Feature Film Lost footage on DVD

[colossus34]

Ok I need some help, BADLY. Our feature film was shot on HD-CAM tapes, unfortunetly we lost about 20% of the footage(long story). Now we are using the PAL-DVD backups to insert in the missing shots. The highres footage is PRO-RES HQ my question is what is the BEST QUALITY format to export the dvd's into Final Cut Pro to cut in with the high res shots from the Pal dvds. What is the best workflow to do this????

The DVD's look decent quality when I play them on a dvd player but I tried exporting the .VOB files as regular .mov files but it seems like they get compressed. Quality is lost, sound out of sync.... guessing its becuase PAL 25fps?

Please, help. Thank you!

[aedipuss]

you probably want to work strictly in mpeg-2 with an editor that only recodes gops that have been edited. not sure fcp qualifies. vegas pro would be ok.

[colossus34]

you probably want to work strictly in mpeg-2 with an editor that only recodes gops that have been edited. not sure fcp qualifies. vegas pro would be ok.

Thank you for your input. So your saying convert the vob files to mpeg-2? Is that the best/highest quality format to go with without losing ANY data as you you can imagine at this stage we dont want ANY LOSS of info? Also what is 'recodes gops' mean? I greatly appreciate your comments as we are in a pretty dire circumstance!

[Cornucopia]

Sounds like you're Mac-centric, so I'd say use ffmpegX or something similar, and save to a lossless Std Def MOV file (like AIC, ProRes422, Animation, etc).
You didn't say where you're from...Are/Were your HDCam tapes 25/50fps or 29.97/59.94fps or 24fps?
If the former, you really shouldn't be experiencing sync problems (once you've got a non-MPEG/VOB copy as a source to work with (see step 1)).
If the latter(s), you probably should do a standards conversion first before incorporating it into your main project.

Scott

[Cornucopia]

If your main project is in FCP, you DON'T want to use MPEG2 (whether from the original VOB or from a remuxed MPG) as a source in your project.
It would be very unlikely that all your MPG-sourced clips were to get edited on GOP boundaries and with no other processing, so I'd throw that following suggestion out as tangential.
You're starting with some compressed info in your master, so there'll always be SOME loss going forward. You just want to minimize it, by doing ALL your saves/renders in a lossless or uncompressed format until final distribution.

Scott

[colossus34]

If your main project is in FCP, you DON'T want to use MPEG2 (whether from the original VOB or from a remuxed MPG) as a source in your project.
It would be very unlikely that all your MPG-sourced clips were to get edited on GOP boundaries and with no other processing, so I'd throw that following suggestion out as tangential.
You're starting with some compressed info in your master, so there'll always be SOME loss going forward. You just want to minimize it, by doing ALL your saves/renders in a lossless or uncompressed format until final distribution.

Scott

Thank you Scott, so your saying use ffmpegX or something similar, and save to a lossless Std Def MOV file (like AIC, ProRes422, Animation, etc) then I should be able to edit in the shots in with the other Pro RES HQ footage? So this will insure no loss of data from .VOB files to .MOV? BTW the footage is 24 fps. The PAL DVDs are 25fps. Also can you clarify GOP boundaries. Thank you very much, as we are in pretty dire situation here so your comments are very greatly appreciated sir.

[Cornucopia]

OK, since you've already got ProRes footage, stick with ProRes.
The "LOSS" really doesn't occur on the decompression/display side, it occurs on the compression/save side (unless the decoder is REALLY crappy). That's why I was saying to SAVE to a Lossless intermediate. So there's loss due to it being 1 generation down (with whatever "approximations" being baked in at that point), but there won't be loss due to an additional LOSSY codec.

If your original footage was 24fps and you've now got 25fps, I'm VERY MUCH hoping that the original conversion was done in the legitimate way, aka speeding up the footage/timebase. So when saving from your DVD's VOB to the ProRes MOV, you want to reverse that process by SLOWING DOWN the 25fps back to 24fps (this should include the audio as well as the video). Then, your ProRes MOV will match all the other 24fps ProRes stuff. No sync probs.
IF, however, somebody did the original conversion to PAL DVD incorrectly...well, you've got much more work ahead.

