Film Fest Wants ProRes

[Jeremy Garchow]

Was it shot on p2 or tape?

[Arnie Schlissel]

The best way is to use Compressor. You can use the Frames and Geometry tabs to conform your frame rate and size to the festival specs.

I usually send directly from my FCP timeline, unless there’s a problem or I need to keep working. Many people prefer to export a reference movie and bring that into Compressor.

Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/

[Rafael Amador]

Hi william,
This is more than a simple transcoding.
Is a full upscaling. You are going from 960×720 to 1280×720.
Whatever the way you send it to Compressor will be OK, but in Compressor:
– Set the proper size.
– Set the Frame Control: ON.
– Resizing: Best.
The Frame Control will allow as well to process in 32b Floating Point.

[William Carr] “–copy DVCPROHD timeline elements to fresh ProRes timeline, export same settings self-contained “
This may be the worst option.
[William Carr] “Is there any honest-to-goodness quality difference between the above conversion methods? “
Yes. Compressor with Frame Control ON may be the best available in FCS.
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[William Carr]

Thank you everybody!

Jeremy: it was shot on P2, L&T into FC from hard drive backups. What difference does it make, so I can learn to suggest better workflows next time?

Arnie: usually I export same settings movie, them Compressor. I will use the Compressor tabs as suggested.

Rafael: that’s right, I realize it is upscaling! Next time I will tell them to shot 1080. I will use the tabs in Compressor to ensure best results.

[Rafael Amador]

[William Carr] ” I realize it is upscaling! Next time I will tell them to shot 1080″
Sure is not the same than when going from 720 to 1080, but in the end you have to rebuild every single pixel.
For a film festival I would go the Compressor way. For something less compromising I could go the FC way suggested by Arnie, with “High Precision” and “BEST Motion Rendering”.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[William Carr]

Understood.

I will export the native timeline as a self-contained same-settings movie, then bring it to Compressor and spec it to shape.

One last thought: I am assuming the ProRes choice should be the “original” 422.
With HQ I don’t think I would see a quality difference, plus would not the higher bitrate make it more of a challenge for their unknown Mac/projection set-up to play happily?

[Rafael Amador]

I would go to HQ.
If they have requested Prores I guess they have the gear to move it.
Prores 720p24 is quite light even at HQ.

[William Carr] “One last thought: I am assuming the ProRes choice should be the “original” 422. “ No reasons to go to 444.
I guess you would get the same effect checking the “444 Filtering” in the Prores window. You would also keep the file smaller than 444.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

[William Carr] “eremy: it was shot on P2, L&T into FC from hard drive backups. What difference does it make, so I can learn to suggest better workflows next time? “

What you’re doing is fine, using Compressor to amke a ProRes movie is cool by me. I was just wondering if it was from tape as you could online it by capturing to ProRes back from tape. Since it’s tapeless, no biggie.

Jeremy

[Jeremy Garchow]

[William Carr] “One last thought: I am assuming the ProRes choice should be the “original” 422. “

I’d go to SQ. Gary Adcock’s article explains that doing software transcodes from 8 bit sources (such as DVCPro HD) to HQ can cause some errors due to the way the HQ codec ‘fills in’ the extra two bits.

The SQ codec does it a bit better when doing software transcodes from 8 bit material, according to Gary.

Jeremy

[William Carr]

Thanks, all!