G
Guest
Guest
...if you're editing a feature shot on a DVX100 on an eMac (or other lower-end Mac) for DVD output. (Or a documentary, or a short, or whatever it is you're editing with a computer that can't process uncompressed or 4:2:2 video.)
Ingredients:
Final Cut Pro HD (Or 4, or 3, or however far back they can go and still have anamorphic-sequence capability.)
DVD Studio Pro 2 or 3
iMovie (This is why it's unholy.)
an eMac with 1.25 GHz processing power, at least 750 MB of RAM, and a $#%&load of hard-drive space
Optional bonus items:
A widescreen TV as a monitor (I didn't have this until about halfway through editing.)
A good sound system (Nope, not this one either.)
Divine intervention (Take a guess.)
DISCLAIMER(S) AND CAVEAT(S):
If you shot 24pA, kiss pulldown removal goodbye.
If you shot fullscreen, kiss the areas at the top and bottom of the screen goodbye.
Use filters sparingly (e.g. color correction, grading.)
This is a long process. Might want to rent a movie for the interim time when you're not editing or capturing.
So anyway, I'm editing a 100-minute feature shot in 24pA mode on Final Cut Pro HD. Since I have an eMac, there's no place to put a capture card, and thus I'm not able to capture footage in the mode I want to, which is under Uncompressed 10/8-bit 4:2:2. I was aware of the native 5:1 compression DV has, but color depth is a thing I had to have; I hate jaggy edges with high-contrast shots, and there were a few of 'em in the movie. You find jagged edges mostly on shots where there's more light in the background than the foreground, either by a light or the sun I attempted to screw fate and attempt uncompressed capture anyway, and got as far as one frame before it aborted. The jagged edges prevailed, but only temporarily. And even when I did capture shots with pulldown at the standard DV file size and tried to be happy, the software took an infuriating amount of time to export files to any QT codec when it was successful and simply crashed when it wasn't. When it was successful--jagged edges. And FCP also had a tendency to corrupt the capture-scratch files at random points. To add the final cap, files captured on a standard DV codec and burned to DVD using DVDSP not only had the jagged edges, but also a tendency to explode into a mass of green pixels a few minutes into play. This was due more to the codecs I used than the software, I suspect, but it was also likely due in part to...the eMac.
In a nutshell...
I captured all of the video directly off of the camera through iMovie, employing the function that creates a new clip for every scene break (Why doesn't FCP have this capability? If it does, someone tell me how to do it.) Since it captures all clips in realtime and only stops capturing once the camera does, there's no need to worry about batch-capturing errors or timecode breaks. Don't do any filter or title work in iMovie; export/share the file to whatever hard drive you're using with whatever codec you want (with MiniDV, the 4:2:2 codecs are the only ones that are gonna do you any good other than the standard DV codec). Do not use the DV-stream codec that iMovie offers you; it doesn't lose any quality, but it doesn't gain any either, and any further post work or compression will feature said jagged edges. The resulting 4:2:2 file will be far sharper playing back in QT than a normal DV-encoded file, but you'll also see one field creeping ahead of the other in certain frames, creating a very odd and unpleasant visual effect for how long it lasts. This is normal. Anyway...
Import the newly encoded file(s) into Final Cut. This is where you kiss pulldown and a 4:3 frame size goodbye. Obviously, FCP won't do pulldown on an imported file. Actually, it may and I might just not know how to do it--but for the route you're going, it won't matter anyway. You'll need to open up a new sequence under the 'DV NTSC 48KHz Anamorphic' heading. You need to do this anamorphically because an import from QT into a 4:3 sequence will cause a stuttering image any time the camera moves once played back on DVD. The footage will need to be rendered upon placing it in the timeline; on the monitor, you'll see the normal image bookended by black bars--you've essentially put a 4:3 image in the middle of a 16:9 workspace. If you have a normal TV monitor hooked up, the image will obviously look squeezed. Double-click on the chosen clip in the timeline until you see the video, filter, audio, and motion property tabs in the Viewer. Go to the motion tab and highlight the text noting the size of the clip (it should be at 100). Type in 133, and hit 'Enter'. Your image is now 33% larger, which is consistent with 16:9 vs. 4:3 screen area. When playing back the clip, there'll be some very minor blurring of the image (unless your shots are out of focus to begin with). The blurring will barely be noticeable--but it adds a quasi-cinematic touch to the clip, and chances are that if you're shooting in 24pA mode, you want cinematic.
