How best to obtain high quality file of finished film?

[Adi Head]

I recently finished directing a 40 minute documentary in Poland, shot in HD. Edited on Final Cut Pro. Post production was all done overseas in Poland. I had to leave Poland before the final mix of sound, but that is being done now.

In a week from now I need to send out a short trailer of the film which i plan to edit myself on Vegas 9. This means I need for the production company in Poland to send me a high quality video file of the finished film as soon as possible. The trailer will probably be viewed on a computer screen (small chance it will be viewed on a tv).

I asked the editor in Poland to render a high quality file of the film for me, so I can import it into Vegas and edit the trailer. He replied that he can render really good quality file which would be around 3GB. But he recommends making a high quality DVD of the film and extracting the video from the DVD.

The following is his exact instructions:

- when you will get a dvd, get from internet program Mpeg StreamClip or Super. They will allow you to transcode this dvd to mov.

- use PhotoJPG codec to make mov file or DV-PAL codec (just check what have better quality on your computer)

- edit this transcode material. use only codec that you have chosen for transcoding

this way, you will get a picture without so called "artifact", which are more visible on TV screen. Also, you can transcode picture choosing "Interlace" option so it will be even better in TV screen (but not in computer screen, so you have to ask on what device they want to show a movie).

As far as I know - DVD quality is a compressed mpeg and is considered not so great. But then again - when viewing DVDs on my computer or tv they look just fine... so maybe it's the best way to go after all.

Another aspect to all of this is that the file can't be too large. it must be able to fit on a DVD-ROM which will be sent to me. I just wanted to get opinions on this and be sure that extracting the file from an authored DVD is the best option.

Thanks!

[Bruce Phung]

attract the video from the DVD is work but is not the best way to go if you want high quality. High quality means uncompress AVI with lossless codec, such as free (Largarith codec) or any other lossless codec, but the file size are huge. 28 minutes video render uncompressed AVI (Lagarith codec net me 47GB. You best bet is to have them store your video in a 250GB portable harddrive and send it to you. Just my thought.

[Adi Head]

Originally Posted by Bruce Phung

attract the video from the DVD is work but is not the best way to go if you want high quality. High quality means uncompress AVI with lossless codec, such as free (Largarith codec) or any other lossless codec, but the file size are huge. 28 minutes video render uncompressed AVI (Lagarith codec net me 47GB. You best bet is to have them store your video in a 250GB portable harddrive and send it to you. Just my thought.

Hey Bruce, thanks for your reply.
I realize that uncompressed AVI would be the best option for quality, but time and size are issues at the moment.
When viewing the trailer on a standard computer screen, I'm not sure anyone will notice any difference between a good quality compressed file and the uncompressed 50GB file. If it were to be projected on a big theater-type screen - that would be a different issue.
So for now I'd say my question is how to get best quality file for editing in Vegas while keeping the file under 4.5 GB, so that it can easily be burned to DVD and sent to me.

Looking forward to reading your thoughts on this....

Thanks!

[Bruce Phung]

I am guessing you can have him render and burn at a higher bit rate. Maybe someone will chim in for this. Good luck.