Downrez 1080p footage to 720p

Hello, everyone. I'm going to be buying an HD camcorder soon for an upcoming trip to Africa. I've got my eye on the Canon HF100, which, according to the specs, shoots in 1920x1980 "full" HD. I'd like to be able to take the video and downrez it to 720p for viewing on my AppleTV and perhaps burning to SD DVD to mail to family members.
Those of you that use iMovie, what has been your experience doing things like this? Or would I be better off buying a 720p HD camcorder?
Regards,
Michael

Downresing 1080p to 720p wouldn't be a problem. Just avoid 1080i to 720p, which is tricky to do right. The camera you mentioned has 30p mode so if you don't mind slightly jerkier look its should be fine. (30p won't look as fluid as 60i, but it looks more cinematic than video.)
One thing I am not sure, however, is using full 1920x1080 in iMovie08. AFAIK iMovie 08 uses 'single field processing' to view and output any interlaced video. Even if your footage is 30p, it is recorded in 60i stream so iMovie will think that it is an interlaced source and deinterlace it. (The only exception I know is when you use a powerful machine, like Mac pro)
Personally I find 960x540 (quarter HD) to be acceptable and nice, so you could decide to import footage as 960x540 and export to same size or stretch it to 1280x720 but you will be compromising in quality.
If you want the maximum quality possible with iMovie you need to import footage at 1920x1080 and at some point involve Final Cut Express or Pro for output. You can choose to import and perform most of editing in iMovie and use Final Cut for output only, or go all the way up to doing all things in Final Cut Pro with ProRes422 for the highest quality possible.

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1080p footage looks horrible in 720p timeline

Hello! I have 1080p footage that i want to bring into a 720p timeline. When i bring it in, scale it to 75% and render, the result is horrible! What is a recommended workflow to use 1080p footage in a 720p timeline?
Thanks!
Kyle

"Horrible" is relative, a bit meaningless.
Since we don't know how much you understand about what you're doing, or what you expect as far as quality, or where you are viewing your results, try not to take this personally.
You are throwing away a full 35% of your pixels so, yes, it's going to look a bit soft. Additionally, you are squooshing all of those lost pixels into new mooshy pixels.
The only way to maintain a pixel-to-pixel relationship is not to scale you footage but to crop it. Anything else compromises the image quality because of the processing. You must be viewing your rendered output on a full resolution monitor suitable to the task before deciding your scaling or processing operations are really "horrible" or they just appear that way as an artifact of the presentation.
bogiesan

1080p 50 footage to Blu ray appears to convert to either 1080p 25 or 720p 50 is Share FCPX or Compressor

Has anyone been able to burn 1080p 50 footage to Blu ray, I can only seem to create a file of 1080p 25 or 720p 50 in either FCPX or Compressor 4 as the 50 option is greyed out in 1080p. As far as I can tell most blu ray players can handle AVCHD 1080p 50, even after the latest upgrades this still does not work. The footage is on the time line and project properties are correct.

SteveMPYC wrote:
… as the .mov file over 200 Gig it wouldn't fit on even dual sided Blu ray. …
wrong assumption.
'Disks' (BR/DVD) are completely different encoded than the stuff in your timeline.
To keep things simple, the rule is:
length matters, not size.
A single-layer DVD with maximum quality settings fits ~60min of video.
And, due to standards, is always SDef.
Same disk fits ~20min of HDef in a sort of BluRay-standard = you can burn a BluRay-structure onto DVD-r ... not fully compatible, but for 'quick'n dirty'.
Same DVD-r fits only a minute as 'data' from your timeline, which probably is encoded in proRes = ~40GBs/h ......
forget size ........ think of hh:min:sec

Editing 1080p 29.97fps footage in 720p sequence

Title basically says it. I know there are various ways to solve this but as the video is due I would rather ask and be sure then head down the wrong path.
So the problem is that I shot in 1920 x 1080 at 29.97fps and the customer wants 1280 x 720 in the final video. There is no preset for 720p 29.97fps in the "New Sequence" menu so I just used the "Digital SLR- DSLR 720p24" preset then under the "Settings" tab, then changed the "Timebase" to 29.97 which also changes "Display Format" accordingly.
I realize I could also edit in 1080p sequence then just export as 1280 x 720 but I want to be able to take advantage of zooming and reframing the 1080p footage in the smaller 720p sequence.
Is this the right way to do it? Any disadvantages or better ways?
I have shot 1080p 23.976fps quite a few times and it is simple to just create a 720p 23.976 sequence from the preset with no problems as the frame rates match in the footage and the preset. I just want to make sure I'm accomplishing the same thing.
Thank-you to anyone with some helpful info, my edit is due tomorrow.

