[Lawrence Marshall]

At this point, just the junction box. I have the HDX card in an old Powermac tower… serves as a way to view Media 100 footage that I digitized in HDX if I have to. Haven’t tried the latest M100 codecs to see if they will open old files (and then I wouldn’t need the card)…

[Lawrence Marshall]

Last year I worked on a film that was shot standard DV 4×3. I submitted it to various film festivals (it has been screened at 37 festivals thus far). Several of the festivals accepted only HDCAM for screening masters. I took my Mac Pro to a local post house, hooked it up to one of their HDCAM decks, and sent my standard DV timeline through my Kona LHI card, upconverting in real time to HiDef (with pillarboxing for the 4×3). I went to one of the festivals (the Woodstock Film Festival) and saw my film projected on a fairly large screen in a theater from the HDCAM tape. It looked extremely good from a picture quality standpoint.

[Lawrence Marshall]

Good thought, Matthew – except I am working with frames, not fields. All footage was shot progressive (no field dominance) and I’m editing on a progressive timeline…

[Lawrence Marshall]

My AJA Kona LHI does put out a very beautiful, detailed hi-res image to the Sony, but I have to set its output to 720p 59.94. When I set the AJA to output 720p 23.98, I get nada – – just scrambled interference on the Sony.

At 720p 59.94, the image from the AJA on the Sony is beautiful. But that’s where I’m also seeing these less-than-fluid dissolve and fades. Also, I’ve got a bunch of photos in this show I’m comping, and when they move left to right, or when I pan up and down the photos, those moves too are less than fluid. They’re fine, I guess – – they are not “sticking” as if the timeline is sticking or the hard drives can’t keep up – – they just don’t move s-m-o-o-t-h-l-y.

[Lawrence Marshall]

Monitoring from an AJA LHi HD component to a Sony PVM-20L5 NTSC, capable of displaying the HiDef signal. I have used this monitor for several years monitoring DVC Pro HD in gorgeous hi-def detail. But your question raised the obvious flag: apparently it can’t display progressive.

Sent the FCP program to both a 27″ Apple Cinema display and then to a Dell 22″ 16:9 display. (Ahem) (*cough* *cough*)… things are looking, shall we say, much more improved.

Bret wins a cookie. I get 24 hours in the corner with a dunce cap.

Larry (perhaps a glass of wine will help me feel better) Marshall

[Lawrence Marshall]

I concur with Dave. Converting your WMVs to an extremely high quality codec like ProRes will yield little visual loss (I’ve done this before). YourPro Res files will look almost indistinguishable from the WMVs, and your final output to H.264 will look pretty darn acceptable. (remember, it’s a webinar, not a doc to be aired on PBS…)

[Lawrence Marshall]

Playback is full. Quality is high. Puzzlement is huge. What’s really puzzling: the 23.98 clips themselves are completely smooth. But throw a dissolve or a fade on ’em… definitely not smooth transitions.

Larry (I’m pretty sure a lot of people make a lot more money with much less headache) Marshall

[Lawrence Marshall]

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Done and done.

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Also done. All from the get-go.

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Thus my premise in my very first post in the thread. I am *so used* to 29.97 and 59.94 that maybe I’m shooting at nothing here…

Thanks for your interest and suggestions, Dave and Rich.

Larry (really, was 3/4″ all that bad?) Marshall

[Lawrence Marshall]

Hi Dave – here’s the report:

Clips playing directly in Quicktime player indicate 23.98 fps.

Final Cut project timeline is 23.98 fps.

Clips in FC’s browser window indicate 23.98 fps.

So, if I take two clips and put them on the timeline (or two still images, whatever) and put a dissolve or fade of 1 second (or 2 or 3), I get a less-than-silky smooth transition. It doesn’t “stick”… it’s just mildly “steppy”, as opposed to a continuous ramp. “Best rendering” every option is turned on.

After Effects: I’m not using the video footage… I’m just pulling moves on photos, traveling text across screen, etc. Comp setting is 23.976, rendering out as fields…

[Lawrence Marshall]

Hi Dave –

I thought of that… I’m doing a lot of comping of the footage in After Effects. I am rendering everything as frames, not fields, and “3:2 pulldown” is not available to me in the “render settings” dialog box. It’s greyed out… only active if I select “fields” for rendering.