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Editing with HD

H

hoop

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 2, 2007
52
0
Bath, yookay.
Hello,

I've got a load of footage in HD that's already been captured and converted to .mov files, and I need to use them. Is there a way of converting the files down to something a bit more manageable, then upping the quality back up in the new, edited form? The original material isn't on the tapes anymore, so I can re-capture at a lower quality :(

Cheers.
 
Bugger. I was hoping that there'd be a program that allowed you to 'flag' edit points, point these towards a source file that is exactly the same duration, and... well you see what I mean.

This is going to be a nightmare. I don't want to go to work tomorrow :(
 
so you have A bunch of HD footage in .mov's? What you could do is shrink those down to something small, kepping the HD stuff you have, and doing all the edits in FCP with the small files. Before you do the final export disconnect the small files (move them etc.) and reconnect to the bigger corresponding files.
 
Rokem said:
so you have A bunch of HD footage in .mov's? What you could do is shrink those down to something small, kepping the HD stuff you have, and doing all the edits in FCP with the small files. Before you do the final export disconnect the small files (move them etc.) and reconnect to the bigger corresponding files.
Click to expand...

Oooooh. Good idea!
 
Rokem said:
so you have A bunch of HD footage in .mov's? What you could do is shrink those down to something small, kepping the HD stuff you have, and doing all the edits in FCP with the small files. Before you do the final export disconnect the small files (move them etc.) and reconnect to the bigger corresponding files.
Click to expand...

awesome idea but wouldn't you have to reset the sequence settings from DV let say back to HD if you shrinked the HD to DV size for editing? Would that have an effect at all?
 
SpaceJello said:
awesome idea but wouldn't you have to reset the sequence settings from DV let say back to HD if you shrinked the HD to DV size for editing? Would that have an effect at all?
Click to expand...

let me look further in this.

edit: no, after working in the smaller resolution, you can go into the sequence -> settings and change the resolution. After that you're fine.
 
Hoop, what kind of HD files are you working with (HDV, DVCPro HD, etc.,)?

If you take your HD files and copy them into DV files you have to make sure to keep the names exactly the same and you must copy/convert them in a way that retains the timecode of the original, HD clip. If the timecode isn't retained then when you go back and reconnect to the HD files everything will be messed up because FCP will be looking for timecode 01:02:23;15 on clip X and it won't be there. I'm sure FCP has a way of keeping the TC, I'm just not exactly sure how to do it. I'll try and poke around w/it today and get back to you.

Also, instead of changing the sequence settings I'd recommend creating a new, HD sequence and copy and pasting the clips from your SD sequence into the HD sequence. Some sequence settings can't be changed once media is dropped into the seq and you always want to make sure you seq settings match your footage settings.


Lethal
 
pdpfilms said:
Couldn't you just edit offline, and have FCP handle the final conversion to HD (online)?
Click to expand...

That's pretty much what we are trying to do, but the OP only has access to the HD QT files so those need to get scaled down to DV for editing, but still retain the proper TC so he relink to the HD files and everything will match up (hopefully).

hoop,
I did a quick test and if you import the HD QTs into FCP, select them, then select Export->QuickTime Movie (*NOT* QuickTime Conversion)
Settings: DV NTSC 48k Anamorphic
Include: Audio and Video
Markers: none
recompress all frames: not checked
make movie self contained: checked

Doing it this way should allow the TC info to be carried over into the new clip. I'd do a test of this though (convert a few clips, edit together a sequence, make the DV clips offline, reconnect to the HD clips) to see if it works before you take the time to convert all the clips.

Lethal
 
Okay, thanks. I brought the files over from work to my house, and because one of the files is 40 mins long, what I' done is import it over to FC raw, where I've chopped it into 10 sections. I'm going to export them out at full quality first, and use those as the source files.

Amazingly, rendering is going to take an estimated 1 hour per section. I'm so glad I'm not doing this at work with the 1 gig machine :eek:

Thanks for all the help, and I'll keep you updated. :apple:
 
Okay, thanks a lot for all of your help. Once I'd spend three days or so fiddling about with settings in between renders, it worked a treat.

However, I just found the original tapes. Turns out they weren't recorded over after all. :mad: /:D
 
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