HDV-> Full 1920x1080 XDCAM EX problem

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Level 3

630 points

HDV-> Full 1920x1080 XDCAM EX problem

Hello all,

I'm kinda embarressed to even need to be asking this, but I've tried all day wasting many hours to no avail and have had enough. I'm trying to do a multicam with footage show on an EX1 and an HVR-A1U and obviously they both need to be the same format. I want to take the HDV footage from the A1U and convert it to XDCAM 35Mb/s VBR to match my EX1, but when I use the Compressor present there's one major issue. Compressor, no matter what I do, will not convert it to true 1920x1080. Even if I go into the Geometry tab and change that to Square Pixel Aspect Ratio and 1920x1080 resolution, it still comes out as 1440x1080 and thus Final Cut refuses to multicam it with the true EX1's footage. Any suggestion besides going to ProRes and needing to convert ALL my footage? If I do need to go to ProRes, what format do you suggest, just regular 422? I will be outputting to Blu-ray, so maintaining the HD is a requirement. Any reason why you see for me not to go to ProRes (LT) since it'll keep the full raster of the EX1 and is still a higher bitrate than the EX1 is shooting at?

I appreciate any help. Honestly I thought I had it all figured out myself, and clearly I was mistaken. For what it's worth, I'm on a Quad Core 2.8Ghz Mac Pro with 12GB of RAM and 4TB of internal storage.

Thanks,

-Brian

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.7), 23" Cinema Display, 17" MacBook Pro

Posted on Nov 8, 2011 10:32 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Hung Ton Quoc

Level 2

175 points

Nov 9, 2011 12:47 AM in response to Brian Kaempen

Just create a XDCAM EX timeline. Drop your HDV on it, just render your selection when your preview is done.

I use to have XDCAM EX timelines mixed with many flavors : HDV, ProRes, DVcam !

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Answer 2

Brian Kaempen Author

Level 3

630 points

Nov 9, 2011 10:39 AM in response to Hung Ton Quoc

I had looked at that, but it takes anywhere from an hour to 90 minutes to export back out of Final Cut and I can only export one sequence at a time. I was really hoping for some sort of batch option like Compressor, but alas, I guess I'll just need to export all these one at a time. I'd really like to figure out why Compressor wouldn't respect it's own size settings now. Thanks Hung Ton Quoc.

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Answer 3

Nov 9, 2011 11:15 AM in response to Brian Kaempen

In compressor duplicate a XDCAM preset to customize and change the setting to 1920.

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Answer 4

Brian Kaempen Author

Level 3

630 points

Nov 9, 2011 11:29 AM in response to Hung Ton Quoc

Already done. I even Saved As to a new preset entitled XDCAM Full HD, and it still wouldn't take. All I can figure is that because it was flagged to be 1920 after the pixels were expanded to be rectangular, Compressor considered that good enough. I say that because if I open it in Quicktime 7 or X, it shows up as 1920x1080, but Final Cut Pro knows better and can see that it's still just 1440x1080. Thanks though.

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