The Bonsai Method
  1. Firstly, capture and edit in HDV.
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  3. Your choice of Native HDV or Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) HDV does not matter to this process, nor will it improve, or worsen the SD end result.
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  5. Got that edited HDV timeline ?
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  7. Let’s call it HDV EDIT
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  9. 1st up, do you want to blur it a little ? Its up to you, this is an optional step:
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  11. •Create a Second HDV timeline, named HDV BLUR.
  12. •Open its settings, and set it to be the same HDV setup as your edit. (Load a HDV preset)
  13. •Drop the HDV EDIT sequence into the HDV BLUR timeline.
  14. •In the HDV BLUR timeline, select the HDV EDIT sequence, and ctrl + click, or right click, and choose ‘Open in Viewer’. Do not double click - this just opens the HDV EDIT sequence. (Unlike double clicking on clips).
  15. •In the viewer, click on the filters tab. Now choose the menu item:
  16. •Effects > Video Filters > Channel > Channel Blur
  17. •Set the blur to be 1 or less, depends on the footage. 0.5 may be all you need.
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  19. ★Q. Why Channel Blur, Why Not Flicker Filter ?
  20. ✓A. Channel blur leaves the interlacing intact, and blurs fields separately. This preserves interlaced motion, while still reducing flicker.
My editing at its finest.
Open the nested sequence, in the viewer,
as you would a clip.
The only way to really know the correct blur setting, is to view the down convert on a TV, ideally from a DVD player.
DV50 matches the resolution of DVD MPEG2 (720x480), and exceeds the colour space (4:2:2 vs. MPEG’s 4:2:0), at 50 mbits/sec it is a good choice for compression too.
Here are the side by side canvas comparisons. While not a full line double, it is very noticeable on a TV, oddly, when there is motion, the effect goes away on the fast moving parts of the scene, to return again when the object stops.
  1. Next up, the SD (Standard Definition) timeline, to do the resolution down convert.
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  3. •Create a New Sequence. View the Sequence > Settings use the DV50 preset, we’ll start with anamorphic for now. Call it DV50 16to9
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  5. Now the very important part!
  6. •In the Sequence Settings window, click on the Video Processing tab.
  7. •Now, click the Motion Filtering Quality pop-up and choose Fastest (Linear).
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  9. ★Q. Why ?
  10. ✓A. It removes the dreaded line doubling!
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  12. •Drop your HDV EDIT or HDV BLUR sequence into the DV50 16to9 sequence.
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  14. View it in the canvas, at 100%, to see the goodness of the method.
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  16. See below for a detailed side by side comparison, you can see the line doubling, that both compressor exhibits, and the DV50 timeline will exhibit if the motion filtering quality is not set to Fastest.
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  19. •Finally, export to compressor.
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  21. As always there are few ways to do this.
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  23. The easiest method is straight from the timeline, and, if you have not rendered the DV50 timeline, this is also the highest quality, because the DV50 codec is never actually used, the image is created at 720x480, and shipped straight to the mpeg encoder.
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  25. It is also pig slow. Partly because the interface between compressor and FCP seems to add a bit of time, but mainly because on a 2 pass encode, it has to apply all the filters and re-scaling all over again, for the second pass.
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  27. The fastest method, is to export the DV50 timeline to a quicktime movie, and then put that movie into compressor. The results are near identical, I prefer the faster method.
  1. Once in compressor (by whichever method you choose) select the DVD: Best Quality setting, 90 minutes if you can. Select all, then remove the AIFF encode (unless you want it).
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  3. Hit Submit. Have a cuppa.
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  5. Load the resulting assets into DVD Studio Pro, and make sure you set the track type to 16:9 to match the anamorphic footage.
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  7. If you want the footage side cropped when played on a 4:3 TV, choose 16:9 Pan-Scan, it will fill the screen, but loose the sides.
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  9. If you want the footage letterboxed when played on a 4:3 TV, choose 16:9 Letterbox.
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  11. Burn and test on a real TV with a real DVD player.
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