[Jeff Brown]

I’m not in PAL-land, so you may get better advice elsewhere, but:
The 25->24 conversion is usually done “directly”, ignoring the speed change that will result; the footage will slow down 4%. What is a “con” is that your sound will no longer be in sync. And a 4% change in audio will be noticeable, so the audio will require conversion. As to tiff frames, they are just a series of stills, so there is no actual “frame rate” to them.

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

Sounds like you are missing the necessary codec for the QuickTime files. Inspect the file properties (using QT Player) and see what codec is needed; most you can download from the appropriate vendor.

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

That’s a not uncommon approach. Less “empty” space means more resolution to work with. Although, it does add a bit of overhead to the greenscreen comp (scale & rotate), along with possible softening due to scaling. If your talent really nails the first take, shoot it both ways.

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

You may want to look at reVisionFX (dot com) Twixtor, as it goes way beyond frame blending. It can take some effort to get clean results, but it’s very impressive. I use it in Combustion; not sure if any functionality is compromised in Premiere, but I think there is a demo version.

-jeff

Jeff Brown
Fire Mist Media
http://www.firemist.com

[Jeff Brown]

You can also try a luma key on the duplicate layer to isolate the highlight, then color-correct that.

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

Dan– on reconsideration, you may just be up against the relatively low resolution of video. A 5-degree swing will take horizontals to a slight angle, and if there are fine lines, they will show artifacts.
Photoshop has pretty good scaling; try “perspective-ing” a still frame in that, and if you still see artifacts, it’s probably time to live with it or increase the swing angle in hopes of reducing the stepping.

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

I believe that’s due to Premiere’s less-than-optimal (i.e., lousy) scaling algorithms. AfterEffects (or some other compositing app) would do better for you if you have that option.

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

One suggestion: Rent a panasonic AJ-SDX900, and shoot DVCPro50.
Or rent a Sony DigiBeta package. Both will give you nice footage to work with.
My opinion– Unless you are shooting more than 30 days a year, you’re probably better off renting.

-Jeff

[Jeff Brown]

How are you viewing the DVD product? Windows Media Player has some problems with audio levels (DVD levels play back low).

Typically, people mix so that audio peaks at -12 dBFS.
-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

Does the noise appear on an external monitor? If not, I would suggest checking your general preferences and setting the desktop display the “other” way– one way is “OpenGL Draw Pixels”, i forget the other option. But switching that setting might make a difference, as it could be a graphics card issue.
If you have noise on an external monitor image as well, then that would point to a more serious issue, as that would affect your final output.

-jeff