A bit of workflow situation here. I cut a show in DV at home on FCP 5.1.2 original sources was Beta SP. I need to get this show into a 720x486 timeline so I can add a closed caption file to it which only seems to work in the 720x486 setting. I will then output to digibeta via Kona 3 at my day job. Due to time and budget, I can't recapture the show via uncompressed and work is only running FCP 5.1 so my home project isn't compatible with work. I tried XML export/import to no avail. Any thoughts on what workflow would give me the best quality on the digibeta master?

Thanks!

Philip

If you can't recapture, then DV is the best quality you can get. Export a full-quality DV movie file that matches your timeline settings. Then import that into an Uncompressed SD timeline and render for output. QuickTime movies using a codec like DV NTSC don't care which version of FCP you're running.


www.derekmok.com

thanks derekmok.

i've actually done this and the converted timeline doesn't look great when playing out to an NTSC via Kona 3. was wondering if there were some other workflows that might result in a better upconverted image.

Without recapturing, you're not "upconverting" anything. The files only contain so much information as you had captured originally. Look at this recent thread, which discusses a similar situation:

[www.lafcpug.org]

Graphics will look better if you create them in the new Uncompressed SD timeline, but the original image quality will not improve. Garbage In, Garbage Out. But it should look as good as the image you were editing with. If it looks worse, then you're doing something wrong -- make sure you render, check render settings, and check to make sure you were exporting the movie file with Export - QuickTime Movie, not Export - Using QuickTime Conversion, and self-contained instead of reference.


www.derekmok.com