[Hal Masonberg]

Unfortunately, working with standard def. This was shot on 35mm, but what we’re working with here is a rough cut in SD from some DVD dailies. Long story, but the footage was taken from the dvd’s as Photo – JPEG even though this is a feature film. What we’re cutting here has no relation to what the film should look like in a proper transfer from the 35 elements. That said, I am still trying to offer the best and most accurate quality possible under these circumstances. Is there another setting I should be working in? I’m assuming the damage has already been done and there’s no reversing it. However, if there are options open to me, I’d love to know what they are.

I’ll import to FCP and compare that way. Thanks.

[Hal Masonberg]

Understood. I would think if the settings having changed, the output wouldn’t either. My settings are NTSC DV (3:2), NTSC – CCIR 601, Field Dominance: None, Compressor: Photo-JPEG (because that was what the materials were delivered to me on many years ago and I don’t want to put it through another compression render in FCP), Quality: 100%.

Again, outputting with current settings, and then viewing both QT files side-by-side in Quicktime 10.0. And the older file I output from FCP last week is a tad darker than any new QT file I export from FCP now. And I prefer the slightly darker one. But it doesn’t have the audio fix I recently made.

Hope that’s the info you were looking for.

Thanks.

[Hal Masonberg]

Yes, exporting via Quicktime Movie, not Conversion. And I am opening the mov files in QT and looking at them side-by-side. The newer ones are now brighter. Not significantly, but certainly noticeably. I can’t imagine what would account for this. I never changed anything in Sequence Settings.

[Hal Masonberg]

Though now it seems when I create a new sequence with the exact settings as the ProRes clip, it will no longer show it as not needing to be rendered. Not sure what changed, but even though the clip and the sequence match, it’s still showing that it needs to be rendered. But before it didn’t. Maybe ProRes was not the way to go. Anyone have any idea what is happening here or how I can get around endless rendering?

Basically, I’m taking footage from a DVD (not a commercial DVD) using Cinematize. I chose ProRes 422 as it was recommended as being best for maintaining as much quality as possible when I recompress for DVD. However, would love to know what other options are open to me. I have to put a new soundtrack on the video image (the original sound is of far lesser quality). Heck, I’d love to know if there’s a way not to have to recompress the footage and still put it back on a DVD.

I could Cinematize it as an mpeg-2 stream. Or as NTSC DV. Recommendations?

[Hal Masonberg]

Yes.