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FCP to 35mm
I was asked to edit a trailer and given a DVD of the movie. I used DVDxDV to rip the movie into Quicktime format using DV NTSC codec. Edited the trailer in FCP5; they love it. Great.
It turns out that the trailer needs to be blown up to 35mm for use in many theaters accross the country.
The only means I have of getting it there is to export to Mini DV then dub that to Digi Beta and take the Digi to whereever they telecine it to film.
But is the quality going to hold up? Seems unlikely.
What’s the best approach?
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12 Replies
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You want to take footage you extracted from a DVD…which was HIGHLY compressed as MPEG-2…extracting that as DV…which again is compressed 5:1. You want to take this and blow it up to 35mm?
ICK!
Oh my. You are taking just about the worse quality image you can get and wanting to put it onto the highest quality format and show it REALLY BIG. No…this will not look good. Not by any stretch of the imagination. If you had access to the source footage and captured as DV…maybe. It would look VERY blurry. If you had access to the source footage and captured it uncompressed and edited, then printed to film. Much better.
But I would highly advise against doing what you have laid out.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
That is definitely NOT how movie trailers are made. Surely they must have better source materials ie. 35mm or D5 HD to work from.
And telecine is not the correct term for the process that transfers to a film print from video.
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DK Davis / Editor/ Post Super
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It’s a pretty amateur setup. I’ll break them the bad news.
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Hey, don’t be so hard on the guy…maybe it is a trailer for local release only and a short run. Ever watch those cheesy local ads that run before a film….most of those were converted to film from Beta SP or worse, probably a few generations down.
Best bet would be to rip the MPEG to any uncompressed QT codec. Cut that together, color correct, and output to the best digital tape format you have….if necessary output a QT and get it to an AVID house who can output uncompressed AVID to digi beta.
Won’t be optimum, but guys, it’s not a lost cause if it is a low budget, video to film short run local or even regional run.
Certainly if higher quality footage exists besides the DVD get it.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
Ditto what those guys said. But, if for some reason you are absolutely stuck with going
from the ripped DVD footage, at least don’t go out to DV. Export as an uncompressed QT
and bring it to a service bureau who will transfer to 35mm from the QT. At least you won’t
be making a sub-standard product even worse.
Ed -
If I had typed faster I would have been the first to suggest the QT route. 🙂
Ed -
Yes, indeed… a particularly nasty workflow.
I would think that the best way to do the upconvert would be Teranex – that’s what the guys who did “Dust to Glory” used to upconvert their MiniDV footage…
And, as others have recommended, you definitely want to do an uncompressed rip from your DVD.
Best of luck…
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Oh my, this is really a worst case scenario…
Two more suggestions:
Once you have ripped it uncompressed, try Graeme Nattress’ G Chroma sharpen to -
Why not see what these guys have to say:
https://dvfilm.com/Evidently, they deal with this kind of thing every day.
Wayne
2DP G5, 3.5GB RAM, FCP HD
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The best it will likely look like is that movie “open water” that was shot on minidv.
I find it kinda odd that its a no budget deal, yet they would waist a lot of money on a print to 35mm.
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