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Importing/Exporting videos at 960 x 540 without losing quality
Hello, first time on the forum, I’ve got kind of a funny situation here, Thank you in advance for any advice.
Starting from the beginning, I have video material from a CANON Vixia HF200 camera, original resolution 1280 x 720, that I have imported through iMovie with the optimize movie feature at a resolution of 960 x 540 to save space on my hard drive. When I check the file info in the finder it says codec: Apple Intermediate Codec, Linear PCM, Timecode.
I did this because up until now my material was for online publication only.I now have the opportunity to produce some short series for a TV program in Brazil using some new material and some old material. Question is: I need to break up some pieces of old material (for example a 20 minute interview in 4 videos of 5 minutes) to send to Brazil online. I would like to import and export this material through Final Cut Pro 7.0.3 (or if there is a more appropriate app…) without losing any additional quality… what codec’s and settings should I use to maximize image quality after export?
Basically we have to see if it’s viable to use this material for TV, or if I’ve already screwed up too much by importing through iMovie.
Thank you for any advice! Cheers –
Ryan Luckey
https://www.comuntierra.org -
3 Replies
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I would have thought the Brazilian TV channel would have some kind of spec that they require material to be delivered in
For TV 960×540 is a totally non standard file size, its too small for SD 16×9 so expanding it to a TV frame size is going to add to the loss of quality.
I would say that you should go back to the camera material and re-edit which may or may not cause you huge grief.
ProRes is the codec of choice for FCP
best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv -
Hi Neil,
Thanks for the reply… I no longer have the original camera files, just the 960 x 540 files. Today I will experiment with the import-export and see how it goes…
-Ryan
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Thats a shame, well try ProRes as you don’t want the new material being Intermediate codec. You wont lose much that way.
I guess also shoot new stuff in SD so you only need to zoom the old stuff up a bit. Trying to get it to HD might be a tall order.
Compressor will likely do a better job than FCP on the scaling. So experiment with that.best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv
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