[William Carr]

Yes, I did think maybe the battery terminal-power transfer inside the camera was bad, but if the kit had come with an AC adapter– which it does not– it would have made no difference. That’s because the optional AC adapter utilizes a battery-shaped connector which uses the very same terminals in the camera battery slot.

I wish there was something I could activate, some button combo to reboot the thing, but I can’t find anything on the web.

The odds are something inside is fried, but the mystery of how / why it got that way is gnawing at me. If it was sunspots or a coronal mass ejection, why was similar equipment in the same bag not also fried?

Anyway, thanks Steve for the thought.

[William Carr]

Thanks for the suggestion, Jason. Although for this situation I have many images required, and a size/quality uniform standard to deliver. Cropping drop shadows and ensuring that every grab is an exact 1920×1080 dimension is a lot of extra tedium, plus, quality might be a little off considering it’s a screen grab rather than a “direct” conversion from ProRes to TIFF.

FWIW exporting from Quicktime 7 is actually very easy and convenient, other than the danged format output selection being broken, allowing only PICT exports. Why is it broken? Why are those other formats offered but not doable? It’s a Mac mystery.

BUT ANYWAY– I did figure a workflow for a non-FCP machine to export chosen frames from a ProRes movie file into TIFF or JPEG or PNG. It’s good old MPEG Streamclip. A single keyboard command, a format choice, and there’s your still; same effort as Quicktime but reliable result.

[William Carr]

Sometimes I can’t be at the FCP machine, so if I only have the ProRes file and QT Pro on a laptop, I need a solution that I thought could simply be QT Pro, if it wasn’t broken.

[William Carr]

It’s likely by perverting the proper color, contrast and image parameters of your work, the result will be really ugly but in a different way than their blown-out settings.

Really the whole point of a projector is to show something to many people at once, so it’s hard to understand what would prevent the simple act of adjusting the projector to achieve this.

Offer them to guarantee you will return the settings to exactly where they currently are.

[William Carr]

Shane and Eric offer true advice.

In one case, mp4 on the timeline is OK– if you are simply assembling a string of clips with minimal editing intervention. In that case the constant rendering every time you touch a clip is less awful.

But honestly if you convert all the mp4 files to ProRes before editing, then edit, your final result may not terrible in comparison to if you had the original footage.
This depends on two things: the ultimate need of the result (is it for web or DVD?) and the the quality of the mp4 you now have (is it good? is it the same frame size as original and is that relevant?).

Are you delivering to a TV station? A movie theater screening? Those two examples would beg a workflow with the higher quality files.

Professional methods are not just traditions, they grow from practical experience and facts. That said, there is quite often a balance that must be struck between doing it the best and proper way and actually getting it done on time with acceptable quality– as long as the quality outcome / schedule trade-off is agreed upon by you and your client.

You may be delivering for a situation where your current in-hand mp4 files are viable. Test the full workflow with a little segment. If usable, offer the option to your client as a way to meet a deadline.

[William Carr]

FollowUp– I tried a DVDxDV demo vs. MPEG Streamclip, and the advantage of the latter is that I could export directly to ProRes, as opposed to a more limited set of intraframe Quicktime choices for DVDxDV. So MPEG Streamclip it will be for this job.

[William Carr]

One reason the menu might look poor on your TV is the method by which your DVD player is connected to the TV. Best will be HDMI or component, next best is S-video, worst is composite (a single little RCA/phono plug).

Otherwise, it’s just the case that it is somewhat difficult to make graphics look polished and professional on SD video, especially now that most people are accustomed to a level of image and motion quality from streaming or playing back HD on progressive screen devices like laptops, iPads, and many flat screen TVs.

[William Carr]

Thank you Brad, I’ll give DVDxDV a try, it looks like it won’t lose quality on the way in to FCP. And the price won’t break the bank!