I'm interested in the workflow for HDV 50i -> 25p -> 24p -> 60i without losing vertical resolution.  I have seen some discussions here but still not clear on some things.  It would be nice to make a sticky for this.

Basically I'm trying for a film look motion.  I am fine with audio that is slightly slower and lower in tone, in fact I prefer lower tone to tone-shifting processing. 

I think a good way is to shoot in HDV 50i (with Sony Z1), maybe with 1/25 shutter.  After that I'm not perfectly clear.

My approach would be to edit on a 50i timeline, then dinterlace (progressive?) to the equivalent of 25p.  My first question is:

A) is it possible with LE to deinterlace 50i without losing vertical resolution?

Not sure what to do next. 

B)  Should I create a 25p timeline and fuse a file?

C)  Then import fused clip to an HDV 24p timeline? 

D)  Or should the fused clip be imported to an HDV 60i timeline?

E)  Then timewarp applied to sync/stretch the audio?

F)  Or can everything be done in fewer steps by editing in 50i, fusing in 50i, and importing fused clip into 60i timeline?

G)  Do I even need to fuse?  Could a 50i sequence by dragged onto a 60i sequence and timewarped?

The main thing is I'd like to not lose vertical resolution (by throwing away odd or even lines during deinterlacing, for example).

Regards,

-SB

I thought I'd do some experiments to test concepts that might lead to a workflow.

Here's one I can't get working, but feel it might be possible:

My theory is that if I shoot in 50i, put the clip on a 59.94i timeline, and timewarp it just right so that each field is now 1/59.94 seconds long instead of 1/50 seconds long, that it should render really fast because there would be a one-to-one match of the fields and Liquid would be essentially just relabeling the fields.

 The secret is in the magic timewarp number, because if off by a tiny fraction, I assume Liquid will try some kind of interpolation.

I'm sure it's likely that Liquid always goes through an interpolation computation even if it weights one frame by zero, so it will always go slow.

But if it worked, it would confirm the technique could be used to rapidly convert 50i footage to a 3:2 pulldown 60i equivalent, which is the desired goal.

I tried to use the 50/59.94 ratio but have not been successful.  Has anyone made this or something like it work in Liquid?

Of course what I really want to do is to convert 50i to 25p (without throwing away lines), pretend it is 24p, then achieve a "3:2" pulldown to get a film look in 60i format.  If anyone has a good workflow for that in Liquid I would like to learn it.

Regards,

-SB

As part of this subject, I'd like to hear how successful anyone has been at deinterlacing HDV clips without losing resolution using LE, and what the techniques are.

 Regards,

-SB