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Help! I inherited a mess
I have been given a project edited in an UHD timeline using 20+ year old Beta footage originally shot on Betacam, Betacam SP and Digibeta and converted in 2004 to MXF format and then converted again from those files to both mov and h.264 formats in 2014. The project was edited most recently in Resolve 18.5 using the mov and h.264 files – and it looks crappy. Of course, there is no budget but I have a couple of questions for anyone who wants to spread some Christmas joy;
1) Should I replace the mov/h264 videos with MXF for better quality or at least better color?
2) If I replace the videos, will the timeline lose all the settings, efx, etc?
3) are there any plugin or LUT ideas for making the interviews look better?
Admittedly, I’m out of my league here and any help would be greatly appreciated………ck
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3 Replies
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Big question! I’m not a Resolve editor, but this is not specifically a Resolve issue. First, get perspective. Go back to the earliest, highest-quality digitization. That would be the original MXF. Open those files directly, in both an NLE and in VLC. They should look essentially the same. And also quite small on your screen at actual size. Remember, this is interlaced standard definition. You probably haven’t seen this in a while and it’s awful compared to modern standards. You do this because you want to know exactly what things looked like before anything mucked them up. It will look low res and lack contrast and color compared to modern footage and that’s just what it looked like. As I said, perspective.
No LUTS. Make sure your timeline is Rec709 because that’s what your footage is (actually it’s pre 709 but essentially the same). It wasn’t shot with a LUT. Just color correct. Depending on how your scopes are setup, your blacks may seem high. Standard definition was not shot full range.
I’m sorry I can’t help you with replacing in Resolve. Premiere has a “Replace” function which allows you to swap in a new clip while retaining all effects. I would hope Resolve has such a function.
Deinterlacing. This is the critical resolution step. Premiere is lousy at deinterlacing. Resolve, I don’t know. I would deinterlace and scale the original, probably with something like Topaz AI, but it is tedious and time-consuming and maybe unrealistic for a full show. The alternative would be to edit and master as interlaced standard definition and then deinterlace and uprez the rendered master.
Just a few tips. I’m working on an old show that’s gone through multiple iterations and it’s just a mess to decode what’s been done to it. It takes a lot of patience, shot by shot.
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Hey Craig,
I have just recently captured a 20-year old Broadcast Master from 4:3 PAL Betacam SP.
Client needs it to be full screen in HD (16:9).
To get it to full screen I went through a few passes, including noise reduction, and then upscaling + a bit more. What worked best for me was exporting out of Premiere Pro to ProRes HQ, then into Topaz A.I. for processing.
Have to add that it is a sit-down interview, so not a lot of fast movement.
That project is still going.
But it lead to a test on an old news interview from 1998, with banding and tape-dropouts. To remove those I used BorisFX Continuum, which worked really well. But there is always a trade-off when trying to remove parts of a “broken” image.Just one example of doing it.
Atb
Mads -
Thank you both! I really appreciate the answers – It sounds like I have my work cut out for me!……….ck
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