[Pierpaolo Ferlaino]

Thanks Raphael. Normally I will follow your advice but I’m looking to a faster way to do the job.

If I change my sequence settings now DVCPro HD will resize / distort and I have reconform my sequence. I did not edited the movie and – since it has several motion effects (from the final cut motion tab) – I should also start over with every single motion effect…

Moreover compressor will make an annoying thin green line on the left side of my footage when I have frame controls ON.

[Pierpaolo Ferlaino]

I often use g-drives and never had this kind of problem. Sometimes they seems to be slow to start playback on my fcp sequence if I leave my computer for some time but I don’t think that render times could be affected by your hard drive until it has no other read/write issue…

[Pierpaolo Ferlaino]

@Shane
Probably there’s a misunderstanding. I mean my finished / edited movies, not the footage (I always archive tapes and card backups but I trash all my captured footage when a projects is finished) .
During the last year most of my projects were edited and exported as ProRes. For dvcpro hd projects I edit them natively, then export my finished movie as prores directly from the final cut timeline since most of my clients ask me for ProRes files. However, in the past, when my clients wanted tapes and not files, I exported dvcpro hd and hdv finished movies natively and stored them on a server for archival purposes. Since I still need these old movies as quicktime file in an editing format for many reasons (I often reuse part of them in other projects) and I’m planning to buy a windows based editing system and switching from final cut to premiere or avid on my macs, I’d like to understand if it worth recompressing these old dvcpro hd and apple hdv movies as ProRes for cross platform compatibility…
@Dave: I tried to import an apple dvcpro hd movie file into avid on a pc and I can only hear the sound but my video is completely white… Maybe I’m doing something wrong? I did not try with apple hdv yet… I will try on edius too. No problem with prores.

[Pierpaolo Ferlaino]

Thanks…
I do not usually archive converted footage since I archive card backups or HDV tapes.

Most of my file based masters are encoded as Apple ProRes and I can decode them on PC based editing systems with no problems.

However, some of my older master files are encoded as Apple HDV or Apple DVCPro HD which – to my knowledge – could be decoded only on mac systems with final cut installed.

Since we are planning to buy an Edius editing station and I probably will need to access these file based masters both on Mac and PC can I keep these files as they are or it’s better to re-encode them to ProRes to keep the best cross-platform compatibility?

Can I decode / edit Apple HDV or Apple DvcPro HD on a PC based editing system?

[Pierpaolo Ferlaino]

I had a similar problem with some archive footage I used for a documentary… I tried everything… At the end JES deinterlacer did a good job for me…

[Pierpaolo Ferlaino]

I think you will end up with a softer image in any case.
Your best choice would be 720p. In my studio we own an aja and it depends on the original footage. Sometimes I can get better result when upconverting with the aja, often I get the same result by editing the clip in a ProRes 720p sequence and conforming the footage to sequence settings…
But I usually upconvert because I edit documentaries so most archive material is SD while my work is HD: broadcasters here always ask me for the “original” format, so if it’s SD I’ll give them SD…

[Pierpaolo Ferlaino]

I did not really solve my issue but manually duplicating and putting my layers on top while they scale up it’s my final choice. Some wiggle and Dan Ebbert’s expressions to control its behaviour added something extra to the job and the client is happy with it…

Thanks everybody

[Pierpaolo Ferlaino]

Thanks a lot. I will take a look to Dan Ebbert’s site and ask in the expression forum…

[Pierpaolo Ferlaino]

Thanks for your answer… the problem with 3D text layers is that I have to deal with camera perspective so when a layer – away from the center of the composition – is moved along the z-position it does not exaclty move towards my point of view. To avoid that I would need some trick to get something similar to an “ortographic camera”…

[Pierpaolo Ferlaino]

Are you using “Best Settings” as Render Setting in your queue?