60i conversion to 24p

[Aaron Frank]

Hello,

 

I'm a tape op and seriously out of my league on this one. I've been given a bunch of tapes shot at 720, 60i. My boss wants a downconvert to 24p. I have a Panasonic HD1400 deck and no idea what to do. Is this even possible with this deck? Or will I have to get some software or another piece of hardware involved somehow?

 

Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated!!

[Phil Rhodes]

I think to do this well you will need to do it in software. It's traditionally one of the harder conversions to do well, without guaranteed good results, and is why 24p cameras became popular in the first place. Optical flow interpolation - very much a non-realtime process - is the best way to do this sort of thing, but it can require manual hinting to get good results on complex scenes. You can do a trick involving applying reverse 3:2 pulldown (to material that didn't actually have 3:2 pulldown to begin with) then deinterlacing, but it doesn't look very convincing in my experience.

 

To do it well is quite a big deal. What I would therefore suggest you do, if it's an original camera tape which will eventually be edited, is to take some "difficult" scenes, such as slow and fast pans and scenes involving a lot of motion, and do some trial conversions. Circulate those and make sure everyone's happy with the results you're getting. Then, do your edit at 60i, and reconvert the output material to 24p. That way you won't have to apply the conversion, which will be time-consuming, to material nobody will see.

 

P

[John Sprung]

I'm a little surprised that you have 720/60i. Most 720 cameras are capable of 60p, and the 720 broadcasters all use progressive. If this is the finished show, take it to a post house that has a Teranex converter. If, as Phil suggests, it's raw dailies, post it in 60i, and only pay for the good conversion on the final product.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.