David Jahns
Forum Replies Created
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I’m using letterboxed video, not anamorphic.
This is very easy to do in Sorenson Squeeze, and I was able to do it in Compressor 2, but it was clunky.
Comp 3 seems to have quite a few inconsistencies…
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Yes, if you’re Motion tab scaling is at 100%, it should be quite a bit larger than your SD sequence. A quick way to do that is to highlight the clip in the timeline and REMOVE ATTRIBUTES – Basic Motion.
Can you look at it in wireframe mode to double check? Also set your canvas view to 50% or so to see the oversized media in relation to the smaller canvas size.
The lack of resolution you are seeing in an SD timeline is a much more complicated issue. There’s a rather lengthy thread where we dug into this pretty deep – and Jeremy G has just today posted a solution, we think. But read it from the top to get the full story on what is going on and why…
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Sweet! That’s great news.
Maybe when you are finished, you could write an article for the Cow to distribute the info as widely as possible.
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Hi Jeremy – thanks for the follow up.
that’s very interesting… I have tried to fool around a bit with 30 frame Progressive formatting in the timeline, which certainly helps with downscaling HD progressive media, but I don’t think I ever tried changing an interlaced clip’s FD to none.
So, you’re basically telling it “Screw the interlacing” at every stage – even when starting with interlaced footage.
Have you watched the timeline output on an interlaced monitor? I have found that sometimes it will look fine on my FCP monitor, and even on an HD-LCD, but then when looking at a good old fashioned NTSC monitor the field dominance (or lack thereof) can really muck things up.
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Uncompressed 10-bit 1080i through FW 800?
Am I doing the math wrong, or doesn’t that break the laws of physics?
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tried that already – doesn’t help.
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Walter,
I fully agree with your suggestions about the need to use hardware for conversions. But that’s the point of this entire thread – that OPEN FORMAT timeline is complete bulls**t – even after clips are fully rendered.
Apple’s marketing says, “Final Cut Pro 6 lets you mix and match source material in a wide range of formats and even different frame rates. Just drag your footage into the Timeline. Freely edit a combination of HD and SD, including NTSC and PAL, all in real time. ”
(and their graphics shows NTSC, 720p24, 1080i60, and PAL 25 all in the same timeline – they don’t show what format the timeline is in, though.)
I suppose, in fairness, they don’t actually claim that it looks good, so I guess they can’t be sued for false advertising! But come on, if you can’t drop an HD clip into an NTSC timeline? That’s a pretty common workflow, no?
So the claim that FCP 6 “mix and match formats” is VERY misleading at best.
But what’s so crazy about it is that it DOES scale quicktimes well, as long as your sequence is not interlaced. And it does scale TIFFs well – even if the timeline is interlaced – so why can’t it scale a QT? It’s maddening!
Certainly I always prefer to work in a progressive format and downconvert on output, but that’s not always on option. The reality is, we’re going to be stuck with NTSC 29.97 for much longer than we’d like.
Like I said on the web page, I love FCP, but these are the kind of issues that makes Avid & Flame users question FCP’s legitimacy as a PRO Platform. Apple is not doing themselves (or us) any favors by over-promising and under delivering.
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Hi Walter – I appreciate the effort you’re giving to this, but I don’t think I’m talking about Apples & Oranges.
Forget the 24 vs. 30 pulldown issue for a moment. Even in a completely 30 frame world – Why does a series of single images in TIFF format scale better than those same images in a quicktime format?
Let’s say you have 30 frame progressive HD quicktime, which is a series of individual images wrapped into one file, right? And then export that shot as a TIFF image sequence.
If you put the HD quicktime in an NTSC Interlaced timeline, it will look awful. Yet if you import the image sequence as single frame files, then put those same images in TIFF format into the same timeline, they will look good. They are the same images – one format wraps them into a quicktime, the other treats each frame separately. Yet they look quite different dropped into an NTSC world.
Which brings me back to the “dirty little secret” – FCP can not scale quicktimes into an interlaced timeline. This holds true for oversized motion graphics as well. In quicktime format, they don’t downscale well, but Export them as an Image Sequence and re-import them and put them on the exact same timeline as the quicktime, and they look fine.
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I think you’ll have to create a custom set up for this, where you use FireWire for device control, and the KONA inputs for your video / audio signals.
I have not done this with that particular camera, but in my experience, FW device control is not always frame accurate. It should work, but you might want to manually change the timecode numbers of each digitized clip to match exactly if you ever plan to recapture the material in a higher resolution. If you don’t have a TC burnin or film reel hole punch – it can be quite difficult to determine if your numbers are accurate or not.
If you are capturing ProRes and don’t plan to recapture from the tape ever, the timecode issue is probably negligible.