[Timothy Ford]

Thanks for weighing in Rich. I was not able to locate my Snow Leopard disc so I tried a couple of other routes and got this figured out, at least for my particular application. Here’s what I did.

I took all the Raw photos from our DP and brought them back into Light Room. I exported everything as 8-bit TIFFs. I assume compressor caps out somewhere around 10 or 12-bit and 16-bit was just too much. (Overkill for me anyway) Resolution was a greater concern as I need to synth some camera moves on the final video clips without losing fidelity.

I started a “new job from image sequence” in Compressor and set my encoding to the preferred specs. I found that Compressor will report the original AV attributes for the images at somewhere around 2000+ horizontal. I simply went into the geometry pane and changed the values there from 100% of source to the true resolution of the photos.

When the job completed, I had my video clip at my intended resolution with no degradation from up-res.

I tried popping this clip into a 4K sequence in Final Cut. It worked, but promptly crapped out. No matter, I needed this at 1080 anyway. However, the cameras I animated in After Effects worked with the clip perfectly.

Hopefully, this helps someone else up against a similar problem.

[Timothy Ford]

Well I have Snow Leopard and Quicktime X. As I understand it, the open image sequence option is no longer available for this version so I can’t really check it that way.

I tried dragging all the stills into a FCP timeline with sequence settings at 30fps and a horizontal resolution of 4096. This is the highest it will allow me to go.

I was hoping to spit some clips out of here, but they will not render or export self-contained movies. It simply reports out of memory. I have 24GB BTW.

Surely this is possible.

[Timothy Ford]

* Computer – Mac
* Operating system – OSX 10.6.4
* Software – Compressor 3.5.2
* Source codec – 16bit TIFF Sequences
* Destination codec – Prores 4444
* Destination – Playback from HD. Use in editing

[Timothy Ford]

It was processed through a Davinci on HDCAM at 59.94, then digitized by them to the prores files at 23.98 some time back. I don’t actually have an HDCAM deck to re-digitize the files. The only thing I have are the 23.98 clips that I have to lay down to Digibeta.

[Timothy Ford]

It does look the same through the broadcast monitor. I had considered the field reversal as well so I recompressed with top first to no avail. I even tried with no field order, and that didn’t work either.

[Timothy Ford]

I am an editor, a young one. That’s why I’m asking the questions, to learn and improve.

I’ll keep digging. Hopefully someone in the FCP forum can be of some help.

[Timothy Ford]

I can’t really say how it was captured. You see we went to an outside vendor to color, dub, and digitize the spot for us. At any rate, it wasn’t captured from digibeta, it was captured from HDCAM.

I’ll definitely post in the FCP forum as well. Thanks.

[Timothy Ford]

Indeed. I’ve been doing my homework and studying up on some VFX breakdowns recently. I saw the SIN CITY OPENING – GREEN SCREEN BEFORE AND AFTER video which illustrates this principle clearly. I’m surprised at how much you latitude you can have with a key.

We will not have time/money for another practice run with this one, but I’m confident enough with the mechanics of the shot that I’ve decided to recommend this route. We may need only to simplify the move.

Thanks so much for your input on this everyone. The comments have been very helpful.

[Timothy Ford]

Yeah this would be the ideal method, but it’s supposed to be in a laboratory or classroom of sorts, and I’m not sure my matte painting skills are quite there yet.

Do you know of any resources/tutorials regarding this subject. Matte painting that is?

[Timothy Ford]

Thanks so much for weighing in Mark. Motion Control is what I was looking for. I’m most concerned with getting a realistic composite between the staged actor and the real environment so I’ll most likely propose this solution. If we were using artificial backgrounds then I’d just track it in post and save us a bundle, but there is just too much to consider regarding perspective.

I had thought of the Lazy Susan idea myself, but was concerned about the lighting. This will be the contingency plan. We’ll just make the camera move less complex and rotate the actor.

Thanks again. Your post was very helpful.