To online or not. That is the question.

Hello there-

I am a Dp and recently shot a film using the HD Varicam. Now that the film is cut and headed to a film print (Fotokem in LA) there is a stromg motivation due to budget not to online the footage that was cut using FCP. The footage was digitized using firewire at what I am told is full resolution (DVC PRO HD?). I am under the impression that digitizing using Firewire is not totally lossless and some quality is affected. Since this film will be projected theatrically we want the best quality available so if firewired footage is at all a compromise I want to know.

Are there any gains to be had doing an online at a fully uncompressed resolution?

Thanks,

Alex

Capture via firewire is full compression. The only thing you will gain by capturing at a higher rate are larger files...and better control over the colors when you color correct. But if you are going to film, I suspect you will be CCing after, or DURING the transfer, correct?

Firewire transfer is practically perfect. However, DVCproHD is reduced raster, 960x720 instead of 1280x720. I'm told that a SDI capture will scale the video to full raster better than FCP.

But this might be irrellevent for a film out, as they will do the scaling.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

Thanks for the replies. We plan on color correcting in a D.I. room but I want to make sure the footage we work with has all the possible information available for maximum flexibility.

So does inputing via firewire and not onlining cause any compromise once you are on to the next step?

Alex

If you use the same files in your DI as you do in FCP, it all depends on what your DI is capable of and how it handles DVCProHD, not how FCP handles DVCproHD?

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X