Once you've toyed with filters to your content, and once the sequence is completed, export it again. I don't recommend using FCP's MPEG-2 encoder; it completes the encode about half the time, and you're more likely to encounter what I like to call the Exploding Pixels of Death upon DVD playback. Compressor doesn't have the same pixel issue, but it does have about the same success rate when it comes to completing. Instead, do a simple QT movie export (the first option on the export list). It takes virtually no time--seeing as how there's no encoding--and you can import it directly into Compressor.
Close out of FCP, open Compressor, and choose whatever length/quality MPEG-2 codec you want (I recommend 'High Quality' as opposed to 'fast'--Compressor is relatively stable on its own, and if you smoke, now's an opportunity to empty an entire pack instead of just half of one). Just make sure that the codec is one of the 'widescreen' ones. I wouldn't recommend going much lower than 4 Mbps as far as bitrate goes. The resulting MPEG-2 file probably isn't going to look too hot on your computer, which is to be expected--you've taken a fairly limited image and put it through two different codecs and filter work. Just remember that computers have higher resolution than NTSC monitors, and they operate on a different frequency (normally). What you see on your computer is *not* what you're going to see on a TV.
The rest is pretty much business as usual: Open up DVD Studio Pro, choose '16:9' as the aspect-ratio designation, lay the tracks and menus, check everything with the Inspector, simulate, and burn. (Note: Don't use iDVD unless you'd like to empty an entire carton during the burn time--although their film-projector menu template is pretty nice.)
The final image, whether played back on a normal or widescreen TV, will look far better than the image on the computer, and it'll most likely be comparable to your source image. You'll see some compression artifacts (usually shifting blocks of pixels) in areas of mostly blacks or dark-hued colors, but it's really no worse than what there is in first-generation DVD movies. The bitrate I chose was 4.5 Mbps, which gave me about 100 minutes of space. And best of all--no jagged edges.
So there it is--it's not quick, but it's a hell of a lot easier than dealing with a 2.9 Mbps raw-footage capture while living with the constant fear that FCP's gonna corrupt your capture-scratch files whenever it decides to be overly prestigious. On a lower-end system, iMovie is much more stable as far as exporting and capturing. The biggest thing you lose is the pulldown--but if you absolutely must have it, just print the anamorphic FCP sequence to tape and recapture it with pulldown (I'm not actually sure if that's possible, but it's the only way apart from using Cinema Tools to remove the pulldown).
Ingredients:
Final Cut Pro HD (Or 4, or 3, or however far back they can go and still have anamorphic-sequence capability.)
DVD Studio Pro 2 or 3
iMovie (This is why it's unholy.)
an eMac with 1.25 GHz processing power, at least 750 MB of RAM, and a $#%&load of hard-drive space
Optional bonus items:
A widescreen TV as a monitor (I didn't have this until about halfway through editing.)
A good sound system (Nope, not this one either.)
Divine intervention (Take a guess.)
DISCLAIMER(S) AND CAVEAT(S):
If you shot 24pA, kiss pulldown removal goodbye.
If you shot fullscreen, kiss the areas at the top and bottom of the screen goodbye.
Use filters sparingly (e.g. color correction, grading.)
This is a long process. Might want to rent a movie for the interim time when you're not editing or capturing.
So anyway, I'm editing a 100-minute feature shot in 24pA mode on Final Cut Pro HD. Since I have an eMac, there's no place to put a capture card, and thus I'm not able to capture footage in the mode I want to, which is under Uncompressed 10/8-bit 4:2:2. I was aware of the native 5:1 compression DV has, but color depth is a thing I had to have; I hate jaggy edges with high-contrast shots, and there were a few of 'em in the movie. You find jagged edges mostly on shots where there's more light in the background than the foreground, either by a light or the sun I attempted to screw fate and attempt uncompressed capture anyway, and got as far as one frame before it aborted. The jagged edges prevailed, but only temporarily. And even when I did capture shots with pulldown at the standard DV file size and tried to be happy, the software took an infuriating amount of time to export files to any QT codec when it was successful and simply crashed when it wasn't. When it was successful--jagged edges. And FCP also had a tendency to corrupt the capture-scratch files at random points. To add the final cap, files captured on a standard DV codec and burned to DVD using DVDSP not only had the jagged edges, but also a tendency to explode into a mass of green pixels a few minutes into play. This was due more to the codecs I used than the software, I suspect, but it was also likely due in part to...the eMac.
In a nutshell...
