[Alan Okey]

Is your client complaining because he actually saw something wrong with the result, or is he simply a purist that demands the best based on some invisible theoretical advantage? In 99% of cases like this, you can set up a blind A/B comparison and prove that it’s a psychological barrier, not a physical limitation.

What was the original footage, video or film? How was it captured? What type of image processing has been done, i.e. has the footage been color graded? Is there a lot of compositing/vfx work in the trailer? It’s hard to tell if your client has a legitimate beef or if he’s merely a purist/snob.

In any case, ultimately it’s up to you to give the client what he asks for. If he demands Uncompressed 10-bit and he’s paying you, then you should give him what he wants.

[Alan Okey]

Compressor is your friend…

As long as you realize that your HDV project is going to end up being standard definition if you make a DVD.

If you want to make a Blu-Ray (high definition) disc, that requires extra software.

[Alan Okey]

Shane, I recently learned that the new EX-1R (the replacement for the EX-1) now shoots standard definition DVCAM in addition to the existing HD settings. The EX-3 is still HD-only.

[Alan Okey]

Your assumption is incorrect. Graphics cards have nothing to do with video playback speed in Final Cut Pro.

The limiting factor in video playback is either storage speed (for uncompressed video) or CPU speed (for long-GOP codecs like h.264, HDV or XDCAM), which are processor-intensive for decoding. Graphics card speed only affects OpenGL applications like 3D modeling or gaming, or applications that leverage the GPU for image processing, like Color or certain FXPlug filters in FCP.

You’ll find that RT performance in FCP is most strongly influenced by the throughput speed of your storage. A very fast RAID (over 300MB/sec.) will provide much better playback performance and a greater number of simultaneous RT streams.

[Alan Okey]

[Brandon Sesenton] “What about Maxx Digital?”

Check out the last link in my post…

[Alan Okey]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

You want RAID-5.

https://www.caldigit.com/HDPro/

https://www.dulcesystems.com/html/pro_dqg2.html

https://maxxdigital.com/shop/index.php?cPath=138&osCsid=918e430aaf5af6283120d48f75b618f4

[Alan Okey]

Assuming you’re in NTSC land, here’s the problem:

Even though both of your sources are lower field first, they are different dimensions. DigitBeta is D1, which is 720×486. DVCPRO is 720×480. When you drop a D1 file in a DVCPRO 50 timeline, FCP is supposed to recognize this and shift the D1 clip up or down one pixel. If it’s not doing it, and the D1 clip is centered (with 3 pixels above and below the top and bottom edge), then your field order has suddenly become reversed. You can fix this by moving the clip up or down one pixel in the motion tab of the viewer, or you can apply the shift fields filter.

[Alan Okey]

[Philipp Figueroa] “I guess this might have something to do with the anamorphic footage I am using but i would expect FCP to render/ compress it to the right aspect ratio as soon as I outplay. “

No, it doesn’t work that way. The only thing FCP does is change the canvas and viewer to show the anamorphic video with a stretch applied. It’s not affecting the original source files, simply distorting them on the screen to make them look correct.

Export a Quicktime movie of your FCP project. Don’t use “Quicktime conversion,” just use the top choice, “export Quicktime movie.” This creates a movie file of your project using the current project settings.

Next, open the exported Quicktime file in Compressor and convert the anamorphic source video to a square pixel 16:9 aspect ratio movie. 640×360 would be ideal. Compressor has several options for dealing with rescaling and cropping footage.

I recommend opening up the Compressor manual spending some quality time with it.

[Alan Okey]

Compressor can’t can’t encode MPEG-2 with 4:2:2 chroma sampling, it doesn’t support it. You’ll need to use Telestream Episode for this functionality.

[Alan Okey]

Try this:

Make sure that all of your ProRes clips are of the same length and filename as the clips that they are replacing, and that they are all in a discrete folder together.

Select all of the existing clips to be replaced in your timeline, right-click (or control-click) and choose “make offline.” Save and close your project. Reopen the project, and when the offline media dialog box pops up, manually select the new clips in the folder you created. As long as the option to reconnect the other offline clips by searching the same directory is selected, your offline clips should relink to the new ProRes versions.