Ok thanks. That's basically what I've done, created a custom sequence and also created a new sequence preset for 720p at 29.97fps. I have shot in 1080p at 23.976 fps and edited in a 720p sequence several times before, I just didn't realize there was no 720p 30fps or 29.97fps DSLR option or preset.
The 1080p footage seems to be playing fine in the 720p 29.97fps sequence I created so I think I've accomplished my goal. I will obviously export and have a close look, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.

Downsizing 5d mkii 1080p and Gopro 720p footage into same 720p sequence

Hey guys,
I'm new here and have looked around on the forums and FAQ's for answers but have turned up with nothing.
Basically I have filmed footage in 1080p with a Canon 5d mkII and also 720p footage with two GoPro's.
I want to export a 720p video using both of these resolutions.
What I had planned was downsizing the 1080p footage (already in the sequence) to 720p to match the rest of the footage and can't seem to work out how to do it!
My current attempts have the 720p footage come up as a smaller 'box' in the final clip, where you can still see the 1080p footage below it.
In other words, the 1080p footage isn't downsizing, and is staying at 1080p.
If anyone could help me, it would be much appreciated!
Using Premiere Pro CS5.5
Cheers

It looks exactly the same quality, just compressed!
That's rather a contradiction in terms. Most compression types aren't lossless, and certainly the options from Handbrake aren't, which means some level of degredation will be introduced in the process. It's not good advice to convert already heavilly comrpessed footage for editing, unless you're converting to a lossless format.

What is the best Workflow to output 1080p as a 720P video?

Hi all,
I have DSLR video shot at 1080P. I knew the final product would need to be 720P which was fine since I wanted to be able to move (dolly, zoom in or out) the full sized 1080p clips in the 720P timeline.
The problem I am seeing is that the video exports much softer than the original 1080P footage.
So if any of you have a good workflow of how you would perform this talk, I would love it if you could share it with me.
Some of the clips I am allowing FCPX to "fit" the 1080P footage to the 720P frame, other clips I am using at the native 1080P size (larger than the 720P timeline) and doing the post production moves (dolly, zoom in, zoom out)
The 720P video will end up on Vimeo.
Thanks for any advice,
Matt

Easiest way:
Share > Vimeo
on the share dialog ... next to the last line -> uncheck Set size automatically and select HD 720p Video Sharing
If you need access before exporting to vimeo:
Go back out to the Projects pane and with your video selected:
If you want to keep your original 1080 format as well then duplicate the project
in the inspector, select the Properties pane.
at the bottom of the pane is a wrench icon -> click it.
reset your video properties to 720HD (you may have to settle for 30p rate.)
double click your newly resized video
"Share" > Export as usual

Editing 1080p footage on MacBook Pro 15-inch Core i5 2.4GHz

Hi,
I am thinking of purchasing a Canon EOS 550d. I would be very interested to know if my April 2010 MacBook Pro 15-inch Core i5 2.4GHz will be capable of editing 1080p footage shot at 25fps (PAL). I have edited 720p footage without any problems, but I have never had a camera capable of recording in 1080p.
Thanks,
Acros-Krik

Should not be a problem at all. The best path is to transcode your footage using something like MPEG Streamclip to a usable codec, i.e. ProRes422 or Apple Intermediate Codec, for Final Cut Pro or Express respectively. If using Premiere Pro CS5, you can import native files directly into it. ProRes422 LT is a great codec from FCP7 only, it keeps the transcoded footage at the same file size as the native files and holds plenty of information for color grading later.
It's highly recommended to have all footage and scratch files on an external drive and not your OS drive. Makes everything operate more smoothly.
I do video work on the exact same machine using Final Cut Pro 7. I would strongly advise maxing out the ram. 8GB of ram helped a lot. I was hitting the 4GB limit with just a few pro apps open prior to adding more.

1080P mixed with 720P - how to make the workflow work best?

Dear Forum
I am starting a new documentary and before i start i want to clear something out..
I have shot most of the footage in 720P But maybe about 1/3 of the footage is in 1080P (I was requiered to do so because some of the footage was used for television)
My question is: How do i start my project workflow with mixed footage??
When choosing a 1080P sequense and scaling to resize the 720P footage, i am unable to use the warp stabiliser on the "up-Scaled" 720P footage... Thats basicly the problem..
Please Help!
Thanks in advance!
- Simon

Do a test for yourself
Not sure about that film grain idea though!
Here is your upscale....

1080p footage exporting with bad resolution

I have 1080p footage that i imported into final cut pro, i am done editing but when i export it, it has very bad quality and it is a lot smaller in the screen, my guess is that i imported the footage with the wrong settings. Would you know if I can change the settings in my current project? I would really hate to start everything from scratch. Thanks!

