[Ryan Holmes]

If you’re working in HD from acquisition to delivery then yes, you should have your PAR (pixel aspect ratio) set to square pixels. If you had it set to D1/DV NTSC Widescreen 16:9 (1.2121) then it would come out messed up as that should be used primarily when encoding SD footage to widescreen. Since SD doesn’t use square pixels in order to get a widescreen image out of SD footage the pixel aspect has to be reorientated so as to produce the correct image.

If HD material always use Square Pixels.

If SD material use D1/DV NTSC Widescreen, uprezzing to HD or going to web delivery then convert to square pixels.

Good reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_aspect_ratio

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

[Ryan Holmes]

Is the file wrapped as a Quicktime movie or MXF?

If Quicktime, does it open and play in QT7?

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

[Ryan Holmes]

[Bill Church] “I’ve been shooting HD since 2008 across a range of cameras (Sony EX3 and Panny HPX-500 most recently)”

If you have access to those cameras that’s perfect for conference type stuff. For many my longer shoots I rely on our EX1’s. They are perfect for long form material.

I think the DSLR’s are great for human interest and cinematic pieces. But for long-form content I don’t think they’re a good fit. I’ve heard of people trying, but I’m not one of them. The file limit has always been a problem. Even for the new 5D3 you can only record internally for 29:59….just under 30 minutes. Even with that and a long form event you’d still be stopping multiple times during your recording.

Though strangely enough, I just ran our Canon 5D3 as a wide camera during a graduation event and fed that into a Blackmagic ATEM TV Studio mixer via SDI (converted the HDMI signal from the 5D3 to SDI). The difference being that the 5D3 can output a clean HDMI signal (no menus, no overlays, and a full 1080p image). That worked relatively well since I just needed it to feed an image to director who was live mixing the event. But I was worried about it throughout the event. It’s definitely not a “go-to” solution in my book.

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

[Ryan Holmes]

It sounds like you should double check two areas:
(1) Verify the exported file settings – 1920×1080
(2) Recreate your ProRes Preset to ensure you set it up correctly

In Quicktime under Command+I you’ll see two display sizes – Normal Size and Current Size. Normal size is the one you need to be concerned about. That’s the actual resolution of the file you’re looking at. Current size is simply the size it’s currently being displayed at (which you can change by grabbing the corner of Quicktime and stretching/shrinking it to fit your display). Again, the Normal Size is what you need to verify.

Verify that the file was exported correctly from Avid. Then verify your ProRes preset.

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

[Ryan Holmes]

Here’s my experience with the DSLR route that you propose. I’ve been shooting on them for corporate video since 2009, 2 Canon 7D’s and a 5D Mark III. I don’t use they cameras for long form recordings (i.e. weddings, presentations, etc.). Because:

The audio is a pain. We typically sync with a program called PluralEyes which analyzes audio waveform between the internal mic and your external audio source. It’s not always perfect but it gets you within a frame or two most every time.

Long form is terribly difficult with DSLR cameras. Because the camera is limited by a FAT32 file structure you’ll only be able to record about 12 minutes before reaching the 4GB per file limit imposed by FAT32. Later cameras (5DIII and maybe the 6D) over come this by spanning the clips on the card. So the problem if you’re recording a talking head conference for 60-90 minutes then you’re going to be forced to start/stop recording every 12 minutes which is hard to stitch together in post. The 60D also doesn’t have a clean HDMI out on it so you can’t rely on that as a way around it.

I’m not trying to tell you not to buy the camera….just making you aware of the problems you’re going to run into. In your situation I would probably look at some of the cameras from Panasonic and JVC that retail around $1K. They are fixed lens solutions, but provide good quality, long record times and can handle audio through a mini jack. All the areas that a DSLR falls on its face.

Also if you’re going to step into HD you’d also better keep in mind somewhere to store all this footage. Drives are cheap, but they ain’t free! 🙂 HD data rates tend to be a good bit higher than where you’re currently working at with mini-DV. (50+mbps vs. 25mpbs). If you get into transcoding your footage to a mezzanine codec (like ProRes or DNxHD or whatever) then you’re data rates and therefore file size will be going up exponentially.

If you go the HD route then you’ll definitely need to upgrade your editing rig as FCP5 would have problems (my guess is that it’d be impossible) to edit h.264 DSLR videos. Or anything from any recent camera in there. It wasn’t until FCP6 that Apple released ProRes as an intermediate codec (which has a data rate of 145mbps).

So in review:
60D DSLR = bad audio, bad long-form, no clean HDMI out, but great depth of field, sensitive in low light, affordable
I would explore a fix lens option for your setup given that you will be doing long-form talking head recordings. DSLR’s don’t lend themselves to that format very well in my experience.

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

[Ryan Holmes]

[Sondre Russvoll] “So, I’ll just have to do the special effects with the low contrast movies?
“

You can do it that way. Or just apply a 3-Way Color Corrector/LUT to your footage in PPro so it looks a bit more punchy and then go over to AE. Just be sure not to bake in any of your color correction/LUT on your footage before you go to Resolve (unless you want to as a base grade starting point).

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

[Ryan Holmes]

Using your original media, do your edit in PPro. Once your edit is locked send that sequence via XML (or EDL) into Resolve. Grade the clips in Resolve. Then either export out your finished project from Resolve or export out the graded clips so you can send a XML (or EDL) back to PPro to do more additional work (titles, After Effects, etc.).

Typically color grading is one of the last steps you do. However, if you’re shooting in a flat picture style you may want to do a rough grade (or use a LUT) so that it looks better to the client as they work their way through the edit. You could do this inside of PPro with a 3-way color corrector (just a simple effect on the clip in the timeline).

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

[Ryan Holmes]

Post this question in the X forum….you’ll get a better response. This is the FCP Legacy section of the Cow (versions 1-7).

https://forums.creativecow.net/fcpxtechnique

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

[Ryan Holmes]

You’ll need to export your FCP7 timeline to a format that YouTube supports – likely h.264 mp4 file. There’s several ways to do this, but the easiest is to use Compressor to encode the file. You can send your timeline from FCP7 to Compressor and apply the settings within Compressor. For internet delivery I refer people to Vimeo’s Compression guide (settings are about the same for YouTube as for Vimeo):

https://www.vimeo.com/help/compression

Tutorials for how to use your particular app are on the right side of the page.

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

[Ryan Holmes]

You can use any number of softwares to do this – FCP7, Compressor, MPEG Streamclip. There’s no “magic-sauce” when it comes to transcoding footage. Though I’ve heard (not confirmed personally) that Red Giant’s Grinder does a good job of preserving timecode. That software is about $50 I believe.

The timecode isn’t as much the issue as FCP7 doesn’t play well with h.264 mov’s. You can drop it on the timeline and make simple edits, but if you get into any FX work or color correction then you’ll lose realtime playback and be rendering over and over and over again to see what you’ve done. ProRes is without a doubt the way to go for compatibility across various software apps, in my opinion.

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