I was approached by a lady who wishes to have 4 hours of video of her husband made into a movie for public audiences.

The footage was shot by a Canadian television station some 7 years ago and i am unsure of what tape format. Being that i am in South Florida and my client is a snowbird flying home for the summer later this month i want to cover any likely possiblility.

I don't think she would want to send the originals via FedEx or any other so i am planning on having a Toronto firm transfer the footage for import to FCP. I will then do a transcript and edit a first cut.

What should i be keeping in mind?

If i have footage transfered to DV tape for import via my XL1S will that preserve the original timecode from beta SP? I'm thinking that if the edit goes well and we want to go to film or upgrade the quality level to broadcast or actual film we could take the EDL and recapture with the original beta. Am i off on that?

What specs does the Post House require?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

aloha,
Mark

Unless it was shot on film, and you can afford a decent telecine to be made, a good DV dub will more than do justice to the original TV program, and it would be highly unlikely that you'd be able to achieve a higher quality by going back to the analogue mastertape. Saying that, get a DVCAM dub rather than a DV dub - I don't think DV supports slaving the timecode to another deck anyway, and make sure they remove the 7.5 IRE setup on dub to DVCAM, so that you get a legal digital signal incase you decide to master from your DVCAM dub. Getting the DVCAM dub is a good idea anyway to make a backup master of the programme.

Graeme