I captured all of the video directly off of the camera through iMovie, employing the function that creates a new clip for every scene break (Why doesn't FCP have this capability? If it does, someone tell me how to do it.) Since it captures all clips in realtime and only stops capturing once the camera does, there's no need to worry about batch-capturing errors or timecode breaks. Don't do any filter or title work in iMovie; export/share the file to whatever hard drive you're using with whatever codec you want (with MiniDV, the 4:2:2 codecs are the only ones that are gonna do you any good other than the standard DV codec). Do not use the DV-stream codec that iMovie offers you; it doesn't lose any quality, but it doesn't gain any either, and any further post work or compression will feature said jagged edges. The resulting 4:2:2 file will be far sharper playing back in QT than a normal DV-encoded file, but you'll also see one field creeping ahead of the other in certain frames, creating a very odd and unpleasant visual effect for how long it lasts. This is normal. Anyway...
Import the newly encoded file(s) into Final Cut. This is where you kiss pulldown and a 4:3 frame size goodbye. Obviously, FCP won't do pulldown on an imported file. Actually, it may and I might just not know how to do it--but for the route you're going, it won't matter anyway. You'll need to open up a new sequence under the 'DV NTSC 48KHz Anamorphic' heading. You need to do this anamorphically because an import from QT into a 4:3 sequence will cause a stuttering image any time the camera moves once played back on DVD. The footage will need to be rendered upon placing it in the timeline; on the monitor, you'll see the normal image bookended by black bars--you've essentially put a 4:3 image in the middle of a 16:9 workspace. If you have a normal TV monitor hooked up, the image will obviously look squeezed. Double-click on the chosen clip in the timeline until you see the video, filter, audio, and motion property tabs in the Viewer. Go to the motion tab and highlight the text noting the size of the clip (it should be at 100). Type in 133, and hit 'Enter'. Your image is now 33% larger, which is consistent with 16:9 vs. 4:3 screen area. When playing back the clip, there'll be some very minor blurring of the image (unless your shots are out of focus to begin with). The blurring will barely be noticeable--but it adds a quasi-cinematic touch to the clip, and chances are that if you're shooting in 24pA mode, you want cinematic.
Once you've toyed with filters to your content, and once the sequence is completed, export it again. I don't recommend using FCP's MPEG-2 encoder; it completes the encode about half the time, and you're more likely to encounter what I like to call the Exploding Pixels of Death upon DVD playback. Compressor doesn't have the same pixel issue, but it does have about the same success rate when it comes to completing. Instead, do a simple QT movie export (the first option on the export list). It takes virtually no time--seeing as how there's no encoding--and you can import it directly into Compressor.
Close out of FCP, open Compressor, and choose whatever length/quality MPEG-2 codec you want (I recommend 'High Quality' as opposed to 'fast'--Compressor is relatively stable on its own, and if you smoke, now's an opportunity to empty an entire pack instead of just half of one). Just make sure that the codec is one of the 'widescreen' ones. I wouldn't recommend going much lower than 4 Mbps as far as bitrate goes. The resulting MPEG-2 file probably isn't going to look too hot on your computer, which is to be expected--you've taken a fairly limited image and put it through two different codecs and filter work. Just remember that computers have higher resolution than NTSC monitors, and they operate on a different frequency (normally). What you see on your computer is *not* what you're going to see on a TV.
The rest is pretty much business as usual: Open up DVD Studio Pro, choose '16:9' as the aspect-ratio designation, lay the tracks and menus, check everything with the Inspector, simulate, and burn. (Note: Don't use iDVD unless you'd like to empty an entire carton during the burn time--although their film-projector menu template is pretty nice.)
The final image, whether played back on a normal or widescreen TV, will look far better than the image on the computer, and it'll most likely be comparable to your source image. You'll see some compression artifacts (usually shifting blocks of pixels) in areas of mostly blacks or dark-hued colors, but it's really no worse than what there is in first-generation DVD movies. The bitrate I chose was 4.5 Mbps, which gave me about 100 minutes of space. And best of all--no jagged edges.
So there it is--it's not quick, but it's a hell of a lot easier than dealing with a 2.9 Mbps raw-footage capture while living with the constant fear that FCP's gonna corrupt your capture-scratch files whenever it decides to be overly prestigious. On a lower-end system, iMovie is much more stable as far as exporting and capturing. The biggest thing you lose is the pulldown--but if you absolutely must have it, just print the anamorphic FCP sequence to tape and recapture it with pulldown (I'm not actually sure if that's possible, but it's the only way apart from using Cinema Tools to remove the pulldown).