Going back to FCP from Color...use original format or ProRes422?

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Going back to FCP from Color...use original format or ProRes422?

OK, so I've color graded all 5 reels for my feature film and am finally ready to send back to FCP and reassemble! I'm hoping Shane Ross can jump in here too since he's been SO helpful up to this point :-) So I have two different formats which I've graded seperately...720p DVCPROHD stuff (99%) of film and two scenes which were HDV 1080p24. So far when I've sent back my DVCPROHD clips I've rendered out of Color using ProRes422..but my Resolution Presets: and Width & Height settings are what I'm most concerned with. What I've done when sending back to FCP is use Apple ProRes 422 with Width 1280 and Height 720 and changing my Resolution Preset from 720 x 576 DV PAL to 1280 x 720 HD to match the Width and Height settings (not sure if I should leave this at 720 x 576 DV PAL??). However, the clips show up in FCP as 133%..so obviously upscaled. So now I'm going to export the DVCPRO stuff to Compressor to upscale to ProRes422 1920x1080 to bring back and match with the HDV 1080p24 footage before FINAL export to compressor again. Should I not be sending the Color clips back to FCP upscaled to 133% with my Color settings...since I will then again be upscaling in Compressor? Or will it really make that much of a difference? And also, should I check the Broadcast Safe circle in Color when sending back to FCP? I didn't color correct with the Broadcast Safe on so should I now to be on the safe side?

Thanks!

David

Final Cut Pro 6, Mac OS X (10.5.8), Compressor 1.0.4

Posted on Apr 15, 2014 10:56 AM

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Answer 1

Shane Ross

Level 8

43,110 points

Apr 15, 2014 2:59 PM in response to davidl466

When mixing formats, always render out ProRes. Heck...just render out ProRes no matter what. And yes, tic BROADCAST SAFE if this is going to DVD or to air.

I'm confused about one thing...if you shot DVCPRO HD, where did 720x576 come from? Don't do that...that's SD. If you shot 720p, render out 1280x720 ProRes (DVCPRO HD is anamorphic 960x720...but ProRes is full raster). It seems like you shot HD, rendered it out SD, and now want to scale it up with Compressor?

I'm REALLY confused by all of this.

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Answer 2

davidl466 Author

Level 1

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Apr 16, 2014 10:48 AM in response to Shane Ross

Ok Shane, So actually just went over my Color outputs and I did render everything as ProRes 422 at 1280x720 ...and the clips back in FCP are scaled at 100% so that's good...for some reason I remember having some that came back at 133%...maybe that was just a couple clips somewhere that were wrong...I'll figure that out...but I didn't check Broadcast Safe on the renders so I guess I can go back and re-render with broadcast safe on...so we did shoot 720p HD and I AM going back still in HD from Color.

Now I'm having another issue with the HDV 1080p24 stuff...which is actually only 20 shots of the entire film. But for some reason I'm noticing that they are interlaced when viewing on my FCP timeline, which my settings are HDTV 1080i 1920x1080...now when I export the scene out to Compressor as a ProRes 422 1920x1080 .mov it actually looks great on my computer monitor...no interlacing that I can tell, looks great. However, if I drop it onto my FCP 1080i timeline then there is interlacing again...and worse, when I make a SD DVD it is also interlaced...most noticable an actor's shirt, there is a bit of Moire effect going on...this must be because I'm downconverting to 720x486?? So I've been killing myself trying to figure this one out. Doesn't appear that deinterlacing in Compressor helps any either. Is my only option to blur it out with a gaussian blur of around 2? (the HDV clips do show as 1080p24 in FCP) Not sure if the interlacing would be gone if I were to burn a bluray since it's a higher resolution?? My settings in FCP are 1920x1080 HDTV 1080i (16:9) Pixel Aspect: Square, Apple ProRes 422 BTW.

There's also quite a bit of color blurring when watching from a burnt DVD from DVD Studio Pro...wish it looked as good as it does on my LG LED 32" screen with Matrox mini...man, do DVD's really look this bad? REALLY considering going and buying an external BluRay burner today

So if I could just get this interlacing problem resolved somehow...

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