10-bit uncompressed video to and from FCP?

[heartofglass]

I have a digibeta master of an old (but digitally remastered) animation, which I am getting digitized onto a 500GB Lacie FW800 drive. I need to get frame grabs of this uncompressed video for publicity purposes for the company I work for (they will be used in making DVD menus, desktop wallpapers, print magazine ads, etc. so I need them to be VERY high-resolution, if possible). I will also be making a short trailer in FCP using scenes from this video.

My question is: will the video travel over firewire800 into FCP at the same quality as the uncompressed 10-bit video? Can firewire800 handle uncompressed 10bit video, or do I need some sort of extra card? I know that I can export into 10-bit uncompressed, but can I make this import/export over firewire?

And...is there a better way to get still frames from a digibeta master? Will these even be high enough quality for print, or 1024 x 768 desktop wallpaper? (uncompressed 10-bit from a digibeta master is still only 720 x 486, right?). I realize that there is a HUGE difference in file size, but how visible is this in quality, and how much would I be able to blow up the image?

I am using FCP 5.1 and my hardware specs are:

Model Identifier: MacBook Pro 3,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Chipset Model: GeForce 8600M GT
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
VRAM (Total): 128 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)

Thanks for any help!!
-HeartOfGlass

 

[MarkG]

Theoretically Firewire 800 will have no problem; it's up to 100 megabytes per second, while uncompressed SD at 10-bit color is around 25 megabytes per second. I don't know whether it will work in reality though.

If it's been captured onto the drive as 10-bit uncompressed SD Quicktime files, I presume that FCP will just import the files without any problems.

 

[BenB]

You can "convert" and "copy" anything over FW800. But to "capture" or "edit", where a video stream is required is a whole different issue. Which are you needing to do?

To "capture" or "edit" uncompressed, you'll need to go with a RAID drive system, as FW800 won't hold up to uncompressed formats, even SD. Uncompressed is much more demanding than compressed formats. SD compressed to NTSC-DV is only 25mb/s, but uncompressed is way more, period.

If you're only transferring footage of any format, no problems, use FW800 drives.
If you're capturing from tape or editing uncompressed, you'll need a RAID set up.

As for your other media, remember that what you have is all you have. Blowing up to larger sizes is going to be very limited. Going to print is going to SUCK. Remember that broadcast video is only 72dpi, even if it's uncompressed. HD color space helps a bit, but not a lot. Going to print, wow, you're going to have problems.

I have clients who want to go to print from video all the time, and it almost never works out as well as they assume. Print demands much higher resolution than video, even HD, ever uses.