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Can I re-import media and just re-link without re-editing?
Here is my situation, I am the editor on a 25 minute sort flim. It was originally shot on 16-mm and transfered to Beta and DV. I had originally thought I would retain the best quality by going through a beta deck. I know someone with a beta deck on an Avid system so I imported the footage and saved out quicktime files that needed a conversion from the avid codec to bring it into FCP.
As I screened the film to the cast & crew before the festival the director of photography pointed out that the colors have lost contrast and the image is blurrier than it should be. Viewing the DV tapes of raw footage reveals he is absolutely correct.
I have applied a gamma filter to the final export, and made sure my VBR was set high during the (software) encoding to compensate, but it is not close enough to the original quality at all.
So here is my solution and question:
I would like to reimport the footage via my DV deck (I blame the avid codec conversion for the quality loss) and merely “relink” the master clips to the new files. Is there a way to do this without re-editing the whole 31 scene project again? In my mind this maybe could work if I just match frame to frame the all original files ins and outs. What do you think?I am permitted some time to resolve this if I can, but not enough time to go back to “square one”.
PLEASE HELP before the film festival… any ideas at all will be appreciated guys… Thank you.
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3 Replies
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Sounds like you tried to save a penny but will end up spending a dollar in your time to fix this.
In the future I recommend digitizing directly to FCP and avoid any transcoding image quality lost as well as pulling your hair out at the last minute.
Tony Salgado
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Well…hopefully the quicktime conversion retained the TC information…it has a reputation for not. Check the footage in the timeline and see if it has the same TC as the DVCAM tapes. If so, then you might be able to delete the media…BUT RETAIN THE CLIPS…and redigitize.
But I am not to sure about this. This would be the way to go if you captured with FCP in the first place, for the clips retain the TC info. But digitizing with another system and exporting to QT and importing to FCP…Not many people have done this so we don’t know what will happen. Sorry I can’t give you a better answer.
You might end up (rather unfortunately) recapturing all the footage off the DVCAM tapes and eyematch-cutting the short film all over again.
Hopefully one of the people who has done this route before will read this and offer a better solution.
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You can absolutely make it work. It’s just a major grind. FCP has the “Modify->Timecode” option. With that option you can achieve anything you want. Either correct the original imported media, or alter the new media. You’ll figure it out.
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