Preparing video for display

[Alan Okey]

Try transcoding your XDCAM EX footage to uncompressed 8-bit prior to importing it into your FCP project. The slowdown might be FCP working behind the scenes to deal with the long GOP structure of the XDCAM footage.

[Greg Ball]

Thanks for your quick reply!

How do you transcode the footage to 8 bit? I’ve been given this footage by my shooter already on a hard drive as QT files. Remember I’m trying to enlarge the wide screen footage to fill a 4:3 image.

[Alan Okey]

[Greg Ball] “How do you transcode the footage to 8 bit?”

Use Compressor to do batch transcoding. You can tweak the encoding specs in the inspector tab to match your FCP sequence.

[Greg Ball]

I’m not just dropping the wide screen into an 8 bit uncompressed timeline, I’m blowing it up to fill the frame. I don’t believe you can do that in compressor.

BTW how long would it take to transcode 4 90-minute presentations?

I also have a LHe, so I can down convet easily.

[Alan Okey]

[Greg Ball] “I’m not just dropping the wide screen into an 8 bit uncompressed timeline, I’m blowing it up to fill the frame. I don’t believe you can do that in compressor. “

Yes, you can. Compressor is an extremely versatile Swiss army knife of an application that allows you to transcode, compress, and perform advanced format conversions, including converting frame rates using optical flow technology for smoothly interpolated results.

I implore you to do some research by opening the Compressor user manual and reading about its capabilities. You can very easily transcode footage from HD to SD, and there are many options for adjusting aspect ratio, cropping, scaling, etc. Whether or not you choose to use it on this particular project, it is a valuable asset that can really expand your capabilities.

[Greg Ball] “BTW how long would it take to transcode 4 90-minute presentations?

That’s entirely dependent upon the speed of your computer and whether or not you’ve set up a virtual cluster with Qmaster. For detailed information on how to accomplish this, read my posts in this thread:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1043558#1043564

[Greg Ball] I also have a LHe, so I can down convet easily.”

I have an LHe as well, and I still use Compressor extensively. The Kona is only helpful for downconversion on capture or output, not for internal transcoding. Its downconversion hardware isn’t accessed internally for format conversion unless you’re ingesting or outputting footage using the SDI or analog I/O jacks. If you merely want to transcode already-captured files for use in a project, it doesn’t really help.

[David Bogie]

Alan’s advice is sound but I sense your reluctance. Try this then, divide your man sequence up into four discreet reels about about 12=15 minutes each. You can do that by simply using the razor blade across all tracks and moving them to a new sequence or nesting them. You work on one reel ore sequence at a time reducing your machine’s media management calls by 75%.

This is easier than it sounds but the first time you try it can be rather confusing and intimidating. Suggest you make a copy of your project and call it Slide Show Reels before experimenting with this method. And, frankly, it’s not for everyone. but way beack in the olden days of FCP2 and FCP3, that’s how we did anything that was longer than about 15 minutes. The agony of waiting for “preparing” or worse was just too much to tolerate. We found workarounds.

bogiesan

[Greg Ball]

Yep, I’d rather not take all of my footage into compressor. Thanks Alan and David for your advice. I’m gonna use David’s advice here since I can break the takes up fairly easily. It’s all talking heads and PPT.

Thanks again.