[Bill Paris]

Thanks Jeremy!

[Bill Paris]

Jeremy,

One more question…… what’s the best way to change the field dominance of the clips in the bin? Via the edit menu… item properties…… format?

[Bill Paris]

Jeremy,

Very interesting! I never would have found this on my own! It’s surprising that FCP would not make that a capture option since it adds so much manual manipulation of the clips after the import. Thanks for the information….. once I get back to my edit system, I’ll give this a try with my problem clips and see what happens. Thanks again!

Bill Paris

[Bill Paris]

Gary,

Thanks for the clarification regarding the Apple ProRes HQ 1080i PSF codec.

Regarding the DVD encode issue……
To test the DVD, I would take the disc to a consumer player/monitor to make sure it would play properly when my client played it on their system. I also monitored the playback on my Panasonic 17″ LCD HD multi-format production monitor.

Before encoding I created a quicktime file using the timeline settings, then down-converted from there.

I wasn’t sure the best format to burn from so I tried a variety of SD formats for DVD Studio Pro and also tried to create a format IDVD would like and imported/burned from there. My preference for a quick client burn would be IDVD, since the templates are clean and easier to use than DVD Studio.

After running into the problem, I did some reading on the Cow Encoding Forum and read about de-interlacing footage before burning to DVD, (which is why I thought I might be working with interlaced files created at capture).

The way I ended up burning a viewable DVD for my client was to output the footage to Betacam…. recapturing as DVCPRO 50 and burning from there. Needless to say, the footage looked like &#(&(!
I suppose I could go back to the scenes that gave me the most trouble…. create a matte around the problem area and de-focus the area….. but what a pain!

Should I be looking at changing my encoding program? I understand the Flip For Mac program is very good? Any other ideas? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. It’s frustrating to take great care in the production and post production process to retain quality, only to have it destroyed in the encode/burn!

Thanks for you guidance!

Bill Paris

[Bill Paris]

Oh Boy is Right!

Ok so now we’re up to a great cup of coffee…. a danish…. and lunch later in the day!
Thanks for the “pull down seminar”! I’m going to have to reaad this a few more times to get it to sink into my rather thick head, but I really appreciate the information!

Regarding training the eyes for 24p….. I’ve actually switched to shooting 30psf (29.97) with my F900 and 30pn with the Panasonic P2 cameras because to my eye, the motion artifacts inherent in 24p are too distracting when fast action is involved. I love it for interviews and drama, but for many shots 24p is just too damn jittery for my taste. I guess I’ve always assumed I could perform a reverse pull down using Cinema Tools if 24p was needed from the footage. (I have not tried this yet, so please correct me if this is not true). I’m primarily a DP with clients that ask for 30psf most of the time. I guess my eye has started to adjust to the look.

Thanks again for the help!

bp

[Bill Paris]

Jeremy,

I guess I owe you at least a good cup of coffee! Thanks for explaining why the 59.94 setting works. I didn’t realize the footage was already being processed by the computer so the monitors can display it…. makes sense.

Regarding the conversion to interlaced from progressive, I was assuming the every frame would be converted to two interlaced fields of scanned information…. not just the filler interlaced frames included for timing purposes I’m assuming we see during playback in the 23.98 timeline. Since each frame would be interlaced and scanned onto the screen, I thought this might even out some of the jitter associated with faster moving clips? I have a shot I really like where a giant wave crashed in front of a nice sunset, but I’m getting some motion artifacts as the water explodes into the air….. it’s driving me a little crazy since the shot is great otherwise. I was hoping that by converting the shot to interlace from progressive I might be able to smooth out the motion a bit. The other factor would be the pull down settings. From what I’ve read on the message boards, the best setting would be 2:3:2:3. ?

Thanks for your help……. perhaps I should throw in a danish with that cup of coffee?

bp

[Bill Paris]

Jeremy,

Ok…. I’m getting though-put now…. I must have had something setup incorrectly. I still need to reconfigure some hardware to get the video into my Betacam deck, but I’m seeing playback with the crops via the monitor so I know I’m getting there.

Question….. do you see the 23.98 motion artifacts diminish after running the 2:3:2:3 conversion in combination with the interlaced SD playback?

Thanks for your help, I’m a little confused about why the 59.94 rate works with the 23.98 source, but I’ll take the results for now and figure out the rest later….. thanks again!

bp

[Bill Paris]

Jeremy,

I think my problem is that I have a true 23.98 rate not the 59.94 rate the Varicam uses for 24p. When I select the 23.98 rate at the frame buffer, I can only select another 23.98 rate in another resolution like 1080 for the SDI out 1 or 2 and Analog. Everything else is gray.

bp

[Bill Paris]

Richard,

Thanks for the info…… nice video lesson on drives! I’ll double check to make sure no other drives are plugged into the bus and see if the camera mounts properly. My other Mac Pro did have a Firewire card, so that might explain why I never had this problem in the past.

bp

[Bill Paris]

Thanks Jason,

I’ve tried it without anything but the Firewire 800 drive plugged in, I’ll try to unplug that drive as well and give it a try.

bp