[Ryan Holmes]

[Joseph W. Bourke] “Are you by any chance creating them at 72dpi…I always do my Photoshop work at 150dpi, just for a bit of overkill.”

DPI has absolutely no impact on computer resolution or clarity in the terms you’re talking about. DPI only matters to paper, not to screens.

DPI really only matters when printing images or in relation to scanning an image into the computer in order to affect its overall physical resolution. If you need to pan and scan a photo you have to scan it at a high enough dpi in order to derive the necessary physical resolution so that you aren’t zooming in past 100%. In a very crude sense, screens only know physical resolution (1920×1080, 1280×720, 1024×768, 720×480, etc.). GPU’s and computer screens don’t really care about any dpi.

I think the “dpi matters” is an old myth picked up by us video people from those in desktop publishing world. This website gets a bit repetitive (and was probably designed at the dawn of the internet), but it makes the point simply and clearly, in my opinion.

https://www.scantips.com/no72dpi.html

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

What version of CS?

I think anything from CS5 up should be fine. I shoot a C300 (same XF codec with MXF wrapper) and CS6 can import the media natively without transcoding or rewrapping.

Premiere CC should have no problems as well if you’re moving to the cloud.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

One thing to note is that the EX1 can also be heavily customized in it’s menus for color rendering. So there isn’t such a thing as a “standard EX1 image.” They all vary based on the color matrix used, white balance, gain, f/stop, etc. Getting 5D footage to match an EX1 is a challenge and is exactly what the term “color correction” sets out to do.

Not sure what software you have access to but there are plenty of options out there to enhance your color toolset – Apple Color, Adobe Speedgrade, DaVinci Resolve are all stand alone apps dedicated to color correction/grading. If you want to get plugins Magic Bullet Looks is an option. So is there Colorista package….which I think is now owned by Red Giant. Noise Industries may have some color tools to check as well.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

You can’t rename it to Content 2. I don’t think XF Utility can read that. It has to see it as “Content” and then can look inside. XF Utility is not a smart program. It’s very basic….very simple.

So you need to figure out your workflow. Here’s a couple of options for ya:

Option 1:
You can do an ingest of the footage through XF Utility which will allow you (1) make a back up the card (sort of like a disk image) or (2) export out each clip as a self-contained MXF file that can be read independently of the XML on the card.

Option 2:
Copy of the cards to your desktop, but place them in folders you’ve already setup (shot01, shot02, shot03, etc.)

Option 3:
Use some sort of a copy software to copy and verify your data. ShotPut Pro being the most readily used option that I’m aware of.

Option 4:
Use Adobe Prelude to ingest, tag, and rough edit your footage

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

In my completely unscientific test (and use) of the camera 640 seems plausible. I’ve had a hard time telling the difference between 320, 640, and 1250. Those seem to be the cleanest signals. I doubt Canon would set the base ISO at 1250 (though the C300 is 850 so…..?) which leaves me leaning towards 320 or 640.

It’d be nice to know. Here’s a video that lays out all the ISO’s side-by-side for a comparison on the 5D3 – https://vimeo.com/42784406

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

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[Ryan Holmes]

[Kris Merkel] “Whatever the reason the client needs this is neither here nor there.”

@Kris – I agree. I was just curious about why. It feeds my fascination when people demand extreme things. And, like a 2 year old, I just like asking “Why?!” all the time! 🙂

[Heather Brown] “Will testing a workflow from another 1080 source be comparible?”

@Heather – It really won’t matter what you’re source material is as the limitations, as they currently exist, will render most everything as a varying level of bad. If you can cut down the length as you suggest to 15 minute segments that would allow you to up the total data rate to around 450kbps, which would be markedly better than before. If you ran your videos through at 320×180 at 450kbps, you might be satisfied with that……?

If you’re source material is HD, then you should prepare yourself or those in your company to know that these data rates do not sustain video well. It will look soft, blocky, and not at all like the source material (unless you make the resolution very small). It’s completely possible to get something done within the limitations, but what quality level you’re willing to accept (or the company) may be where the rub lies.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

[Heather Brown] “30-40 min pieces that need to be exported to WMVs w/ a 40MB limit. “

That’s a pretty strict limit! With those lengths and that hard cap you’re looking at about 165kbps as your total data rate for both audio and video. So you could apply 100kbps towards video and 64kbps towards audio. You won’t be able to go much beyond 320×240 (or 320×180 if widescreen) as a resolution. And likely even that resolution will break down and show significant softness and blocking with those reduced data rates.

But Tero’s right. Your choices there are it looks bad as a bigger size or it looks good but is the size of a postage stamp. I’m curious why the hard limit and why WMV?

Here’s Vimeo’s Compression guidelines for what they recommend when you upload to their service (not your use case but it gives you some size/data rate guidelines that I think are pretty useful overall) – https://vimeo.com/help/compression

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

[Chad Brunswick] “Any other ideas? “

I would probably run a reset disk permissions and verify/scan the drive….make sure it’s all good there. I would also verify from wherever you got the file that is indeed a DNxHD Quicktime. They could export it out as a different format instead for you to load it onto your system.

After that I’d guess I’d have to go more nuclear and reformat the drive and reinstall from scratch.

[Chad Brunswick] “but of course you can’t upgrade or install anything on a Mac unless you keep up with the current version of OSX.”

For long term consideration…..not sure what OS you’re on, but FCP 6 is now over 6 years old (released in 2007). It’s probably time to consider moving up to something more current as well. Especially if you have to start dealing with more modern codecs.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

[Chad Brunswick] “Suppose I’ll try installing an older version like 2.3.4.”

That’d be my next step.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

I’m guessing that the either the Avid Codec components you downloaded are not installed in the right place (if QT can’t open it) or you downloaded the wrong components.

Which codec pack did you download from Avid? I’m not positive that the newest codec pack will work in FCP 6.X. You may need to get the one built around that time?

The Avid Codec components should be installed in [your_system_drive]/Library/Quicktime

In there you should also see codecs like ProRes, DVCPROHD, Apple Intermediate Codec, etc.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost