the HDR-FX1 Down-Conversion

mmonte000 · September 13, 2005

I am going to buy the HDR-FX1 in a couple months but I still have a few questions. First of all when you "down convert" Are you converting the video from 1080i to 720 or are you just cropping off the edges of the frame? Once converted are you able to up-convert it without recapturing footage? And does the down conversion still look better than something like the pd170 for example? Is it possible, however unlikely, for me to transfer anything shot on the fx1 to film? Also, is the quality in DV mode better than the quality with the dvx100a?

Sorry for all the questions

-Chris Reilly

Kyuss · September 13, 2005

I am going to buy the HDR-FX1 in a couple months but I still have a few questions. First of all when you "down convert" Are you converting the video from 1080i to 720 or are you just cropping off the edges of the frame? Once converted are you able to up-convert it without recapturing footage? And does the down conversion still look better than something like the pd170 for example? Is it possible, however unlikely, for me to transfer anything shot on the fx1 to film? Also, is the quality in DV mode better than the quality with the dvx100a?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

i can help in an experienced way on only a couple of points

"Down Convert" to me is HDV to DVD (ie 1440*1080 convert down to 720*576)

Yes can up-convert again, but quality will be lost in the down-convert that cannot be regained without re-capturing.

Can't really give an educated comparison with PD170, but HDR doesn't have XLR or DVCAM but significantly does have twice the resolution of the PD170 and its 16:9 is native as opposed to the PD170 supporting 4:3 natively.

Transfer to film - yes possible, no idea who would do a conversion TO film as opposed to from, but search hard enough and you would find one for sure...

In DV mode i would guess that the DVX100A is the equal of if not the better of the HDR, but when you factor in the HD, the sony has the edge...

Alvin Pingol · September 13, 2005

>>First of all when you "down convert" Are you converting the video from 1080i

>>to 720 or are you just cropping off the edges of the frame?

Downconverting refers to the resizing of an entire frame. It can be done by simply discarding excess pixels, which looks bad unless the conversion factor is 50% or 25% the original size for obvious reasons, or by using interpolation to smooth things out if not doing a half or quarter (or eighth, etc.) reduction. Whenever I downconvert something, I usually throw a fine unsharp mask over the image since I don't have to worry too much about video noise being sharpened anymore, plus it helps recover some details lost due to interpolation and the lower resolution in general.

>>Once converted are you able to up-convert it without recapturing footage?

No. [technically yes, but all you will be doing is interpolating back up to the higher resolution, which is pointless if your source material is true high-def]

>>And does the down conversion still look better than something like the pd170

>>for example?

I cannot say for sure since I have not done this, but I would imagine it should, since your HD source footage has a *lot* more information to begin with, than the native SD PD-170 footage.

lux · October 20, 2005

If you were to film with the intention of sd, and since the fx1 can record in dv or hdv, would there be any advantages of recording in hdv and down-converting to dv? Would down-converted footage look better then the same footage shot in dv or would it justy be a waste of time.

Erkki Halkka · January 3, 2006

If you were to film with the intention of sd, and since the fx1 can record in dv or hdv, would there be any advantages of recording in hdv and down-converting to dv? Would down-converted footage look better then the same footage shot in dv or would it justy be a waste of time.

It will look better, if you scale to an uncompressed SD format - how big the diffrence is depends on the footage.

Wether it's worth of the extra step or not - i.e. for bluescreen work it's DEFINITELY worth it, for something like a documentary (not much post) it's maybe not.

You can do the conversion in the camera if you wish, but you'll end up with a regular DV file, and there's probably no big difference compared to shooting DV right away.