Hi All,

I've been busy working on my movie using CTA1 and was wondering what would be the best quality to use for exporting clips for post production in Final Cut Pro without having huge clunker files such as uncompressed AVI's. I don't want to lose quality, but don't know how many hard drives I'll need to store that footage.
I want it to look good on a movie theater screen, and it needs to be in HD.
Thanks, LA

if it's for a big screen, not sure how many corners you can cut -

if you really want to keep the quality, then you may want to focus on your workflow.

for example, render 1 avi, then right after import it into fcp and re-render it to the best loss-less codec in FCP - then delete the avi or zip / rar it - the raw avi files compress very nicely for storage with zip / rar - you'd be surprised!

if you are planning for something like 4k, then you really want to try to be as purist as possible imo and convert with fcp for the least possible artifacts. if you want to go extreme purist then render to image files and compile them in your nle

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Thanks. I wonder if I could go for the 720 instead of the 1080 output.

well, from your post about going to a movie theater screen, you need very high resolutions for that. I don't know if you said that to express your desire for quality, or are actually going for the big screen, as we've had film makers that have actually released theatrical movies. But if you want very good quality in youtube, then that starts at around 1280 x 720 and up.

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HD Quality 1080 should do. I know many Digital Theaters actually use lower resolution as the agency needs to upload the file to the Digital theaters remotely.

really ? wouldn't that begin to show artifacts when stretched out on a big screen ?

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The newer Digital Theatre ones use 2048 x 858 resolution ( MOV / Apple pro Res Codec). Earlier ones used lesser res as these days we have fewer Single Screen theatres and more of smaller screens in the malls.

My agency was okay with 1080p and they adjusted at their end. They prefer taking the film on a tape. That gives them an opportunity to charge a sort of processing fee and process as per their need.

Moreover, they do a bit of in-projector compensation.

Popcorn in hands, in-seat romance, blasting 5.1 surrounding Dolby compensate the balance.

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Best Method : Transfer your file to DIGIBETA and handover the tape to the agency. They will do the rest.
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okay, so i guess i'm stuck with uncompressed avi files at 1080. i better buy another big external drive since this is a feature length. at least it will look good. thanks! LA

Why don't you render directly to DIGI BETA if you are looking at big screen release?

i am concerned about the clips coming out of crazytalk being the correct resolution, etc. so that once the film is put together, in FCP that it COULD be on a big screen. the initial release will be VOD, but I don't want to disqualify myself from a theatrical release. LA