DVCPRO HD: fixed resolution? Fixed pixel aspect ratio?

[PaulJBis]

Hi all:

I know that the DV coded has a fixed resolution, and you can only encode with it to 720x576 (PAL in my case), but... does DVCPRO HD share the same limitation?

Why I'm asking this: at work I've been put in charge of editing some material shot originally with the Panasonic HVX200 camera (in DVCPRO HD). The guy who transcoded the original MXFs to Quicktime clips (whom I haven't been able to speak to) chose to encode them with DVCPRO HD... but with a resolution of 640x360. First of all: WTF??? 640x360 is not any valid broadcast resolution AFAIK. Second: when importing those clips to Final Cut, they don't look right: they look too stretched horizontally. My theory is that the DVCPRO HD codec always uses anamorphic pixels, so encoding those clips to 640x360 (=1.78) wasn't really necessary; since this guy did so, Final Cut is showing anamorphic pixels in an image that was already 1.78 to 1 to begin with, so the image is stretched horizontally "twice".

My questions then: 1) is my above assumption (that DVCPRO HD always uses anamorphic pixels) correct? 2) How can DVCPRO HD allow you to encode to a non-standard resolution like 640x360?

Thanks in advance.

[digitalvideo]

why do you not transfert directly the mxf in finalcut ?

640X360 for hd ??? is it a proxy ?

[JohnnyMalaria]

Hi all:

I know that the DV coded has a fixed resolution, and you can only encode with it to 720x576 (PAL in my case), but... does DVCPRO HD share the same limitation?

Yes, it does. DVCPRO HD supports two resolutions.

For PAL, these are 960 x 720 (for 720p mode) and 1440 x 1080 (for 1080i mode).

I don't know how your colleague could encode them as DVCPRO HD *and* 640x360. Surely, the DVCPRO HD codec would only support the two formal modes. Does Quicktime let you tag a file with a nominal playback resolution (that's separate from the actual)? Are they definitely encoded as DVCPRO HD?

[PaulJBis]

Thanks for responding. I managed to solve the problem in the end (more later), but here are more details in case you're interested:

-The files are definitely in DVCPRO HD... or at least that's what Quicktime's "Window/Show movie information" says, and that's where it also says 640x360. To be exact, we're using DVCPRO HD 720p60.
-When opening the files in QT Player, it plays them in 640x360. When importing them in FCP, it also reads and shows them as 640x360 (but stretched anamorphically, as I said).
-How did my colleague manage to do that? Well, it's not that difficult ;) : I tried opening a file in QT Player and exporting it using DVCPRO HD and an arbitrary resolution... and it worked. I set that resolution the standard way (using the "size" button in "Options"), and I suppose that it's storing it whereever the QT container format does. Now that I think of it, perhaps the problem is that the DVCPRO HD codec doesn't override the resolution you're trying to encode to, like DV seems to do... but as I said, I don't really know how it all works internally, which is why I'm asking.
-*Why* did my colleague do that (export to 640x360? Now that's a much more interesting question... ;) I blame drugs.
-As for importing the MXFs directly... can you do that with FCP 5.0? (which is the version we're using). Last time I looked it wasn't possible.

Anyway, in the end I solved it all by re-exporting all the 640x360 files with the DV codec and with the 16x9 flag set. The quality sucks, of course, but at least I can get the editing done; later we can always reexport all the clips in HD and relink everything.

[Blue_MiSfit]

A possibility:

When you open a file in QuickTime on OS X, and resize it for playback, it will remember the dimensions for that individual file.

Perhaps the file in question was actually 960x720 DVCPRO HD, but was resized to 640x360 for playback??

Stupid QuickTime :)

Sound like you've got the ideal workflow from this point figured out, just remember to capture correctly in the future...

~MiSfit

[digitalvideo]

Normaly you have 960X720 flag at 16/9, maybe you can look at this paper :
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/FCP5_HD_and_Broadcast_Formats.pdf

for info flipmac seem to transfert mxf to fcp.

[PaulJBis]

A possibility:

When you open a file in QuickTime on OS X, and resize it for playback, it will remember the dimensions for that individual file.

Perhaps the file in question was actually 960x720 DVCPRO HD, but was resized to 640x360 for playback??

Stupid QuickTime :)

Sound like you've got the ideal workflow from this point figured out, just remember to capture correctly in the future...

~MiSfit

Well... it could be that, but I seriously doubt it. In "Show movie info", both "Normal size" and "Current size" said 640x360.

As for importing the MXFs directly into FCP, I had a look today and it's indeed possible, so I don't know why they didn't do it. The whole project was set up by other people who aren't around, so I couldn't ask them.

[digitalvideo]

another good paper from apple that explain how to work with P2.

http://images.apple.com/pro/pdf/L317074A_FCP_Wkflw.pdf