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Why is it important to upconvert compressed media at the end of the finishing stage?
When the time comes to color correct your program, near the end of the finishing stage,
you’ll be reprocessing and rendering every clip to which you either make adjustments
or apply effects. Whether you’re working in Final Cut Pro or in Color, all image processing
is done in an internally uncompressed data space, regardless of the source format. Because
you’re adding filters and vignettes and performing other high-quality image-processing
operations that will ultimately benefit from less compression, this is the appropriate time
to render your compressed source media using an uncompressed or lightly compressed
format suitable for mastering. This lets you retain the high quality of the image-processing
operations being performed and prevents you from double-compressing your media
unnecessarily. There are two ways of transcoding compressed media during rendering.
• If you’re grading your program in Color: Make sure that your program’s media is
reconformed to its maximum native quality (or better) prior to sending it to Color, even
if the native format is compressed. You can send either compressed or uncompressed
media to Color, as long as the media is in a format that’s compatible with Color. In
Color, you specify the codec used to render the final color-corrected media using the
QuickTime Export Codecs pop-up menu (in the Project Settings tab of the Setup room),
and this is the point at which the internally uncompressed image data that’s processed
by Color is written to a superior media format suitable for mastering. See the Color
documentation for more information.
• If you’re finishing your program entirely within Final Cut Pro: The best solution for
high-quality mastering is to change your sequence’s codec using the Compressor
pop-up menu in the General tab of the Sequence Settings window. It’s also a good
idea to open the Video Processing tab and make sure the bit depth is set to an
appropriate quality for your program and that the Motion Filtering Quality pop-up
menu is set to Best.
If you follow either of these workflows, it’s not necessary to preemptively transcode your
media in preparation for finishing, because it’s simpler and easier to transcode your media
during rendering, and you get the same results. For more information about rendering
your final media using a mastering codec, see the Final Cut Pro and Color documentation.
Format Conversion When Finishing Mixed-Format Sequences
Final Cut Pro supports mixed-format sequences, which is very convenient when you need
to perform the offline edit of a project that incorporates a wide variety of source material.
For example, it’s common to mix high definition (HD) and standard definition (SD) clips
in documentary programs. More extreme examples include programs that incorporate
archival footage in different broadcast standards with different frame rates, such as
programs that combine PAL and NTSC footage.
69Chapter 5 Finishing