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resizing and converting video in FCP – bad results…
Hi
In my work I am constantly resizing the resolution of video footage, f.x. taking in a 480×300 video file and scaling it to PAL resolution (720×576).
If I use the scale tool that is built into FCP I am getting rather bad results. Text gets unreadable, and quality is not so good.
So for scaling I’we been using Sony Vegas, which does a great job! But I would like to be able to do this on my mac, not my pc. And preferably from inside FCP.
So could someone recommend me some good tool for this?
Also I’we been doing allot of converting video clips from the internet, and I’m also using Vegas for this. But is there some other good tool for this, Mac or PC doesn’t matter. Usually i’m converting and scaling a bunch of video clips, so something scriptable or cabable of converting multiple clips at once would be best. Someone recommended FlipFactory, but I’m not sure if that is what I need, since most of the clips are usually in various formats.
Regards
Fr -
12 Replies
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oh and I forgot to add, that i’m usualy also converting from 24fps to 25 fps.
Vegas does a decent job at this… but sometimes the movies get a little jerky….like a ‘hic’ ever 25 frames.
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Shake would be perfect for this. Shake have high quality scaling with lots of algorithms to choose from. If you want the best quality, you can also use the new optical flow-based conversion – that can also change the frame rate.
it is also very scriptable – just about everything in shake can be done from the command line.
regards, Bj -
Great 🙂
Shake sounds good for scaling and converting framerate.
But wouldn’t I need another tool to convert the downloaded files to something more shake/fcp friendly? Or can shake do this also? I’m mostly talking about mov (h.264), asf and wmf files.
If shake is not suitable for this, then is there some other program out there? Then I’m only talking about straight codec conversion, no resizing or framerate conversion.
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You are already using pompressed media so nomatter what yoou do it isnt going to end up looking the best.
you menchoned that you are getting these video clips from the web, which is never a good source for getting video to edit because it has already been compressed.
Another issue with video from the web is copywrights. To be editing these things you NEED to have the legal right to do so. Assuming that you do have the copywright then you should also have access to the origonal mastered video, and you should have no need to be scailing up.
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Take a look at Compressor. I have converted DV footage to 720p HD with great results. It also converts PAL to NTSC and visa versa. Truly underused (and not really understood) application.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
i’ll give compressor a try, didn’t know that program was capable of doing this kinda conversion 🙂
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Also make sure that you use the Frame Controls. That turns on the same kind of processing that Shake does, but with an easier to use interface IMHO.
s
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AFAIK Compressor now uses the same algorithms as Shake
(Seem to remember Graeme Nattress stating that at some time).
You’ll be using the “advanced format conversion”
Gunleik -
I searched google for afaik compressor but didn’t find a program called that. Is the name correct?
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Compressor comes with FCP.
“AFAIK” is shorthand for “As far as I know.” It’s not a part of the product name.
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