[Andy Mees]

Phil,
Try just placing the .qtz file directly in the timeline
Andy

[Andy Mees]

Thanks Adrian

Very best of luck to you and the Pig, looking forward to reading.

Andy

[Andy Mees]

Hi Melinda

I’ve not had reason to use this myself, but perhaps this recently released Compressor Repair utility could be used to your advantage. If an uninstall / reinstall is the regular routine then clearly its worth a try!

https://www.digitalrebellion.com/compressor_repair.htm

Cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

Actually Roger, your luck may just be in:

Compressor Repair

I hope you found it in time!

Best
Andy

[Andy Mees]

Hey again Travis

Word to the wise mate, its usually considered bad form to cross post as folks expend a fair bit of time answering only to discover the same answer, or maybe additional pertinent info, is already posted elsewhere… but I do appreciate you’re just trying to get as many eyes as possible n the question.

For the benefit of other responders, here’s a link to the other post:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/142/861343

Cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

Travis

Most folks avoid Quicktime Conversion … whilst convenient the quality is not great. I had a look at the package you FTP’d in the other day and yes, overall the quality is good but suffers greatly in the pans and zooms. Try this as an alternative workflow. Export > Quicktime Movie > w/ Settings as ProRes 422 (you could also export just with Current Settings but as its just an intermediate then you may as well take advantage of the faster export from ProRes 422) Now take the export into MPEG Streamclip and choose File > Export to MPEG-4, Set the frame size to 720×576 DV PAL and enable Better Downscaling, leave all other settings at default. Now send that one in and I’ll take another look.

Cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

>What’s the best way to convert all this material from letterbox to anamorphic and retain the most quality?

David, the best way is going to be to take your letterbox master to a well equipped post facility and have them create an Anamorphic master by cropping and scaling using Teranex conversion hardware or similar. The scaling offered by these systems will be superior to anything you can do with your Mac.

>Will I lose any vertical clarity by cropping off the letterbox and stretching the image vertically?

Yes, absolutely. But there is absolutely nothing you can do about this unless you have access to the unletterboxed original and can create your anamorphic master from that.

All this said, you can do a quick and reasonable conversion just using Compressor on you Mac.
In Compressor’s Geometry controls set the Source Inset (Cropping) Crop to 16×9 1.78:1, then export as normal.

[Andy Mees]

[Tom Matthies] “The producer would like the finished timelines put back onto the original HD XDCam field disks “

Got ya, but unless you are transferring back to disc via HDSDI then you’re going to be looking at a conform regardless of the intermediate edit format. If you want to avoid rendering/conforming to MPEG HD during the edit phase then you have the ProRes render option. I’m not trying to force a workflow you don’t want on you, but you do mention that you’re reasonably comfortable with XDCAM Transfer and just starting to play with FCP 6 this week, so its worth knowing what your options are.

Cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

[Victor Perez] “We’re looking at what the difference would be if we used FCP’s Log & Transfer instead … Our easy setup is for an XDCam Timeline … As for rendering in ProRes? Our tech guy said the difference was minimal so we’ve left that alone so far. “

Victor

FCP Log and Transfer (L&T) interface does not currently work with Sony XDCAM HD devices. There is a Sony plugin (PDZK-LT1) that enables using it with XDCAM EX devices, but not XDCAM HD. AFAIK that plugin does not allow transcode to ProRes it is a straight essence transfer as per Sony’s XDCAM Transfer app.

Regarding the XDCAM HD timeline with ProRes rendering thing, you might want to talk with your tech guy again about that. ProRes rendering offers a significant speed increase over rendering to XDCAM HD, and potentially a significant quality increase too, especially with heavy effects and graphics work.

Hope thats useful
Andy

[Andy Mees]

[Tom Matthies] ” It’s those long conform times, you know… “

Tom

Why are you conforming mate? Are you mastering back to XDCAM HD? You can edit with the XDCAM HD natively in the the timeline and have your renders set to ProRes … then master out to whatever format is most suitable without conform. (Regardless of your edit codec, if you master to XDCAM HD then you’re looking at conform time.)

Cheers
Andy