Codecs for Vidding NTSC DVD Source in Final Cut

[frayadjacent]

Hi all,

I vid with Final Cut Pro, and most of my vidding thus far has been with NTSC DVDs, which I rip to my computer and then use MPEG Streamclip to convert clips to mov.  I use the Apple DV/DVCPRO NTSC codec for my clips, but I'm starting to wonder if there's something else that would work better.  In particular, I've had some issues with non-square pixels in my final export, especially when the source's frame aspect ratio is 16:9 (it doesn't seem to happen in 4:3).  My understanding is that the DV codec doesn't use square pixels, and I'm wondering if there's a good, high quality editing codec that works well for NTSC DVDs that does use square pixels, so I can just nip the issue in the bud.

Thanks!
Fray

Comments

[sanguinity]

Yeah, marking DV/DVCPRO as 16:9 in Streamclip worked fine when I was reviewing the clips in QuickTime Player -- everything looked fine. But iMovie insisted on importing them as 4:3 and then pillarboxing them. I never pushed farther than that with it, because there was image distortion during that import, and I just couldn't see it turning out satisfyingly in the end.

I played around with Streamclip settings a fair bit, and settled on exporting with AIC at 854x480, which seemed to have comparable image-quality to the original. I haven't had any stray quality problems that I've been able to notice. (Short track record, though.)

Nothing has ever been fully stable for me, but some things are more stable and other things are markedly less stable. AIC, so far, has been in the "more stable" category. As near as I've been able to figure, poking around the web, AIC was designed to be used during the intermediate stages of making a video, i.e., during editing.

[frayadjacent]

Thanks for the info -- I'll definitely try that out. It looks like ProRes 422 is another option as well.

[sanguinity]

Keeping that in mind for whenever I finally upgrade, thanks. :-)