uprezzing dvx footage in FCP 4.5?

[anchoryanker]

My college uses FCP 4.5 HD in it's video lab, and I have been using it to edit footage shot on my dvx100. once i am done editing it, i usually run it through a copy of magic bullet 2.0. I have noticed that on alot of the look presets the image starts to break down, and i get artifacts and other obvious signs of the 4.1.1 color sampling scheme.

My question is, once the footage is edited and before i run it through MB, can i take the sequence and open it in a new project set for dvcpro HD 720p, and do my color correcting and MB work with those settings? can FCP do the same sort of native 'uprezzing' as i've heard sony vegas does?

I'm rendering a small test sequence right now in Final Cut just to see if it works, if anyone else has any advice on how to use MB with SD footage and not have the image break down I'd appreciate it.

 

[NoahK]

Going to DVCPROHD would do very little but add more noise and reduce image quality. It's DV at 5:1 compression- you can't undo that. To get the best image quality from DV you could export to 10-bit Uncompressed but you'll still eventually need to go back to DV at some point if you want to get it back onto tape. Otherwise for DVD an MPEG-2 created by exporting to Compressor directly from the timeline would have the least amount of additional compression.

Also I'm personally not a huge fan of Magic Bullet as it has painfully slow render times. My suggestion would be to get really good at color correction, perhaps purchase the Color Finesse or Colorista plugins. Realistically speaking if you're dissatisfied with the look of DV it's time to think about going up to HD or a 2/3" interchangeable lens camera.

-Noah

 

[anchoryanker]

thanks for the response. I've been exporting to dvd using h.264, is MPEG-2 better as far as quality goes?


basically, i've seen some really great work that's been put through MB without the footage breaking down, I'm trying to figure out how they do it.