Try this, copy a clip and paste it into a new sequence. You sould get a warning asking if you want to change the sequence to match the clip, Say yes. If you don't get that warning, stop an make sure the sequence is actually set to match the clip.
when you paste it in, the clip should look small in the Canvas. Select the clip and right-click on it to see the Remove Attributes options and remove scale and distortion. The clip shoudl be normal now.
Delete the clip, go back to your problem sequence, select all, copy. Go to the new empty sequences, paste. Select all, remove attributes.
bogiesan

4k & 1080p footage in a multicam edit bug

This happened when I mixed 4k and 1080p footage in a multicam edit and on the multicam inside my editing timeline I changed the "Spatial Conform" to none so I can edit my 4k angle a bit more. When I change it back to "fit" everything works fine. Stupid bug Is there any fix to this?

It appears to me that this is just a glitch in the display in the angle viewer, and it does not affect the output. If so, while mildly annoying, it is not a showstopper.
Anyway, try resizing the angle viewer a little and I expect this to disappear.

BUG/CRASH when exporting 1080p project containing DSLR footage. 720p works fine. Please fix or respond

Hello,
I would like to report an application crash for iMovie mobile. After the recent update (1.2.2), adding the functionality to import footage from cameras other than iOS devices. (DSLR, HDV, HD, MP4 etc.) I recently created a 12min project in iMovie which contained all clips shot on a Canon DSLR. I was able to export a 720p movie to my Camera roll when the project was completed. However when trying to export a 1080p movie it always crashes around 20 seconds after starting the export process. This leads me to believe that there is a bug. I also tried this on 2 other devices (iphone 4s and friends iPad 2) all of them are having the same crashing problem.
I made sure that there was enough space as I'm aware the 12min 720p movie alone was 800mb. Meaning the 1080p file could not exceed more than 2gb. I had 16GB of free space and no other applications running in the background and they would all crash around the same 20 second mark.
Please Advise if this is a known issue already in the works.
Thx,

Welcome,
This is a user forum, so no Apple staff here sorry.
If you have a problem or error to report to Apple then you can do so here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/imovie_ios.html

Playback of 1080p footage looks like studdering

I export my footage to Apple ProRes 422 HQ 1080p. Then I run a check in Quicktime 7. Need it to set a posterframe.
But when I run the clip, people walking in the shot look like shot in a slower framerate.
Got a big shock, because it would mean to re transcode those clips.
I then opened for testing 1 clip in FCP and everything looks smooth.
Must be something in the settings of QT7. I like that program, because I can open more clips at the same time.
Anything I should change in the settings?
Thank you.

Anything I should change in the settings?
Probably your work flow.
If you are setting a posterframe for your Apple ProRes 422 HQ file, then the assumption is that this is final distribution format. While this codec may be excellent for archiving raw data and video editing—it is not suitable for the distribution of a final product targeted for general playback. Further, while FCP is optimized for the editing and real-time rendering of "Pro" codec edits on systems that which support this, the QT player is only optimized for the general playback of distribution level content. Thus, the most likely reason for you playback problem is your likely attempt to push more data through the QT player than it can smoothly render without dropping frames which is is designed to do when it cannot keep up with playback requirements.
What you are seeing here is probably quite normal. Basically, you need to look at your video data rate here. How much data are you trying to push through the QT player per second? Since you did not mention whether or not you limited the data rate of your Apple ProRes 422 HG coding of your content, I will assume, for the sake of argument, that such encodes were made in the auto data rate (i.e., unlimited) mode. If true, then it is likely that your playback expectations are simply unreasonable and you should modify your work flow so that the final distribution content matches media player capabilities.
As no one had asked such a question previously, I ran some tests to get some idea as to what might be going on here. To simulate an HD source content, I extracted a 4 minute video only segment of a BD file I already had on my system, exported it to an Apple ProRes 422 HQ compressed file and compared the results. Here are the stats I found for the H.264 "source" file:
As you can see, the video data rate is greater than 26 Mbps. This is 4 to 10 times what I normally use for general playback distribution H.264 1080p files and roughly 6 to 16 times what I use for 720p H.264 content for mobile IOS and ï£¿TV devices. When I recompressed the BD video data to Apple ProRes 422 HQ and allowed it to use all the data rate it wanted, here is what I ended up with for this particular source file:
As you can see here, this particular file increased 7.5 fold in terms of data rate and file size for the same 4 minute file. In short, this compression codec was never designed for use as a distribution/general playback format and its use here in the QT player likely creates a data bottleneck when trying to play the equivalent of 7 and a half blu-ray discs simultaneously if your files are encoded similar to my test file. So yes, once you are satisfied with the FCP edits, I would probably recommend you recompress your files to match your distribution/playback requirements/needs but keep the "master" file as an archive file for re-edits and/or re-compression as different situations may warrent in the future.

