Working with 25P progressive scan footage

[Davade]

Hi all,

Currently I am working on a new documentary that was shot on Panasonic DV camera which has a 25P progressive scan function on it. Furthermore there is an anamorphic len attached to it so as to achieve a 16:9.

I will be editing them on a FCP and I have a few queries.

1) How do you manage 25P progressive scan resolution when digitising them into FCP without it interpreting as interlaced? Is there a plug-in or hardware that actually translate the algorithm?

2) The final edit needs to be printed onto film and how do I ensure that the final export of the edit still retain the 25P progressive scan resolution?

[JWRL]

If you're working SD then you will be dealing with an interlaced image regardless of whether the camera is clocking the image out of its CCD at 25P or 50I. The only difference is that the two successive fields that make up one frame contain the same motion content, unlike a conventional television image. The resulting picture is still interlaced because that is the way that standard definition television works.

In fact apparently some cameras do a less good progressive output anyway and can produce motion artifacts on the two successive fields.

[Davade]

Thank you so much. It has been a great help to know.
I can now start the process of digitising 70 tapes into FCP without thinking that I am going to digitise them all again.

[Editgrrl]

Hi Davade
I was just wondering how your digitising went. Could you tell me what deck you're digitising from, whether it's a HD SDI signal or via firewire, and if you found any inherent issues.

I have been working on a project that is 1080/25p and found that digitising (via a HD SDI signal) caused crashing and kernel panics and have had to use an extrerme work-around to capture the footage. I would like to resolve this for my next project.

Thanks

[Davade]

Hello Editgrrl,

My digitising went well very smoothly. I am using a Firewire and digitise them using a Sony Deck DSR11

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBusiness/DisplayModel?m=10014&p=16&sp=113&id=58442

I don't think the 25p has been translated into my footage and I am going to leave it til the end when I do the online.

I have yet to find a satisfying solution.

Sorry that I couldn't help you much.

Cheers,
David

[JWRL]

Editgrrl, you're dealing with HD, while David is dealing SD. Different issues entirely.

You may in fact be running up against drive access issues. Are you using RAID or just single disc drives? Because you will definitely need high speed disk access. On one of the (Avid, but the principles are the same for FCP) forums that I browse the suggestion was that for good real-time performance you need RAID 5, although others seemed to be managing with simple two way stripes.

If you don't understand any of the preceding paragraph, contact your friendly local computer wizard.

Whatever the outcome, welcome to the bleeding edge!