We have to create a promotional movie which includes video footage and CG rendered with VRay in HD.
By way of getting the process correct, if anyone has done this before will you provide any tips or things to avoid as our time frame is a bit tight and don’t have time to get anything wrong.
In Max we are rendering out at the HDTV (video) setting which is 1920x1080 @ an Image Aspect of 1.77778 and a Pixel Aspect of 1.00000. Is this the same dimensions etc.. that we should use to setup Premiere ?
The final output is for a Widescreen TV/Plasma PAL.
Your right, there seems to be some places that use 1920x1080 and others that use 1280x720 so, I am confused.
The interlaced thing or Progressive - if the footage is shot in progressive, it is meant to have more of a filmic look apparently. I intend to do everything Progressive anyway - not sure how this works with rendered images. Actually, I think they are rendered as Interlaced - due to the ‘Field Order’ setting in the Preferences dialogue under Rendering. If I am wrong then please correct me.
If you want to render interlaced you also have to enable “render to fields” in the render settings. I wouldnt recommend that at all tho. Usually i’d say 1280x720 is sufficient even for 35mm scanned to HD. Depending on the footage quality you can even get away with doing 1024x768 sometimes.
What I meant was - when rendering from max, the pixel aspect is 1.0 or square. When exporting the movie from Premiere, do I still export it with square pixels? Will square pixels look fine on a widescreen tv ? Not stretched or whatever.
Yes a 1.0 pixel aspect will look fine on a HD tv, somethings to note though, most HD tv’s are 720p not 1080p and if you are going to dvd they only handle ED, in the case of the dvd you will need to change the pixel aspect.
720 might be easier to work with both in Max and in Pemiere and after effects, and it can be down converted or up converted to the Upper rez HD or down to SD.
Cheers
Mike K
if you are going to dvd they only handle ED, in the case of the dvd you will need to change the pixel aspect.
Does this mean that HD movies can’t be stored on DVD for playing on a HDTV ? Also, why would I have to change the Pixel Aspect ?
it can be down converted or up converted to the Upper rez HD or down to SD.
I am not sure how this works. Will a movie @ 720 not lose clarity if converted up to HD?
dvd (mpeg2) can only support 4:3 SD video so you need to render the 16:9 footage at a 1.2 pixel aspect to fit into the format, then when it is displayed it will stretch out to fit the wide screen.
There have been a lot of posts on the subject here are a couple.
DVDs can only play 720X576 in PAL versions. To play HD u will need a BluRay player or HDDVD player, or a Hard disk based device capable of HD output via HDMI.
just finished an HD res movie. u cant currently burn it to anyhting, bar blueray, i think. but dont quote me on that. delivery has to be Quicktime. H264 is a good one for full HD, other options as we did was deliver on HDCAM tape. thats the only way that I know of currently. a post house can dump to tape for you from their edit suites.
we edited, and comped at full 1920, and everyhting was fine. we had over 30 layers in AE, no probs. premiere edits with rushes so to speak, it creates little versions. final output, was 1280 res HD, its smaller brother, as some footage we got given was at this size. so working at 1920 and downsizing means nice sharp render quality. plus we have the option to output an HD version when tech catches up.
Thank you all for your help. Its good I asked the question because I had no idea that HD couldn’t go onto a DVD.
Unknown, could you elaborate some more on your process as the programs you are using is exactly what we are using ?
For example, what settings do you use to set up in Premiere/AE?
How do you go between Premiere & AE ?
Did you export your final movie from Premiere to tape, if so where there any specific setting you used or didn’t use?
Where there any tips or tricks you encountered during the process ?
We are going to film on a Panasonic HVX200 - did you have any problems downloading the footage to PC ?
I love doing digital video work but find it an incredibly difficult process so, any information you can provide me with will be well received.
usually i render widescreen format with hight of 480 and whatever the width would be for that. square pixel. then go through the entire editing process like that and finally at the end when compressing to mpeg2 will i set the PAR to compress the file to 720x480 (even though in my research there wasnt much quality difference between rendering animorphic and keeping it like that for the whole process or rendering quare pixel and compressing at the end. plus since i go to dvd i render at 24fps and compress at 24fps onto dvd since im NTSC and i love saving 6 frames a second
I have shot with that cam in the past and, as u must be aware, this is a P2 cam, so ideally no tapes are involved in the process (although it´s possible to record with tapes too, u wont get HD from that). You will need a laptop for “ingesting” the footage, as the p2 card itself is a pcmcia card, so u just need to plug it and use the P2 viewer and drivers from panasonic to complete the process. You will end with lots of MXF files, which are only compatible with some video apps out there, avid xpress being one of them and natively. Beware of the resolution u use, though. If u go 1080p, u are not likely to run into trouble, but if u use 720p, check if ur editor can handle that, especially with slow-motion shots (like 50p).
I would recommend 1280X720 progressive (aka 720p) because it wont be an overload for your machine and quality will be really good. There are some apps which can help dealing with the resulting MXF files. One of them is Raylight (Raylight by DVFilm - Edit HVX200 DVCPROHD P2 MXF with Vegas or FCP)
and the others are the range of products from Cineform (http://www.cineform.com)
Seems like.