[Hillary Knox]

Yep, ok. That leads me to believe that my ripper isn’t being all it can (or should) be. I’m didn’t use MPEG Streamclip because (at least for me) I haven’t had a lot of (i.e. any) success using it to rip commercial DVDs which is what I’m using for this…nobody freak out, I’m just doing some tests for internal use only.

In the ripper than I’m using (the trial version of Foxreal Blu-ray Ripper for Mac), it gives me a 720×406 file when I use the “original resolution” setting. In related news, when I rip directly to 1280×720 as suggested (and already tried), I get a file that is 1272 x 720. It also gives me a 30fps file when I use “original frame rate”, which, as I mentioned before, I had to conform to 29.97 in Cinema Tools.

So, to paraphrase General Beringer from War Games: “After careful very consideration sir, I’ve come to the conclusion that [my DVD ripper] sucks”

In case anyone is wondering, I was trying to determine what gave me the best quality for an HD file…ripping the DVD at native resolution & scaling it up in FCP or ripping it at HD resolution & working with it that way. If anyone has any conventional wisdom on the subject, I’d love to hear it.

[Hillary Knox]

Ok, that’s all great information. Thanks for that.

Working in the project at 32-bit *seems* to give me some better results when using certain aspects of Color Finesse, but I don’t have any scientific proof to back that up. I mean, I know you can’t manufacture detail out of nothing, but working in 32-bit appears to offer some minor advantages when using Color Finesse like trying to recover detail from blown out highlights…again, nothing I could prove.

As I said before, rendering in Animation 8-bit (as set in the AE render settings) gives me a file size that is around half that of a file rendered in Animation 32-bit. Since the Animation codec is 8-bit only as you say, I guess there’s just a bunch of duplicated data in my 32-bit renders? I certainly can’t see any difference in the renders.

Millions vs Millions+ is a good idea.

Yeah, animation can get huge, I guess so. In this instance, the source file I’m dealing with that prompted this whole thread is about 10 secs, & about 190 MB. When I correct it & render it as 8-bit, it ends up being about 360 MB. When I render as 32-bit, it’s almost 600 MB.

Thanks for the help.

[Hillary Knox]

Im guessing you mean that your footage is DV sized (720×480) using the Animation codec. Is that correct?

Sorry, yes, that is correct. I should have been more clear.

I would not expect the number of layers in my composition to have any affect on my final file size. Are you rendering these layers out separately to be composited at a later date?

Right…I wouldn’t expect that either, which is why I’m asking the question. I should have said “as you might expect because I’m posting this question about surprisingly large file sizes”. I’m not rendering the layers separately. In this case, the separate layers aren’t of use to anyone but me.

I have been playing around with color bit depth just to see if that has anything to do with it. It seems that when I render the files in 8-bit, the file sizes are roughly double the original file size. When I render 32-bit (the project bit-depth), the file sizes are roughly triple the original file size. For what I’m working with, rendering in 8-bit makes basically no difference than rendering in 32-bit, so that’s half the solution right there.

But, even when rendering in 8-bit, why would the file size double when all I’m doing is some relatively simple color correction? (My relative ignorance of the Animation codec might be part of the answer.)

Thanks.

[Hillary Knox]

As long as we’re talking about it, I’d like to hear some opinions on what anyone would consider the *practical* working ProRes (or other) codec/resolution limits on the current batch of MacBook Pros? I’m not so interested in “what’s the absolute max it can handle?”, but rather what do you use on a regular basis? Or, what’s the max it can handle without you wanting to shoot yourself?

I’m most curious to hear about about experiences with FCP 7 & Color, but also AfterEffects & Motion.

Thanks!