GOP boundaries: GOP=GroupOfPictures aka Packet of Frames that MPEG uses to compress with, usually 12-15 frames long and only one of them being a REAL frame (all the rest are "changes" to that frame). The BOUNDARY is the end of one GOP and the beginning of the next GOP (where the "I" frame or real frame starts). If you only edit on GOP boundaries, it means your degree of fineness of editing can only get down to 12-15 frames, without having to recompress.
Since you're NOT going to go that route (where you attempt to maintain your original MPEG's validity), it has no bearing. ProRes, AIC, etc are all Intra-Only codecs, meaning that EACH and EVERY frame is a true ("I") frame. Or a GOP=1frame, if you will.

Scott

[aedipuss]

to back up a moment. vobs on dvd are mpeg-2 in a wrapper. 720x576 25fps if PAL as you say. you can extract the original mpeg-2 from the vobs with something like vob2mpg.

if you convert the dvd mpg to prores and then back to mpg there will be a second generation rendering reduction in quality. if you use a hq encoder like cce sp2 or similar it might not be much, but there will be some.

if you convert the prores hq footage to 25fps mpeg-2 matching all the dvd's specs and then join it with the dvd mpg without re-encoding there will be no loss of quality.

[lordsmurf]

You need a Windows machine to do a quality extract of the DVD.
Move to Mac and ProRes next, after you have the MPEG-2 file pulled from VOB.

Honestly, if you have to ask these questions, considered paying a video professional.
It's super easy to screw up your video.
Something like this is rather easy, cheap, and a day project.
But it does take skill, proper software, and experience doing it.

[poisondeathray]

You'd probably want to do a decent upscale if you plan to mix in the shots . FCP not so good for this

[Cornucopia]

to back up a moment. vobs on dvd are mpeg-2 in a wrapper. 720x576 25fps if PAL as you say. you can extract the original mpeg-2 from the vobs with something like vob2mpg.

if you convert the dvd mpg to prores and then back to mpg there will be a second generation rendering reduction in quality. if you use a hq encoder like cce sp2 or similar it might not be much, but there will be some.

if you convert the prores hq footage to 25fps mpeg-2 matching all the dvd's specs and then join it with the dvd mpg without re-encoding there will be no loss of quality.

The FCP's existing ProRes footage WILL have a loss in quality going to MPEG2 (4:2:2 to 4:2:0 and bitrate reduction at least). No use cutting down the good to make it match up with the bad. Who knows what the end format will be - it hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet. I say, better to have 2 generations in a few sections and 0 generations in all the rest. Then, at least, you won't have to worry about GOP stuff either.

Scott

p.s.
I agree with lordsmurf's and poisondeathray's last comments (not sure though if it was mentioned yet about HD -HQ, yes, but HD?)

[jman98]

Honestly, if you have to ask these questions, considered paying a video professional.

I agree with this. Maybe I'm wrong but I have the feeling based on the posts that the original poster is deeply in over his head here and isn't very likely to do this correctly or understand a lot of the information that posted to help him. Or he may barely get it done but he'll have to do it in a very suboptimal way that degrades the quality unnecessarily.

[colossus34]

Honestly, if you have to ask these questions, considered paying a video professional.

I agree with this. Maybe I'm wrong but I have the feeling based on the posts that the original poster is deeply in over his head here and isn't very likely to do this correctly or understand a lot of the information that posted to help him. Or he may barely get it done but he'll have to do it in a very suboptimal way that degrades the quality unnecessarily.

Thank you I am not 100% apposed to this although as an indie film project cost and budget is an issue. Ideally, I can find the best way to do this and have someone else actually oversee/do it for us but I want to make sure I understand the process correctly as not losing image quality is of paramount importance at this point. The project will end up in HDCAM master but more than likely will be downcoverted to DVD's/online VOD streaming distribution. It's a low budget horror film. I was also advised by others to recapture from DVD straight into Avid/FCP using Digital video feeds etc as VOBs tend to not look as good. It seems like there are multiple ways to 'skin the cat' here, which worries me.

I was hoping there would be a univerally accepted/standarized method for approaching this....

[aedipuss]

an up-conversion from interlaced 25fps dvd mpeg-2 4:2:0 720x576 to HDCAM 24p 3:1:1 1920(1440)x1080 probably isn't going to look as good as you want. if it's 25p on dvd it maybe a bit cleaner, but still you are asking 400k pixels/frame to become 2000k pixels/frame. there just isn't any way to re-create the missing 80% of pixels nicely.

don't know who would advise re-capturing already digital material, it doesn't even make sense.