Ingest 1080p AVCHD as 720p ProRes

I have three (3) Canon VIXIA HF10's and I do a lot of three camera shoots in "full res" 1080p and I'm starting to eat up significant HD space (even with almost 7tb to my name). The camera itself doesn't have an option of down resing to 720 (only 1920x1080 and 3 bitrates of 1440x1080). I tried finding a way to get ProRes to ingest the full 1080p as 720p with no luck. Any suggestions other than using the Media Manager to convert it after the fact (which I've been having problems with anyways)?

Has anyone tried Voltaic to convert AVCHD?
I've just started to try capturing AVCHD and this string is great, thanks for the info!
Seems like any program to convert needs tons of tweeks and still isn't great. I have my footage on external hd, got Voltaic demo(converts avchd to quicktime), but can't get the demo to work.
Any ideas to get me started would be great! It seems like Toast may be the best option for me if Voltaic won't do it?
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Exported image is always stretched... source clips 1080p, sequence settings 720p.

So I'm trying to export a file from FC7 at 720p, but it always comes out stretched, no matter what resolution I have the export set to. The source clips are mostly 1080p, but I chose to edit 720p because my Mac was just too slow to be able to efficiently edit in 1080p.
Sequence settings:
Frame Size: 1280x720 (HD 720p)
Pixel Aspect Ration: NTSC - CCIR 601 / DV (720x480)
Anamorphic: Off
The clip settings are mostly 1920x1080, however I'm also working with some still images that vary in resolution. In editing, all of the clips are zoomed in, as I'm trying to cut out some aspects of the image, and focus on specific details within the clip's frame.
In the canvas, the image looks just as it should be, but whenever I export, it is noticeably stretched. I feel like I've run out of options, and I'm thinking of re-editing the entire thing (it's not that long) in 1080p. My gut tells me that it has to do with the clip formats being different from the sequence settings, but I can't figure out anything else that I could try to get it to export properly.
I was hoping if anybody had any ideas, they could shoot them my way. I'd appreciate it.
Thanks!

Unfortunately this did not work, but I feel like it should have when I observe the clip settings. Interestingly, when I set the sequence Pixel Aspect Ratio to square, the image on the canvas appears stretched in the same way that it does in all the exported files that I had previously created. The clip settings are as follows:
Resolution: 1920x1080
PAR: Square
Compressor: H.264
Frame rate: 59.94
Other images that I used are varying resolutions, but also have a square PAR. The sequence settings are as I mentioned in the opening post, but here are some added details that vary from the clip settings:
Compressor: Apple Proress422
Frame rate: 29.97
I tried changing all of the PAR of the clip settings to match the sequence settings, but this didn't work either. Honestly, I think I might just resort to working within 1080p where the sequence settings are changed to match the clip settings exactly, because I opened up a test sequence and it works just fine this way. I appreciate the help a lot though, thank you!

1080p footage to DVD or Blu-ray?

I am involved in a feature length documentary film (aprox 1 hour 15 minutes), where we shot all of our footage at 1080p. We used a Canon 6D, Panasonic HMC40 AVCHD cam and some shots with a gopro hero 2.
We will be releasing this on DVD, but this is also my first time ever releasing something on disc in a mass quantity.
What are the best steps to get this process complete and keep the great quality I am seeing on the timeline?
I am using final cut pro, and compressor. After that I am basically lost and not sure on where to go with it.
Any help would be appreciated!
-Anthony

To recap, for a "commercial release" DVD you'll want to get a specialist involved for the authoring of your show. A pro author may also have access to Cinema Craft Encoder sp3 that is used by pretty much all the big DVD releasers to "create the ultimate level of picture quality" you see in the big kids' DVDs.
After the show is authored, there are two routes for production:
A "Duplication" house can burn your DVDs, package them, etc. in relatively small quantities (hundreds to thousands) at surprisingly reasonable rates.
A "Replication" house can manufacture your DVDs, package them, etc. in LARGE quantities more economically. Note the words in bold.
The Duplicator burns the DVD in a way very similar to how you would, that is, use a DVD writer to record data onto a blank DVD.
The Replicator creates a "stamp" referred to as a "Glass Master" to make the shiny inner layer of the DVD and them encapsulates it in plastic to complete the DVD. He literally manufactures the DVD. This process is less expensive for very large quantities and is less susceptible to variations than burning.
The rules for Blu-Ray are a bit trickier, but in reality Blu-ray probably isn't going to catch up with NetFlix as the DVD replacement technology. If your people want to go there, start Googling.
HTH

Downrez 1080p footage to 720p

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