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MillimeterIntegrating DV Source Footage into HDV Projects, Part 1
Dec 10, 2007 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer
Sooner or later, if you're an HDV shooter, you'll need to use DV source footage in one of your high-def productions. It could be a multicamera shoot with mixed DV/HDV equipment, or inserting SD B-roll into your HDV project. But sooner or later, it'll happen, and then you'll be facing two basic questions.
First: What do I need to know to do it right? Second: How does the quality produced by my editor compare to that available with third-party scaling tools? Well, this month, we’ll tackle both questions: the first in this installment, then quality comparisons in the next installment, which includes Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro, plus Algolith AlgoSuite, Digital Anarchy ReSizer, and Red Giant Software Instant HD.
Technical Issues
Let’s set the scene. You’ve got some 4:3 DV footage that you’d like to integrate into an HDV project. If you decide to scale in your editor, there’s a really good chance that you won’t need to dig any deeper into the technical issues I’m about to launch into. I’ll assume that you’re working in an HDV preset in Premiere Pro and/or Final Cut Pro, and the current versions of both products can easily handle multiple formats in a single timeline. Final Cut will even automatically scale the SD video up to HDV resolution for you, saving you a step (Figure 5).
On the other hand, if you decide to utilize a third party tool to scale your video, you’ll need to know some additional technical details about your source and target formats. There are also some artistic decisions worth reviewing, and a myriad of things that can go wrong, which are always easier to debug when you know what’s going on under the hood. So let’s dive into the relevant technical issues.