[yoda313]

don't know who would advise re-capturing already digital material, it doesn't even make sense.

Maybe some other novice thinking dv-avi would be better not realizing its a waste of time from a dvd source that is already digital???

[lordsmurf]

I was also advised by others to recapture from DVD straight into Avid/FCP using Digital video feeds etc as VOBs tend to not look as good.

Yeah -- that's a terrible idea.

It seems like there are multiple ways to 'skin the cat' here, which worries me.

As well it should. Generally, there's 1-2 right ways, and several dozen wrong ways.

[colossus34]

The PAL footage on DVD is 25fps so it does complicate matters so this is the workflow I'm getting at:

1)Use Mpeg StreamClip to convert VOB files to PRORes HQ 4:2:2 at 25fps

2)Use Compressor program to convert footage to 24fps.

3)Import into Final Cut and cut in with other 24fps HD footage..

4)Use Virtual dub to smooth out any glarring visual issues and artifacts.

5)Output to HDCAM-SR and make DVD's from that for distribution.

Thank you for your feedback.

[Cornucopia]

I'm guessing Compressor does FRC by interpolating/blending frames, which is NOT what you want to do. You want the timebase to actually slow down (25 frames @ 25 frames/sec = 1 sec, those SAME 25 frames @ 24 frames/sec = 1.041666 sec), for both audio + video. Virtualdub on the PC can do this, but I think at this point you want to keep it on the Mac so you don't have other conversion/filetype issues.
I'm not totally up-to-date with opensource Mac video apps, so I'll defer to others.

Other than that step, I think you've got it. Don't really know if Vdub is the most appropriate in the chain (like I said, watch for filetype/conversion issues), but it's doable.

Scott

EDIT>>>>
You should use an app like DGIndex+Vdub to analyze the PAL DVD first to make sure it was authored correctly. No sense changing the timebase BACK to 24fps, if the it wasn't first changed correctly to 25fps. That could just cause MORE problems.

[colossus34]

I'm guessing Compressor does FRC by interpolating/blending frames, which is NOT what you want to do. You want the timebase to actually slow down (25 frames @ 25 frames/sec = 1 sec, those SAME 25 frames @ 24 frames/sec = 1.041666 sec), for both audio + video. Virtualdub on the PC can do this, but I think at this point you want to keep it on the Mac so you don't have other conversion/filetype issues.
I'm not totally up-to-date with opensource Mac video apps, so I'll defer to others.

Other than that step, I think you've got it. Don't really know if Vdub is the most appropriate in the chain (like I said, watch for filetype/conversion issues), but it's doable.

Scott

EDIT>>>>
You should use an app like DGIndex+Vdub to analyze the PAL DVD first to make sure it was authored correctly. No sense changing the timebase BACK to 24fps, if the it wasn't first changed correctly to 25fps. That could just cause MORE problems.

I'm not 100% sure how Compressor does it but I will have to see... I've always been told the "Teranex VC100" is another way to go and is the better option but much more pricey. Take the Pro Res HQ footage to a vendor and convert it through that to 24fps to match rest of footage.

[colossus34]

UPDATE:

So after taking it to a professional we've decided our best bet is to use MPEG Streamclipper as others mentioned to rip the VOB files then run them through a Terenex hardware device to fix it from 25fps to 23.98 and turn it from SD to HD to match rest of 23.98 footage.

The first issue we've come across is whether to rip the files at Uncompressed 10 bit 422 or simply the PRO-ResHQ? The other footage is PRO-Res HQ so we should probably stick to that format but at the same time if you look at attached file, there is visibly LESS noise in the blacks and richer color in the uncompressed footage. Any thoughts/opinions or ideas on this?

Thanks for all the help guys.

[Cornucopia]

I'm not seeing this on a pro monitor right now so it's very hard to tell just what's going on. Although, when I see something like this, I usually think that one setup is NOT doing the RGB->YUV (including 0-255-->16-235) conversion correctly while the other one is. You'd have to compare both of these with the originals (both DVD and tape and good ProRes footage) on a vectorscope/waveform monitor to know which is doing what it should.

Just eyeballing it, which one more closely looks like your existing footage?

Scott

edit>>>
Try putting B&T from a similar source through the Terenex and see what it does with footage - maybe it isn't calibrated...?