Final Cut, Media Manager, Creating Offline, Varied sized source material

[Mark Raudonis]

James,

Welcome to the cow. Since you’re a first time poster, I’ll be nice!

As you’ve discovered the “on-line/off-line” workflow ALWAYS represents a compromise… especially when it comes to multiple formats.

Bottom line, YOU’RE HOSED! I won’t berate you about the wisdom of your production choices, but now you’ve got to live with the consequences. You can’t enter post with the kind of mismatch of formats you’re presenting and NOT expect to spend time adjusting, correcting, and rendering to fix a questionable production decision.

While it’s fairly easy to transcode everything to a common off-line format (which you’ve done), there is NO WAY to avoid the fact that the different original frame sizes will complicate your on-line conform process.
If EVERYTHING you had was a common format, then yes, you could simply calculate the resize and adjust accordingly. In your case, you should pick the predominate format, and match everything to that. In your final on-line session you will have to go through shot by shot and identify the source to calculate it’s correct resize. Three different formats equals three different resize calucations.

The transcoding process to off-line (ProresLT) will not crop your frame size, it will only reduce the large format to fit in that space. So you will still have the visual material to zoom in on or reposition, but when you do so, it will look much worse than if you did it at full rez.
So, to summarize: All of the resizing work you do in the off-line format will have to be REDONE in the on-line because you are mixing three different frame sizes.

There’s no free lunch here. Either pick one acquisition format and stick to it, work at full rez throughout post, or pay the price in time and effort in the conform.

Good luck.

Mark

[James Statham]

Cheers Mark,

Firstly, Thanks very much for getting back so soon, really appreciated.

I understand completely your confusion about the production choice! I felt the original post was getting long enough without me rambling on about the choice of cameras. And I know I can ramble on a bit! The simple fact of the matter, was at the eleventh hour something happened that meant, shoot like this or dont make the film… Even the option of postponing the shoot wasn’t an option. I wish it was, but it is what it is and making the best of it….

Anyway, back to the workflow. I think I have found a way around it, just need to do a little more experimenting. I will let you know how it goes, I just wanted to give a quick response. When you say it will reduce the format to fit the space, will it stretch the footage to fit the frame or will it just put it in and leave the rest of the frame blank (black)?

Cheers, James

[Mark Raudonis]

Do a test to see what happens.

Quick answer: Original media: 4K Off-line REZ: ProRes LT Editing sequence settings: ProRez LT.

Media transcoded from 4K to Prores will fill the frame completely, but just be degraded quality. The problem is NOT in the off-line, but when you go to Up Rez the other footage. Assuming a 4K timeline,
every other piece of media that’s NOT 4K will show up as a SMALL picture with black around the edges. You will have to BLOW UP to fill the 4K frame. The reverse is also true. If your UpREZ format timeline is
just HD (1920 X 1080) then your 4K images will be HUGE and must be shrunk down to fit within the frame. This is where your repo or reframing is easily possible. Make sense?

My guess is that your uprez process will take place on a HD timeline 1920 X 1080, and therefore you will have to shrink the 4K stuff to fit. Hope this helps.

Mark

[Shane Ross]

And by the by…Canon DSLR footage converted to ProREs 4444 is actually WORSE then converting it to ProRes HQ or just ProRes. When I got ProRes 4444 footage from a 5D, it was clipped at 98IRE…and wouldn’t go lower than 0IRE. This is bad when trying to color correct. When they gave me the footage converted to ProRes 422 (normal), everything was fine and MUCH better. I could color correct better, have more flexability.

Just because the number is bigger, doesn’t mean it is better. You need to choose the RIGHT codec for what you are working with. 4444 is just too much for DSLR.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[James Statham]

Yeah, I agree. I found the same issues the last time I did a 5D project, I had the same issue and got around it using plain old 442. But that was before the Canon plugin made life easier. It was converted using MPEG Streamclip, a method that always made me ponder regarding quality. I dont know why, something just didn’t ring right about it. The fact that it interlaced my progressive footage even when I asked it not to made me question its ability to output quality footage.

However, this is the first time I have done a 5D project since the release of the plugin. So I brought a clip in at 4444, did some grading on it and it graded much better than the last time. So I went with it, not caring about the size of the files I was creating. However, it was shot better and I have more grading experience under my belt now so that could also be a contributing factor. But based on that grade I went ahead and imported it all as 4444, that was probably a bad decision (because of bloated files if nothing else). I am going to fetch a dark clip in at 4444, HQ, LT and plain old 442 and do a side by side by side by side test on the lot. I am most certainly not saying you are wrong, in fact I believe you are right, its just nice to see with my own eyes. plus I can post the results and hopefully prevent others from creating bloated files and actually decreasing quality.

As it stands