[Russell Lasson]

Sounds like your sequence settings don’t match your clips. What type of video are you putting in the timeline? What is your sequence currently set to?

-Russ

[Russell Lasson]

Would playing it out of QuickTime instead of FCP be acceptable?

I’m really not sure if there is a way to get the non-standard frame size to play right. I know my capture cards wouldn’t know what to do with it and it looks like the same is true with the desktop preview.

-Russ

[Russell Lasson]

I wouldn’t be afraid of keeping the video 4×3 in a 16×9 frame if it is old family movie footage. Seeing it 4×3 is kind of nostalgic and nice if it’s old footage. You could also do a cool treatment on the sides of the video instead of just leaving it black.

-Russ

[Russell Lasson]

I haven’t used the extender/repeater from Gefen, but we have some of their DVI cables. We had some of the orange fibre cables, but they broke after a year. We also have some of the 15′ cables for Apple monitors (blue with usb and firewire) that have worked well. Currently he have two of the 15′ Apple cables connected together to go to a 23″ display. It’s working fine.

We’ll be replace our cables soon with the ethernet DVI extender solutions.

-Russ

[Russell Lasson]

[Henrik Kolind] “I’m using FCP6, and my sequence settings are 1024x768px, square pixels, no fields, 25fps.”

That resolution isn’t a standard video resolution. That’s probably why it’s not playing back right. Do you have the option to output the video as Digital Cinema Desktop Preview – Raw?

-Russ

[Russell Lasson]

[ErikAndre] “(1) What is the absolute *best* way (prime focus on quality) to upscale the SD footage to HD (timeout… isn’t there an upscale feature?)… or is resizing within the canvas and re-rendering the best way?”

First of all, you’re original footage is coming from a DVD through stream clip. It will never look great. You’re best option it to only get it to look good enough.

Easiest way, just drop the SD footage on the timeline and scale it up. Make sure your Sequence settings – Video Processing – Motion Filtering Quality is set to High.

Another option is to use compressor to convert the footage to HD using some presets that are in there.

You could also try Instant HD by Red Giant.

Try to find something that will give you acceptable results. It will never look as good as your HD footage most likely, so keep that in mind when you’re trying to decide what is acceptable.

[ErikAndre] “2) Is it a bad idea to give the SD 4:3 footage a 16:9 look by cropping it, or would it be far too pixelated due to the stretch (?)… Note: i’d really like to keep the 16:9 look.”

It means you’re going to scale footage that doesn’t look that great to start with. Try it and see if it is acceptable. I’ve never had any SD footage look as good as footage that was shot on HD.

-Russ

[Russell Lasson]

Is the video grainy when it’s done capturing or just in the preview window when it’s capturing? Is that what you mean?

If you’re capturing over firewire, you’re just copying information off of the tape. So if it gets more grainy it’s because it was shot that way, not because of how it’s being imported.

-Russ

[Russell Lasson]

Gary,

With a name like:

[piper] “SaltAire Cinema Productions “

I’d think you were based in Utah. If so, I’d like to invite you to lunch sometime.

Email me if you’re interested: rlasson(at)kalpics.com

Thanks,

-Russ

[Russell Lasson]

[Tom Matthies] “many of today’s “High End” car spots the cars are actually computer generated. “

Yes, I think you’d be shocked if you actually knew how many where 3D models of the cars instead of the actual thing.

-Russ

[Russell Lasson]

So your 3.1MB/sec footage is native HDV copied over firewire. FCP can play this back and you can edit it. It can be a pain to render and export though. That’s why someone suggested using the 11MB/sec Apple Intermediate codec. Though it takes up quite a bit more space, it’s much easier to edit and render with.

12 hours of footage at HDV would be about 133GB. 12 hours of Apple Intermediate would be about 475GB.

With either one you can set up your sequence setting so they don’t need to render everything (just effects, dissolves, etc.)

If I had the space, I’d probably just use the Apple Intermediate codec because it’s easier to work with once it’s in the computer.

-Russ