Image quality difference?

[Josef Heks]

Hi,

 

Im not experienced with the technical proccesses of filmmaking so I hope this question wont make you laugh too hard at me :) This question has arisen often whilst I have watched many DVD special features (often when they show deleted scenes). I will use an example from the LOTR 4 disc special edition. On the Post-production disc, there is an example of how the editor edited a scene. The viewer can either watch all the raw shots, or the final edited sequence. Why is it that the raw shots are of such poor image qulity (washed out, different aspect ratio, very uncinematic looking)...these "raw" shots also have numbers (timecode?) on them. Then when you see the final sequence, it looks amazing. So I take it this is not just colour correction at work...why do the "raw" shots look so bad? Is it because they are just lo quality dailies?

 

Im stumped, and would love to know why this is so,

 

Thanks

[Tim Carroll]

In a nutshell, many times when a film is edited, the editor uses a low res, dirty (with a timecode burn) transfer of the film. This requires way less computing power than trying to edit with a high res transfer, and the timecode burn, or window burn, allows the editor to know exactly what footage he is using. Most high end digital editing software will also keep track of all the footage used, the keycode, etc. Then once everyone is happy with the final edit of the story, they take the Cut List, or EDL (Edit Decision List) to the transfer house and only have the footage that is actually used in the final edit, transferred and color corrected. This saves quite a bit of money.

 

-Tim

[Guest Jim Murdoch]

Then once everyone is happy with the final edit of the story, they take the Cut List, or EDL (Edit Decision List) to the transfer house and only have the footage that is actually used in the final edit, transferred and color corrected. This saves quite a bit of money.

 

-Tim

This is pretty much the way all "non-linear" editing systems work. If you've ever used Windows Movie Maker (comes free with windows XP), or any other PC-Based editor, you'll have noticed that the images on the editing screen are normally quite low-resolution, and after you've finished editing, the computer may take a couple of hours to churn out the full-resolution copy.