Because this film will eventually be screened at an awards ceremony, the quality needs to be as high as possible, so as you can see I've used settings appropriate to high definition video when creating the project.
It doesn't always work like that though...if you are trying to use lower quality video footage in a sequence that is set up for HD, the quality of the finished product will be terrible because the original footage will stretch to fit the sequence settings and pixellate or distort.
How you set up your project will depend entirely on what program you're using and where the finished article is being shown.
I made the mistake of using Final Cut to make edit and export a series of 30-45 minute films at the high quality they were captured at. This took far too long to render and export, and as they were only meant to be shown on the web, the file size was much too big and the quality unnecessarily high, so they'd take too long to stream.
It's a really good program, and will take pretty much any audio, video and photo format. The quickest ones to work with are those that are compatible with my OS without conversion - .mov, .jpeg, .aiff, .avi etc. Windows files like WMVs and WMAs work too, but the disadvantage is that the rendering process is much slower because the software's basically having to convert it for you every time you need to watch something back.
If you're working to the specification of a client, the first thing you really need to know about the film is how and where it will be shown or distributed; of course this won't change the way the film's edited or the quality of the work, just the quality of the final export. It's possible to compress high quality video and large images down, but not to scale poorer quality footage or photos up, so this has to be taken into consideration from the start of the project. I find it's usually best to work with the original footage in a good quality format and get one master best quality export. You'd then go back to the project and export in a lower resolution (for instance if the film was intended for web). Especially if a client is reviewing your work, they will want to see a high quality film, despite knowing that it will not necessarily stay at that resolution when it is broadcast.
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Preparing Assets - Unit 28.1
Ok...so this is me setting up a Final Cut Pro project...
Because this film will eventually be screened at an awards ceremony, the quality needs to be as high as possible, so as you can see I've used settings appropriate to high definition video when creating the project.
It doesn't always work like that though...if you are trying to use lower quality video footage in a sequence that is set up for HD, the quality of the finished product will be terrible because the original footage will stretch to fit the sequence settings and pixellate or distort.
How you set up your project will depend entirely on what program you're using and where the finished article is being shown.
I made the mistake of using Final Cut to make edit and export a series of 30-45 minute films at the high quality they were captured at. This took far too long to render and export, and as they were only meant to be shown on the web, the file size was much too big and the quality unnecessarily high, so they'd take too long to stream.
It's a really good program, and will take pretty much any audio, video and photo format. The quickest ones to work with are those that are compatible with my OS without conversion - .mov, .jpeg, .aiff, .avi etc. Windows files like WMVs and WMAs work too, but the disadvantage is that the rendering process is much slower because the software's basically having to convert it for you every time you need to watch something back.
If you're working to the specification of a client, the first thing you really need to know about the film is how and where it will be shown or distributed; of course this won't change the way the film's edited or the quality of the work, just the quality of the final export. It's possible to compress high quality video and large images down, but not to scale poorer quality footage or photos up, so this has to be taken into consideration from the start of the project. I find it's usually best to work with the original footage in a good quality format and get one master best quality export. You'd then go back to the project and export in a lower resolution (for instance if the film was intended for web). Especially if a client is reviewing your work, they will want to see a high quality film, despite knowing that it will not necessarily stay at that resolution when it is broadcast.
Because this film will eventually be screened at an awards ceremony, the quality needs to be as high as possible, so as you can see I've used settings appropriate to high definition video when creating the project.
It doesn't always work like that though...if you are trying to use lower quality video footage in a sequence that is set up for HD, the quality of the finished product will be terrible because the original footage will stretch to fit the sequence settings and pixellate or distort.
How you set up your project will depend entirely on what program you're using and where the finished article is being shown.
I made the mistake of using Final Cut to make edit and export a series of 30-45 minute films at the high quality they were captured at. This took far too long to render and export, and as they were only meant to be shown on the web, the file size was much too big and the quality unnecessarily high, so they'd take too long to stream.
It's a really good program, and will take pretty much any audio, video and photo format. The quickest ones to work with are those that are compatible with my OS without conversion - .mov, .jpeg, .aiff, .avi etc. Windows files like WMVs and WMAs work too, but the disadvantage is that the rendering process is much slower because the software's basically having to convert it for you every time you need to watch something back.
If you're working to the specification of a client, the first thing you really need to know about the film is how and where it will be shown or distributed; of course this won't change the way the film's edited or the quality of the work, just the quality of the final export. It's possible to compress high quality video and large images down, but not to scale poorer quality footage or photos up, so this has to be taken into consideration from the start of the project. I find it's usually best to work with the original footage in a good quality format and get one master best quality export. You'd then go back to the project and export in a lower resolution (for instance if the film was intended for web). Especially if a client is reviewing your work, they will want to see a high quality film, despite knowing that it will not necessarily stay at that resolution when it is broadcast.
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