First 1920x1080 24p video from my hv20 - Oklahoma Storm Chase Timelapse

jamesl

So, I've been pulling my hair out for the past two weeks trying to create true 24p 1920x1080 video from my Canon hv-20 NTSC camera. I have some great footage from a beautiful supercell on July 12th in Western OK shot in the pf24 hdv mode of the camera. I normally process my movies in Windows Movie Maker, but I just wasn't happy with the results in this case.

I first downloaded the demo of Sony Vegas Pro to see how that works vs movie maker. Wow, what a powerful but confusing piece of software. It's taken my a while, but I think I am becoming somewhat comfortable editting in Vegas now, and I love it. The number of effects you can apply is amazing. In messing with the different templates, I started diving deeper into what my hv20 can do in terms of resolution.

After doing a bit of googling, I found this excellent resource:

http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2007/0...-24p-pulldown/

In short, this explains that the hv20 can create 24p video, but it is wrapped in a 60 frame interlaced package. In order to get 24p, you have to do what's called a pulldown romoval to transform the video stream. If your video is only going to DVD or TV, then you don't have to worry about this. However, for me, my video is soley for the internet, and I really want deinterlaced progressive scan quality.

For the past two weeks, I've been trying to get my head around this whole crazy concept. I consider myself a pretty sharp photo editor, very familiar with a number of tools. My photo tools, however, seem simple compared to the insanity of codecs, rendering, pulldown removal, etc. The number of different standards and ways of doing things with hd video is mind boggling. I was finally able to get the 2nd Windows PC method mentioned in the above link working last night, and I'm pretty happy with the results. Here's a before and after video rendering:

1440x1080 interlaced video from Windows Movie Maker:
<EMBED height=480 type=application/x-shockwave-flash width=640 src=http://cdn.smugmug.com/ria/ShizVidz-2010071401.swf flashVars="s=ZT0xJmk9OTMzNjEwNTI2Jms9b2hHOTImYT0xMjkxNzY2OF9yemtIOSZ1PWphbWVzbA==" allowFullScreen="true">

1920x1080 24p rendering from Sony Vegas:
<EMBED height=360 type=application/x-shockwave-flash width=640 src=http://cdn.smugmug.com/ria/ShizVidz-2010071401.swf flashVars="s=ZT0xJmk9OTcyODYyMTI3Jms9eVM1ZmsmYT0xMjkxNzY2OF9yemtIOSZ1PWphbWVzbA==" allowFullScreen="true">

Here's a link to the full 1920x1080 version:
http://www.langfordphotography.com/S...27_yS5fk-X2-LB
(note, this video is BIG, and you'll need a good internet connection and a high res monitor to see it fully (or a tv)).

So, am I crazy for trying to get 24p? I love the huge resolution. It's also easier to pull individual frames from the source since it's not interlaced, and the files are a larger resolution.

Any comments, feedback or thoughts are appreciated!

James

DavidTO

Beautiful.

What I don't understand is if you're speeding it up why would you have to worry about the pulldown? I'm going to talk in FCP-speak, since that's what I work in, but let me know if this makes sense. When you cut the original clip into your sequence, and speed it up, the system is already throwing away a bunch frames, right? So just make your sequence settings what you want your output to be, in this case 24fps. The software will render the speedup and the conversion to 24fps at the same time.

jamesl

DavidTO wrote: »

Beautiful.

What I don't understand is if you're speeding it up why would you have to worry about the pulldown? I'm going to talk in FCP-speak, since that's what I work in, but let me know if this makes sense. When you cut the original clip into your sequence, and speed it up, the system is already throwing away a bunch frames, right? So just make your sequence settings what you want your output to be, in this case 24fps. The software will render the speedup and the conversion to 24fps at the same time.

Thanks for the reply David! I think you are probably right. A lot of it is just my limited understanding of the technology, and the effect of the different shooting modes. Ultimately I'm wanting the highest quality output resolution and color quality. I just wish it didn't take me 3 hours to render a scene! ;-) Using 32 bit color really bumps up the processing time.

James

DavidTO

The other thing you could do is to skip the video step altogether and use an intervalometer to get a time lapse on a still camera.