Help in capturing best possible quality?

[baitcaster]

If anyone out there is willing, can one of you walk me through capturing my footage in the absolute best quality possible. I shot it 24p normal, and when I've tried to capture it, so far it's not up to par. I am editing a short, that, if all goes well could be used in a full length. This is my first time using fcp4 with the DVX, and I am editing myself. A lot is riding on the quality of this piece, and needs to look final, even though it's not. I would love detailed steps from any of you who have done this. My manual is very vague.

Thanks ahead of time.

Brad

 

[xander76]

Re: Help in capturing best possible quality?

The bad news:

Capturing DV footage over FireWire is pretty much a binary operation; either it worked (i.e. didn't drop any frames) or it didn't. Because of DV & FW's digital nature, a successful capture is an exact copy of the data on tape; there is no decompression or recompression of the image. Bottom line: if you captured successfully over FW, that's the best capture you can do.

The good news:

Although it can be a pain, a lot of things can be improved in post-production. As an example, practically every frame of every television show and movie you've ever seen has been color-corrected.

It might help if you told us what about the footage you captured was not "up to par". We might be able to suggest some fixes. And by "we", I mean "someone else", since my post-production wizardry is severely limited...