SD footage from 4K in AE

[Adrian Edson Dean]

I will be shooting some commercials then doing some FX post on them. Nothing too fancy, but I've been having problems downconverting to SD and trying to keep any semblance of quality.

I know that SD is inherently crappy (the color space/resolution/etc.) but does anyone have any ideas on how to make the footage look the best possible?

I'll be editing in After Effects CS4.

Should I do the first light in REDCINE-X? I'm using the RED Rocket so I'll be doing a full debayer regardless. Or should I just import the footage right into AE?

What codecs/settings have others used who are trying to output standard def. using After Effects on a PC?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[Uli Plank]

I wouldn't compress SD in AE at all. What's your delivery format?

 

[Kim Frank]

In AE Cs4 you're not able to take advantage of the new color science, wich is a big improvement, so I first would render the footage in RedcineX.
Besides that I'm getting really good results when exporting SD from 1080p f.e.
You can drop the footage in an SD Comp an fit to height, but even just outputting with the desired Strech enabled gives me really good results.
I usually work in 1080p and than just add as many output modules with different stretch settings for the outputs desired.
Uli what do you mean by you wouldn't do it at all?
I always thought AE had one of the best scaling algorythms.

 

[Uli Plank]

AE has pretty good scaling. I wanted to say I'd avoid any compression before encoding to the final format.

 

[Adrian Edson Dean]

I wouldn't compress SD in AE at all. What's your delivery format?

My delivery format will be an mpeg2 720x480 video delivered tapeless. The 30 second encoded files are about 18 MB. Highly compressed, I know. I might be able to encode at a higher rate but that's what the client has done in the past. I can give more detail if that isn't specific enough.

 

[Uli Plank]

Well, then the only thing to try is save uncompressed and use a high-end encoder like Cinema Craft. Footage originated on R1 shouldn't look any worse than from 35mm – maybe even better, if the 35mm was grainy…

 

[Adrian Edson Dean]

Well, then the only thing to try is save uncompressed and use a high-end encoder like Cinema Craft. Footage originated on R1 shouldn't look any worse than from 35mm – maybe even better, if the 35mm was grainy…

Thanks for your advice! Off the top of your head, is this the best encoder you've seen? Where might I go looking for other good encoders?

The encoder in AE or adobe's media encoder are not up to snuff?

Thanks!