Media Manager "Recompress" setting question

I'm about to color correct my short film in Color and I'm prepping the FCP project per the colorist's instructions. They've seen a lot of the quirks and have given me steps to avoid issues (baking all footage with time ramps, stills, etc.) They've asked me to make sure all the clips in the final sequence are the same Codec; my original footage was DVCProHD 720p24, but a lot of shots were sent out to an AE artist and he sent them back with the compression set to 'None.' In order for everything to match, the easiest thing for me to do is Media Manage the sequence and 'Recompress' everything to DVCProHD 720p24.

When you recompress through MM, what does it do to the clips that already have the same settings you're compressing to? Does it just copy them over or does it add another layer of compression on top of what's there? I'm wondering what the recompression will do to the untouched clips that are DVCProHD already.

Thanks,
JK

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SCQT! Self-contained QuickTime ? pass it on!

>Does it just copy them over or does it add another layer of compression on top of what's there?

I believe it recompresses everything. Why not MM "copy", then select those non-DvcproHD and batch export them to DvcproHD? Alternatively, you can recompress everything to ProRes HQ.

Wait a sec... Why are you converting graphics for CC?



www.strypesinpost.com

I was just watching a very good video podcast about the proper way to use "Media Mangler"....er, "Manager".

[www.pixelcorps.tv]

dave

No no no no no....

No.

Do not take a hammer and try to pound everything through one hole. MOST of what you have does not need to go through that hole. YES...recompressing DVCPRO HD as DVCPRO HD will add a layer of compression and reduce the quality of the image. DO NOT recompress that footage.

What you need to do is take your time and go through the footage and convert everything that isn't DVCPRO HD 720p into DVCPRO HD 720p...so that all the footage matches. Yes, this takes time. This is something you should have done with the graphics the instant you got them back. But this is something you do to the b-roll footage and archival footage after you lock picture, so that you don't recompress everything....only what you need.

And use COMPRESSOR...not the Media Manager. Does a better job.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
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Quote
strypes
Wait a sec... Why are you converting graphics for CC?

They're actually not graphics, the shots done in AE were all green screen composites. And they represent the bulk of my short, maybe 75-80%. Very little of the untouched DVCProHD footage remains.

Quote
Shane Ross
Do not take a hammer and try to pound everything through one hole.

Thanks Shane; I totally get what you're saying. I was worried about the recompression issue. I did some tests tonight and honestly I couldn't see the difference between the original footage and the same footage re-compressed through MM. No extra grain or jaggies, histogram in scopes was nearly identical. But if there's more information being stripped out of the footage that I can't see, I believe it.

Would converting to ProRes be a good compromise, if I don't have time to go through the whole sequence and pick through the clips?

JK

It's not really a question of whether you can see the difference. It's a question of whether you're destroying information in your shots that your colorist will need when he pushes those shots. And the answer to that question is "yes."

The bigger problem here is that your compositor gave you shots in the wrong format. This is the second time this week somebody's asked a question about the "none" codec seemingly without knowing what it does. "None" is a 4:4:4 RGB codec that dates back to the earliest days of Quicktime, before Final Cut Pro was even invented. It uses different tonal and gamma mapping functions than any of the 4:2:2 YUV codecs, so taking shots that originated in 4:2:2 YUV, converting them to "none" and then converting them back to 4:2:2 YUV again can cause your white, black and midpoints to shift. Sometimes the difference is subtle, and sometimes it's drastic, depending on the idiosyncrasies of a given shot.

Next time around, make sure you keep your shots in YUV to avoid tone and gamma shifts. Depending on your system's overall level of beefiness, a good choice is uncompressed 8-bit or 10-bit 4:2:2. (Uncompressed 10-bit will preserve more subtle color differences, at the cost of creating bigger files with higher data rates.) If that's too much data for your system to handle comfortably, ProRes is a good compromise.

Hey Dave, that's an excellent MM tutorial.

Thanks

D

A lot of other good tuts on MacBreak. Watch them all. Christine, Mark, Alex, Brian and Steve all do a great job.

Michael Horton
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Thanks for the link Dave, very helpful. And thanks for the explanation of 'None' Jeff, I didn't know any of that. Next time I'll be more specific about what I want back when I send out FX shots.

I actually had enough time to export all of my original DVCProHD footage without re-compression, then combine it on a new timeline with the FX shots that had been compressed down to DVCProHD. Everything went smooth with the color correction today, except for Color acting like the fickle beast that it is. Powerful, but still very, very buggy. But that's another post

Thanks all,
JK

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SCQT! Self-contained QuickTime ? pass it on!