't that going to cause some distortion

click on the image to see it larger

[spudgun]

I shall give that a try my friend. Many thanks. Don't know about distortion, wasn't sure if the quality would be INFERIOR if creating a MOV file out of Videostudio. Can but try! Again many thanks for your help. Spud

[asik1]

We have one ongoing forum expert on HDV and that is Ken from NZ, once he will wake up he will give you your optimum workflow.

[spudgun]

Many thanks. That fine gentleman Ken has helped me on MORE than one occasion.

[Ken Berry]

Now awake... but a little confused by the progressive/interlaced question and HDV; or rather what I see as spudgun's conversion of interlaced to progressive HDV. If he has a Sony or Canon HDV camera, which I suspect he does since his original HDV footage is 1440 x 1080 -- also known as HDV2 -- then it is interlaced video (1080i). No if's, not but's... HDV2 only comes with one set of properties 1440 x 1080, Upper Field First, 25 fps (or 29.97 fps NTSC), 25000 kbps, and mpeg layer 2 audio at 384 kbps.

JVC went with what is called HDV1 which is 1280 x 720p which spudgun also mentions, though again I don't know why he is converting his original interlaced HDV2 to HDV 1.

The 1440 x 1080 frame size also seems to be causing a bit of confusion, and it shouldn't as it is all smoke and mirrors. HDV2's 1080i records at 1440x1080 but uses rectangular pixels similar to widescreen DV (the HDV pixel aspect ratio is 1.33:1). This stretches the picture frame to 16x9. In effect, it appears identical to 1920 x 1080i video on the screen.

I regularly convert my HDV2 footage from my now aging Canon HV20 to AVCHD 1920 x 1080i and there is no distortion at all, so that is one worry out of the way.

Unfortunately, though, I haven't tried producing either 1080p AVCHD from my HDV, nor in .mov format as I never saw the need for it. So if spudgun really wants 1080p, then all I can suggest is that he either use his existing converter, or do as Brian suggested regarding the QT profile in the image he posted. My only worry there would be, though, that by going from 50i to 25p half the frames would be thrown away and the resulting video could appear a bit jerky or flickery...

[spudgun]

Hello Ken. Many thanks for the advice. Yes, I have the Canons, XHA1 and the HV30, which here in PAL land I shoot at 25 fps, which I believed was 25 full frames as I can switch between that or 50i. I hadn't thought of rendering out using AVCHD. Because I submit to STOCK footage agencies, they all pretty much require clips in the Quicktime MOV fomat, usually with Photo JPEG Compression. I am going to try your workflow using AVCHD, Ken, and see what I can do with the result. Kindest and sincere wishes to you great guys.
UPDATE!! The AVCHD rendering produces an unwatchable M2T clip, two thirds GREEN screen! Will try something else.If I render in an HDV 1080 file then try and upscale it to 1920 X 1080, it also SLOWS DOWN the footage, clearly affecting the frame rates!!

PS: That little HV20 of yours is a miracle!! Is it still realy going?? You must have shot hours and hours with this! Is it still all original and unrepaired!!??

[Ken Berry]

That's strange. I output to AVCHD literally all the time from my HDV footage and the quality is excellent. Never had a failure. Something is obviously wrong since you say the extension of the new clip is .m2t. That of course is the extension HDV uses. AVCHD should be .m2ts.

50i footage is the same as 25 fps when the footage is interlaced as it always is with HDV. The complication is that you can also have 25p and 50p when you select frame based or progressive.

And yes my HV20 is still in its original, unrepaired state and still going strong! These days, though, I also use my GoPro Hero 3 Black a lot. That produces mp4 using the AVCHD h.264 codec. I usually set it for 50p, and sometimes mix it with HV20 50i footage, and that also works well when rendering to AVCHD.

[Curious]

I just asking myself why converting the lower resolution clip to a higher resolution one (if not a requierement of the final clip user). For a similar codec, this would create bigger files without increasing quality (upscaling is usually better to be done in hardware on tv or viewer device, than low cost software codec, because this needs extrapolation, i.e. creating more new pixels that were not there in the original frame and this could be cheaply done by consumer software ). Similar concern going from interlace to progressive content: this requieres for the codec to do some kind of deinterlacing (field drop, field blending, etc) that could be of lower quality when done in low cost software encoder (if the content has fast action frame, this could cause jearky/choppy video if not well done)...