[Nick Meyers]

what i would do about the DV to HD is to take the tapes to a post house,
and have them capture while passing the signal through a terenex hardware up-scaler.

i’d capture whole tapes as Prores HQ.

i’ll admit i’m lucky in that i have close ties to a post house that would allow me to supervise this directly.

i’ll also admit i know nothing about 23.976 to 29.97, pull-downs etc
maybe that can be dealt with during the capture, i don’t know.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

or you could try something like your original idea:

inport into FCP, raise levels,
and export using same settings, so no re-compression on the video
not sure how that will work with H264, but worth a look, i guess

nick

[Nick Meyers]

you could try running through compressor again.

i think it’s possible to raise the audio somehow, maybe with a filter
and set the video to bypass.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

you probably know, but there are shortcuts to adjust levels of timeline clips.

if you have a clip selected, or are parked on it,
Control + / – (top row) will raise / lower by 1db.
Control [ / ] just underneath those keys will raise / lower by 3db

i’ve created my own versions which are similar, but better, IMO

Control + / – (NUMBER-PAD) for raise / lower 1db
Control Option + / – (NUMBER-PAD) for raise / lower 3db

if you have a control surface it could make things faster.
it doesn’t make FCP halt while you use it, for example.
if you have “Record Audio Keyframes” turned OFF,
then you are simply setting an overall level for each clip.

of course if you every re-edit the clip into the timeline it wont have those levels.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

this problem is almost impossible to fix properly without decent monitoring.

even a DV camera hooked up to a TV would give you a better idea of what is happening than nothing.

it’s more than likely your sequence is not progressive, but interlaced,
that’s more the standard for SD.
you can tell by checking the “Field Dominance” menu in your sequence settings.
“None” is progressive, Upper or Lower else is interlaced

the images might be a bit large for SD. it depends on how much you need to blow them up, of course.

one trick that works for me, with TEXT in SD sequence, is to add a Blend fields filter.
i use the Too Much Too Soon blend fields (free)
but the FCP flicker filter pretty much does the same thing i think, when it is set to max,
so maybe this trick wont work for you

if the flickering is worse DURING your moves, then you can keyframe the gaussian blur up a bit during the move.

that’s if you apply the blur to the clip in FCP.
another way is to selectively blur the trouble spots in Photoshop
i think your can get a demo period on that now with Adobe’s creative cloud approach.

i’ve been doing some graphics work today, and i’m enjoying working with layered Tiffs.
they keep all their layers in Photoshop, but in FCP appear as a single clip.

it’s vey easy to update an image in PS, save it,
then bounce back to FCP where it updates, and you can monitor it on an external monitor.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

exporting from FCP using “Same settings” or “item settings” will give you a simple transfer of data,
no quality loss.

if you have done a lot of colour correction on your DV footage in a DV timeline, then there is an argument that you have lost some quality already.
but exporting it will be lossless from what you have at the moment,
as would playing out to DV tape.

you WILL lose your original Timecode & Reel #s

if you are chasing quality, here is what i would recommend:
whatever you do, don’t do your up-scale to HD in FCP.
there are other tools for that.
Hardware, such as the Teranex, as mentioned before.
other brands of software: Resolve, which is free does a good upscale.
Your adobe suite may do so as well, i don’t know.

as for de-interlacing, as i’ve already said, i like to be able to see what i’m doing,
and one reason for this is that the best result is NOT a one-setting solution.

some shots: wides for instance, or shots with very little motion,
can look better with a BLEND de-interlace, where you mix both fields and get better resolution.

but most motion looks simply awful with blend, so you’d go with a single field.

for a de-intelace job a did a while back (shot on HDV, destined for cinema screens)
i exported one pass of the graded master with blend, one pass with single fields,
then went through the film, deciding which was best on a case-by-case basis,
for some shots i even did simple composites of both versions.

but remember that de-interlacing, especially the non-blend variety, is throwing away resolution,
so you should probably do that AFTER you up-scale.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

personally i dont like compressor for this sort of this as you cant monitor what it is doing.

for de-interlacing, i prefer Nattress Smart de-interlace, which i can do in FCP, then monitor the output.
it is much faster than compressor, too.

as you also need a rather large blow up, i think you should be asking about that as well.

your best bet would be to capture to HD, sending your signal though a Teranex up-scaler.
this may well be able to do the de-interlace as you go,
but it might be best to upres to interlaced, then do your de-intelace later.
ask around is the best advice i can give.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

you might want to take a look at Resolve, too.
my experience with compressor (not the latest version) is that it falls over if you load too many clips at once.

we did an entire films worth of transcoding on Resolve in one go a few months back.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

no you cant globally affect any of the controls in the text generators WITHIN FCP

you can edit an XML file to change text controls.
you can try to do it yourself,
or use TItle Exchange from Spherico.
the free version does 50 at a time.

you could add a 3way colour corrector to the text generators, as Mark suggested,

if it;s only a dozen or so, the simplest approach is to make up one new title the way you want,
then edit that OVER all your existing text clips (Use the superimpose edit, to make this fast & simple.
then you go through and copy paste the text from your old generator into the new one.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

try “Item Settings”.
it’s the default when you export.

“Although it is very bad of Apple if there is any noise or other artifacts added by FCP it was quite clear that the rushes file was just that bit cleaner and easier to colour correct.”

what, so you are wanting the grader to grade the reference file?
that’s just crazy, sorry.

there should be no difference between a reference file and a self contained,
if there is, you must be doing something wrong.

nick