[Grant Strac]

One of my freelance gigs is company that remasters old 35mm film to disc and when we do this the company goes from film to digital file which is them put to disc by us or them. It’s weird if they go straight through to DVD and if so you must be loosing massive quality. I would call that company and ask if they had a hard file not on disc you can grab this would save a lot of problems.

But first off the mpeg stream clip you need to open the disc and drag the info straight off the disc onto hard drive. First try and take one of the VOB files that is the feature and change the appendage to .mov. You’ll get a question window saying are you sure, say yes .mov.
Sometimes this works some times it doesn’t. If it doesn’t still select the .vob video files, some flies are just menu or blank its normally the ones with numbers 1 & up. Try to open with quicktime, right click open with and if it does open export through that. Finally if all this is fails you use MPEG stream click but be careful of your settings.
It defaults the quality to 50% and most people miss that option, hell I did about 3 times and finally went why the hell is it that bad. So when you choose your compression in the window make sure you read EVERY option, drag the quality setting to 100%, check aspect ratio. Stream clip does not analyze the file it has presets it appends to anything. AND make sure the frame rate is 30 fps just like disc.
Export to full quality .mov and then make it pro res. your past problems where not because of pro res. If anything it was your original encode. WHen you are encoding with stream clip DO NOT do anything on your computer. If you open up safari you could cause a glitch in the video because ram is taken away and causes bottleneck of information. You start it and leave it alone till it’s done. Even closing safari after initiating the encode could screw the file up.
You may of had issues with it in the timeline because your machine is not set up for what your file is. When you encode using pro res make sure it’s aspect ratio and frame rate are the same as hard file and I assure since old it was made 4:3 so you need to manually check the pro res task with the inspector.

I would need more information to diagnose what when wrong because I can’t discern the problem with the information proved. I need fcs version, os x verion, the dvd information 5 or 9 and frame size, all that stuff and detailed explanation of what went wrong

Grant Strac
Apple Master Pro Certified Final Cut Studio 2
Apple Trainer Certified Final Cut 6
Apple Level One Apple Final Cut 7
Apple Final Cut Optimization Certified

[Grant Strac]

AWESOME!! So glad to hear it worked. One thing I would like to add my MacPro is 10 times more powerful than my MBP. But my MBP boots faster as well and the only reason I can thing is there is less processor cores and one hard drive to synchronize to activate.
Like my MacPro has four hard drives, 8 cores, and 22gb to all get fired up and sync together and 1gb video card to fire correctly and get the user interface to active. This is only thing I can logically answer that question because I felt the same way going WTF my mbp is less powerful but starts up in half time. I could be wrong but logically to me it makes sense

[Grant Strac]

I have three mac’s I edit with but my main machine is MacPro 8 core Intel 22gb ram 4 2tb drives. It is set up with four boots. One with lion for my personal use & fcs x, one boot with leopard fsc 1, one with snow leopard for fcs 2, and lion for fcs3. This is for all my clients. But I have old iMac and year old MBP which both handle my work as well.

Also I would disagree with your statement about VBR and GOP. I have never heard or had top cause issues with dvd players. GOP is something specifically designed for dvd only. Ever since I was taught by Apple Master Trainer to do what I said to do four years ago I have never had issue. Gop is important because the smaller it is the more information put on each frame. If you have 10 i frames in the encode or 100 that means it will have all the information on 100 frames rather than half the information over a large top structure. It doesn’t add much size it just means that many more frames have full information it needs.

Gop is IpppbI then only two frames have full information in that frame then the encoder “fudges” the information between the I’s and there is half or less information in that gap. Bad analogy but best way to explain without the full details. If you have IpbI successively then more quality

Your comment about cbr or vbr is almost correct. I didn’t even mention it as advice because it’s minuscule difference between the two. In either selection you still get high bit rate one just decides that in less image intensive sections to put less information so it has more room for the image intensive scenes. It automatically chooses how much information to put into the frames that need more than others, like a fade in & out will be less so the next scene can have more. This way you save space on disc. But he needed advice to preserve quality and these details will add more quality but insignificant to his needs. I do appreciate your insight

Grant Strac
Apple Master Pro Certified Final Cut Studio 2
Apple Trainer Certified Final Cut 6
Apple Level One Apple Final Cut 7
Apple Final Cut Optimization Certified

[Grant Strac]

To your first question I do not understand what you mean when you say looks like high frame rate. Please explain. Also you batch compress with compressor.

