Workflow for Producing a Film Festival

M

MDrake

Member
I have been hired as the technical director of a local film festival and I was just wondering what everybody thought would be the easiest, fastest, simplest compressor/codec to use.

There are 27 films, all 10-12 minutes long. I will be playing a digital copy of the movie off my Macbook Pro and through to the theater's projector. I am not sure whether to do HD or SD, but I am assuming SD simply because most of the films that are submitted to me are showing up in SD. I will be editing in FCP.

My questions to those who know: What is the best compressor setting to use for my sequence? What do you think about ProRes 422? I changed the compressor for the sequence to ApplePro Res422 and it looks reasonable. Also converted the clip from tapes to Apple ProRes.

What do you guys suggest would be the correct workflow for this type of task? Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
 
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So you'll be playing back directly from FCP?
The question is what do YOU think about ProRes 422? I think it'd be fine for this but you are the one lookin' at it.
 
grinner,

To be honest ProRes looks great for the films I have ripped off DVDs so far. The color is great and there is almost no visual artifacts.

My only concern is the large file size associated with ProRes. I have 27 films @ 10 minutes each, and most of the movies right now coming out at 2.8 - 3GB. That seems unnecessary, but I will live with it if it's the best workflow.

I thought about playing IN FCP, although I would be worried if for some reason a frame dropped for some unknown reason and stopped the whole show. I was thinking maybe I should export to h.264 or something and just play it through Quicktime?

My question with that if I do that then, is should the compressor be set to ProRes422 if I'm importing ProRes or should I set it to h.264?

Thanks for the quick reply!
 
To be honest I was just afraid of a huge quality reduction that way. From my past experience anything to DVD is not nearly as good as just exporting a movie to the computer and playing it off the screen.

Maybe I haven't played around enough and found the best settings in compressor but I don't have a lot of faith in the quality of DVDs from compressor.

Thoughts?
 
I thought you were ripping DVs to begin with. Is that not what the submissions are coming in on?
 
There are plently of good DVD players that have an upscale funtcion to DVI or HDMI. If your source is coming from DVD - the quality will never be better - you can only hope to keep it the same.

Michael
 
Sorry guys, I wasn't being clear.

Majority of the films coming in will be an exported file, either with a QT wrapper or AVI. Films will also either be HD or SD.

This is the case except for the first two which I have been told by the festival director need to be ripped off DVDs and made into a movie which can be dropped into my one big timeline for the festival.

DVD players also don't work because the show is meant to be played continuously for a straight 2.5 hours each night (27 films spanned across two nights, fyi). So even if I had all the films on separate DVDs it wouldn't make sense to have to load the player before each 10 minute film.

I guess I have one overall broader question.... how much of a serious affect does choosing the compressor setting for your sequence have in FCP? For example, would it make more sense to be in ProRes422 (from what I've read a great online-editing format) rather than H.264 which is what I will be exporting the movie to in the end to reduce the massive movie's file size.

The thing is there really won't be a lot of editing so I don't think H.264 is a bad idea... can somebody clarify this for me please?
 
The answer is in how well it holds up on that projector. I'd stay with ProRes422 but honestly, since you are getting such a smorgasboard of compressed hooha as elements, it probably doesn't matter. If there is a way to test it by projecting it, you should do that first.
 
OK I think I will stay with ProRes422. I am definitely going to test the show on the actual projector before we run it.

Is there any kind of software which allows you to cue up certain files and play them back? Something like sound effects cueing for stage productions but for video? It'd be great if I could load all the video clips in separately and have a virtual control board to play whatever I wanted and whenever I wanted. Something that would also keep a black screen up while switching?

Anybody know of any software that does something along those lines?
 
I guess I thought you were playing back with FCP. Simple filler between clips laid out on a timeline would be fine if that's the case.
 
Nah I don't trust FCP for a flawless playback, even on my fully loaded Macbook Pro.

The filler slugs is not what I was talking about. I meant is there any sort of "video-cueing" software available that will let you load a bunch of movies in, and then play them on command at the click of a mouse. Much like SFX cueing software for theatre productions.

If I could use that then I could wait for audience laughter/applause after every film and then play the next one when I want.

Rather than have to export 13 and 14 10 minute clips out into one big movie.
 
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