[James Bayliss-smith]

What camera, what format etc…

[James Bayliss-smith]

Hi Michael, Rafael and Chris

Thanks for getting back to me, I have some follow up questions.

[Michael Gissing] “Betacam SX is best captured in FCP via SDI as ProRes 422”

I thought so but am I right in thinking I’d need a capture card like an AJA or Blackmagic one. How would one do this into a laptop? A capture box? Any links to products would be appreciated. Also out of interest is ProRes422 HQ just not worth it for Betacam SX or is it technically better?

[Michael Gissing] “In PAL you should always avoid DV 25 or 50 codecs as they are the only lower field SD codecs. I see so many news stories with the wrong field order on Australian TV and I know it is down to people shooting or editing in DV and converting to mpeg2 or H264 and leaving the field order wrong. So my advice is to always avoid those codecs.”

I have experienced this myself when I reversed some footage and didn’t change the field order of the reversed portion. If anyone wants to expand on this I’d be very interested to learn more. I’m afraid I can’t avoid DVCPro25 or DVCPro50 as this is what our P2 Cameras shoot to. So to understand this is PAL Upper field dominant? Should I be changing the field order of all my DVCPro Edit’s? I’m a a little confused about this

[Michael Gissing] “With P2 you could shoot HD”

Our cameras: Panasonic AJ-SPX900’s don’t shoot HD unfortunately

[Rafael Amador] “Betacam SX is very closed to DVCPro50; 8b/422 compressed).
Betacam Digital is 10b/422 compressed
Yes you are losing quality if you convert to DV.”

What is DV 8b/422? What is the data rate of DV 25? (i.e DVCPro 25/50)

[Chris Tompkins] “It’s obviously all done on the cheap.
Laptops
Convert to DV
Quick and dirty”

Yes but I think the key word there is Quick. Being in news we have to work quickly and I’m guessing our work-flow is designed for this. The only bit I think should/could be improved it the way we use our archive. Converting to DV is clearly not the best option. I’m assuming if we had proper capture cards in our laptops we could convert just as quickly to ProRes (which flavour would be recommended?) or DVCPro50.

Do you guys have any other suggestions as to how we can improve our workflow? I appreciate your time

Thanks, James

[James Bayliss-smith]

Thanks for your advice David and Dave,

Sorry to be pedantic but surely when something doesn’t do what it should in a program it’s bug? Good to know I’m not doing anything wrong. I guess I just have to remember to pan everything before I export. Would be great if I could change all these pans as a batch in Quicktime 7.

Cheers

[James Bayliss-smith]

O.K. so we get back to my original question. What resolution should I rip the DVD at to import into after effects? I think your saying it doesn’t matter and it is the quality of the scaling that matters so I should therefore rip at 720 x 576 (PAL DVD 4:3) and then let after effects deal with everything else. My whole theory of ripping at 1920 x 1440 then cropping (or scaling I think you refer to it as) was just plain wrong and weird. Not theoretical merit?

Sorry for all the questions I just need to understand this otherwise I’ll never learn it properly.

Cheers

James

[James Bayliss-smith]

O.K. Thanks Michael,

I do have After Effects but have never used it as I still haven’t mastered FCP so I’ve been putting it off but it seems more and more that it is useful for a variety of things that FCP can do.

So rendering in FCP is not great? I’ve kind of heard this before but didn’t take it in as I’ve never really understood rendering. So the rendering process is better in After Effects for doing the same thing? Just a better programme for that type of thing, more specialized?

I’ve heard that the more rendering one has to do the worse the final quality will be. I can understand this if multiple different effects have to be applied but is this also the case If I change a transition multiple times. i.e. changing the length of a type of dissolve then rendering again? Or is it the case that you can change the same effect and render multiple times and have no cumulative loss in quality?

Thanks again,

James

[James Bayliss-smith]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your patience. If you take 33.3% of 1080 you are left with 680 roughly. With my method, encoding at 1440 when you crop the image to create a 16:9 image you will be left with an image that is 1080 lines of vertical resolution and 1920 horizontal. I may have confused you earlier with talk of zooming in. That is what I’ve been doing in Final Cur Pro but I mean is crop a 16:9 image from a 4:3 image. With a DVD ripped to ProRes 422 at 1920 x 1440 then if I do this then surely I will end up with footage, 16:9 images with no image distortion and HD resolution. I take your point about hardware but I have no access to this type of equipment and no budget. Does my workflow seem strange or is it logical?

I haven’t actually tested it yet as I’m working in SD just trying to think ahead. What is FCP doing with my footage when I import into a 16:9 sequence 4:3 material then zoom in to get rid of the black side bars and then reposition for optimum framing. Am I really getting HD resolution after all that, given my above workflow?

Cheers and all the best

James Bayliss-Smith

[James Bayliss-smith]

Hi Thanks for your response.

You said: If you do the upscaling as you rip, then of course you meant 1920 x 1080 (not 1440). Try a test on a short section.

Actually I did mean 1440. When I zoom in to 4:3 in FCP then the 1440 will change to 1080 thereby giving me 1920 x 1080. I managed to do this with MPEG streamclip. That is what I meant when I said is this logical?

So I’ll still be using FCP to zoom but from bigger resolution to HD resolution.

Does this make sense or is there a better way (I don’t have access to hardware)

Cheers

[James Bayliss-smith]

Hi folks, I thought I’d join this thread as I have a similar question. I need to do this on zero budget so no fancy equipment just software, I have MPEG streamclip and compressor. I have a 4:3 SD DVD with some archive. I’m thinking of converting the DVD with MPEG Streamclip into ProRes 422 1920 x 1440. That way when I use it in Final Cut Pro then zoom into the 4:3 footage to make a 16:9 image the resolution will be HD 1920 x 1080.

Am I being logical? Does this make sense? The resolution of the original image was 768×576. Am I being fussy. My instinct is to upscale then edit with that. Should I just use the original in my HD timeline. Surely this is a better way?

Any other upscale Strategies/solutions for this problem would be most welcome, I also have some DV footage I need to do the same to.

Thanks,

James

[James Bayliss-smith]

Hi Noam what do you mean by Spring? The season or is this something else?

James

[James Bayliss-smith]

Thanks Brian,

Well this doesn’t sound so bad or hard to manage for the few instances where this might happen. Any one else got any tips about potential problems I will encounter when recapturing all my footage at HD once I’ve locked the picture? In relation to subclips or anthing else for that matter,

Thanks