[Grant Strac]

I don’t know what it’s called but back in DV days in studios they used color bars and turned on blue only to calibrate. I recently had this issue and my mentor had this blue ring that you put over one eye, because LCD cant do blue only. So I put up color bars and used this blue viewfinder thing to calibrate but I could only used the TV’s functions so I could only get it close not perfect because dosen’t have all the functions a ntsc has but this brought my colors closer and I did my luma and black by feeding my desktop into a timeline and using the waveform to level it properly

[Grant Strac]

Ok great! Actually I was trying to say that the swapping of footage is not necessary. One thing that you’ll have is timecode differences. Unless you have done it many time, which I have and still have problems. Final Cut is not great at doing what you are planning. It looks at HD and DV differently and unless you have all your setting impeccably set up you are in a world of hurt. The most efficient way of doing it is to rename the folder in capture scratch this way fcp can’t see it. Then to select time footage in your bin and mass capture. Major problem tho it will kick back because it dosen’t understand you want to capture hd footage now as dv. It will say no no need HD deck. There is no way to modify the original files to make it work. The only way you should do it is to print out your footage time codes. You can select your timeline and have it in txt document display all the time codes. Then through your deck log. As you know logging is a bitch. You can log the entire thing 100% correct and it captures five clips and the rest says can’t find timecode.

Basically as a Apple Trainer & Master Pro, I 100% suggest against that method, I promise you it’ll be so much time wasted in frustration. Unless you are very experienced and if so you know the world of hassle that’s going to happen. If you want to preserve full quality going down to dv.

I have another way that’s easier and less headache.

First exporting self contained file then bringing into compressor often actually works out longer than if done through fcp to compressor. The only quicker way to compress is exporting un-self contained. This puts out a .mov but doesn’t have footage in it. What it is a hard file timeline in the sense that only fcs programs can read it and it’s just pointer to the footage. For example even though its exported if you changed a file name it would come unconnected in the .mov non self contained. I highly suggest doing the non-self contained it encoded surprisingly faster than the other methods. But then again you are loosing some info. The advantage is compressor will still see chapter markers and I frames on a non self contained transcode.

Now the easier way to preserve quality. Go to your capture scratch of the footage and batch compress it to ProRes422 this would take just as long as recapturing in lower quality and won’t give reconnect issues. Reconnect everything. In final cut make a new timeline in DV NTSC 16:9. Do not hit conform timeline when you put footage in. Paste the footage into the DV timeline. Now you will have images 1000 times bigger than the canvas window. Click the first clip in the sequence hit W to show wireframe, hold shift+command and downsize the image. Now you crushed a huge file to DV 16:9 size and image quality is preserved its like taking a vectored jpeg and making it small it becomes more detailed. Now select that clip in timeline and command+c to copy. Select all your other video clips AFTER that modified one with marquee tool and right click>paste attributes> select distortion only and hit enter. Now it changed all the files to what you made the first clip in three clicks. Now change your graphics manually. You could do this with out the prores conversion but if you have time pro res is beautiful because it can be modified over and over, this is what apple made it for to be repeatedly compressed.

Now you have HD footage in DV timeline. This preserves quality amazingly. Compressor changes the overall image down to dv and looses quality. Now you took a massive file, squished it down, and exported in native timeline settings. BANG you’ll have much better quality after you do what I said with the original post.

This is much simpler and less headache than recapture in lower quality. Final Cut just fuc*ing blows at doing that. Everytime I have it causes issues. I had a tv show all captured and done but the media drive fried. I pulled up autosave vault opened it up and batch captured the footage in same settings in same exact timeline and it causes so many frigging issues. I used captured it no controlled and manually put it in was quicker than dealing with recapture because for some reason final cut sucks at preserving the timecode metadata during reconnecting.

