at wich stage downsample footage?

[fredjeang]

Hi,

In the case that you know from the begining that the output has to be 720p, at wich stage would you consider to downsample the footage at 720?

Normaly I film at the max res posible, convert into editing format at the same res, edit, keep a master and from the master I create the necesary versions.

But I was thinking if it would be a good idea to downsample at 720 directly from the convertion to editing format. This has the advantage to be less memory consuming. But I'm not sure if quality is lost this way.

So, reducing at 720 from the begining or at the end after the editing?

Thanks.

[Chris Sanderson]

Simple: Keep as Hi-res as possible until the final conversion(s)

[fredjeang]

Thanks Chris.

[fredjeang]

I personaly find that the transcoding to ProRes gives me a good workflow without downsampling. What really slows down in my case is when work in native AVCHD so I avoid this.

In fact, Chris statement is very logical. Having an edited master at the highest resolution possible is a good option. Because a part from the fact that it keeps the max res until the end, you might want to need later a higher res output for a reason or another.

[fredjeang]

In that case just work with proxy files and only reconnect to the full ProRes files at the end. But again very few clients honestly need 1080p for now. The average viewer can't tell a difference between 720p and 1080p on plasma and LCD TVs. Only the creators of the content can. Stuff going to a big screen are a fraction of a single percent of everything shot real world.

You're correct. In the technical sheets I had, so far, not one time clients have asked for 1080. I've worked one with proxy but didn't like very much. If you're in a plane with little computer power it's very usefull though.