I'm finishing up a historical documentary that is being onlined at 1080i / 59.94. I have a steaming pile of archival footage from the 1930s, all in Quicktime format (various codecs), most of it 640 x 480 / 29.97 that I now need to cut in. I'm planning to bring it into the sequence 1:1 10b MXF
My rule of thumb has always been to bring in footage as natively as possible - format and frame rate, etc. With that being said, these are the three methods I've been experimenting with.
1. In a 1080i / 59.94 project, AMA link to the QTs and transcode to 1:1 10b MXF
2. In a 30i project, AMA link to the QTs and transcode to 1:1 10b MXF
3. In a 30i project, import the QTs at 1:1 10b MXF, lower field first
I've been a little surprised to get some mixed results so far. I initially thought method 1 would be the best choice but I've been seeing some interlacing issues and also some weird strobing if I need to do motion effects. Those go away when I utilize methods 2 and 3 (the project matches the native format of the clips, of course) but I could swear that the image is not as sharp as when I transcode with method 1.
Any thoughts?