[Grant Strac]

The media manager is also refereed to as media mangler. Be careful. You should only use the option to “copy media to location”. This is non-destructive. All other options are destructive and could destroy your entire world if you are not fully educated in MM

Grant Strac
Apple Master Pro Certified FCS2
Apple Certified Trainer FCP6
Apple FCS Optimization Certified
Apple Level One FCS7 Certified

[Grant Strac]

Ok well your MacPro is 1000 times more powerful than the MBP. It’s odd your having lag time. What pops into my head is who did you get it from trade with friend, colleague, or store. Either one the first thing you should have done is use disk utility to nuke the internal drives.
Reformat all drives, especially boot drive, you need the operating disk to boot to then you can use disk utility to reformat the drive. Then you reformat once, then use the security button in that window and zero out the drive just the first level. Unless your NSA the first level is fine also it will take about hour pending on how old your machine is.
After you reinstall and all that you should have massive improvement. I bought a MacPro6 six months ago and I have reset it twice already. I have four 2tb inside and have snow leopard, lion, leopard with fcs 1,2,3 &x. Your not that level but an 08 macpro has been beat up files all over and have bad hard drive segments. Reformatting atleast twice a year is a must if you want your machine running optimal OR organize your stuff properly.
Also you might be having lag because I’m sure this is your editor and personal. You need to go buy a drive and install it to have two boot drives. One drive has nothing but your editing software and programs and is NOT connected to internet. Second drive is personal for whatever you want this way if one fries you have another drive ready and you need to keep editor offline to keep it safe and optimal. You’d be surprised how much internet information and all downloads documents blah blah causes problems for editor because of not properly sectored information.
If you can’t reset then you should clean house. Organize everything to folder. DO NOT have more than 10 desktop icons and even then put all desktop contents to one folder. Desktop stuff causes surprisingly a large amount of ram lag. After you delete all unnecessary stuff do not empty your trash. Securely empty it go to finder bar.
Also alot of people make this mistake. They have their final cut studio program on the same drive they have their capture scratch. This is the quickest way to fry your drives. I am certified trainer and I tell my classes that is cardinal rule to always have all your programs on one drive and capture scratch on separate. One because if your drive fries you have info and if other one fries atleast you have the autosave vault.
If you do this operations will triple in speed. Think if you have all on one drive your pulling off the drive and pushing back in it’s bottle necking.
I could go on and on but lastly download tech tool pro and run a check on your ram and your hd’s. If all I said is done and you still have lag buy newer ram its dirt cheap now, I am 26 gb and got it for 240. Ram is your most important thing in the previewing timeline activations.

Hope this helps respond if you need more help I could go on and on with tips to optimize your performance I took Apple course on it there are alot of things that can be done

Grant Strac
Apple Master Pro Certified FCS2
Apple Trainer Certifed FCP6
Apple Level One Certified FCP7
Apple Optimization Tech FCS Certified

[Grant Strac]

Hey,

First your idea of replacing with DV files is great, you know what your doing in FCP. BUT you don’t have to go through that hassle. To me it sounded like you recorded in HD captured in HD, edited HD, want to recapture after it’s approved in DV. Am I correct?
If so this is way to many steps you have compressor it’s an incredibly powerful program. DO NOT export a .mov. Never do that in my opinion. Open your fcp and and select your project in timeline. Right click it and export using compressor, fun fact if you have to tight deadline deselect self contained export that compressor reads the encode faster but not as stable. You want to do export to compressor because then your machine dedicated certain ram & processing power to make it a better quality and to avoid problems, jump frames, interlacing when not suppose to be… and on.
Direct from timeline much more stable = better quality. Put your Best or regular compression for DVD. Best= 2 pass encode Good=1 pass. In inspector select the quality and make your bit rate highest as possible. NOW depending on length of your project you could pick highest & won’t fit on disk. So bring up your bit rate and go back to general and it calculates your size. The default encodes are exactly that DEFAULT always go through and change the quality to highest possible that will fit on disc, leave little room for audio.
Also go to your gop structure, all this is in second tab within that window. Change the gop to lowest amount and you want IPB not IPPPPB, point being smaler gop structure higher quality.

You have interlacing in your encodes because your previewing on a computer screen. I export my 1920-1080 and have interlacing because these screens are not set up to display that. So no don’t change your interlacing. You could also be seeing that because when you export full .mov you loose compressors ability to deeply analyze the project and dedicate the proper processes to it. Export from fcp to compressor then EVERY frame is analyzed and compressor will properly make changes that it can’t see with full MOV. Example being from timeline to compressor, now compressor will analyze every cut point and make that an I frame. Which will automatically make it a better quality because more I frames is better. A full export of .mov doesn’t give compressor that ability.

If you need more help respond I hope this sheds light

Grant Strac
Apple Master Pro Certified Final Cut Studio 2
Apple Trainer Certified Final Cut 6
Apple Level One Apple Final Cut 7
Apple Final Cut Optimization Certified