Timeline Set up Advice for 2k delivery of SD footage

[Shawn Convey]

Hello, I have a bit of a unique case and would love any/all feedback on setting up my timeline correctly for delivery success.

FYI - I am a director/DP who is teaching myself editing but still relatively clumsy in an NLE. I am hoping to be proficient enough to be my own "junior editor" for my feature doc projects. Keeping my naiveté  in mind when giving advice will be super helpful to me and help reduce "follow up" questions 🙂 

Goal - Deliver a 2k (DCP) short feature (60min) documentary film consisting of SD (4:3) archival footage which was shot on the DVX100a 13 years back. All footage is SD there will be no mixed media. It is imperative that the upscale and text on screen look as good as possible.

The Situation - Footage is currently in a Premiere Pro project (60+ hrs) pretty well organized and close to ready to be delivered to the editor (lets say it is "pre-edited" now). We have known essential scenes and shots translated (org. language is Bengali, translated to English) and we have .srt's of said translations. I would be "fine" with doing the edit in PP, however it is seemingly impossible to import subtitles in a format other than .scc or a very stripped down .srt. As such the styling and resolution of the subtitles would all need to be redone in PP and from what I understand DR will allow me to work with the .srt files seamlessly, change all the params on the text and even export a new .srt file. As such I am inclined to import each timeline into DR and attach the .srt files in DR and finish the edit, color and delivery there. 

Problems to Solve:

1. SD --> HD upres for delivery - Some have suggested the "super scale" function in DR 16 could work well in this case but I have been having a hard time finding information on the best way to set up a timeline for this specific case use (or really any decent info on settings or techniques to try within Super Scale. What would you suggest?
    
2. Proper Timeline Set Up - I know this is super important when starting any project and as I am less familiar with SD tech (or lack thereof) I am even more hesitant to stab in the dark on this. I would hate to create a problem at the onset which would become problematic on delivery.  Everything was shot in 24p btw. Any suggestions on not only setting up the DR timeline but exporting the PP timeline(s) or project if possible (I would rather import a complete project but if I need to go timeline by timeline I will).
    
3. Subtitle gotcha's or Pitfalls - So I was a bit heartbroken to learn that the .srt files have very limited functionality in PP, and I would love to know what are the pitfalls I could experience in DR before I make the belabored effort of migrating the entire project over. Any, life experience help or suggestions would be super helpful!

Again, any advice, guidance is very much welcome and appreciated. Thx!

[Shawn Convey]

Az Kola - Was nice enough to respond to my FB post about this and suggested I export an XML and watch the "Lesson 03 - Sending a Premiere Pro timeline to DaVinci Resolve" from LowePosts Conforming video tutorial series which was indeed helpful however I have run into some of the same issues that I had in the past when "stabbing in the dark" at this as there are still several specific 24p / SD to HD issues which I can not get a handle on:

1. Feathered Motion Issue - I believe "field dominance" is off and creating a feathered effect with quick motion I don't see a way to adjust this as my timeline is HD but the footage was shot 4:3 / SD. I see where some of the options are available IF I were in an SD timeline but not in an HD timeline. 
    
2. Square Pixels vs. Non-Square - The image is a bit stretched (subtle but there) due to the fact that the 1920x1080 timeline is Square Pixels and the Original footage is non-square. I am obviously fine with black bars on the left and right (which I do have now) to accommodate for the 4:3 aspect ratio but I don't want the image distorted as it is now. 
    
3. Project Organization - Assuming I can figure out how to make this work, I would love to maintain a neat and orderly folder structure similar to the one I have in Premiere (which does mimic what I have on my HDD folder structure). When I bring in timelines to DR it brings in only the clips that I have in that timeline and of course not in a folder structure. Cleaning up one timeline wouldn't be that big of an issue but if I were to bring in a one or two dozen timelines that would be super time consuming and tedious. Is there a way to IMPORT all the Media into the DR project before hand so when I import individual timelines it finds/links or otherwise does not duplicate the clips from the timelines on import? (does that make sense?)

Any Suggestions?

Edited March 19, 2020 by Shawn Convey

[Shawn Convey]

**UPDATE**
I spent the better part of today, digging deep in other forum posts on other sites and many of the questions I THINK I may have figured out but now I would really love some feedback on specific settings to make sure I do indeed have everything set correctly before I import the remainder of the timelines.

Feathered Motion Issue & Non-Square Pixels issues - were solved in the Clip Attributes section (sorry I should have known that... n00b)
Project Organization - I imported all the footage and set up the Project the best I could BEFORE importing the first timeline. I changed the clip attributes for the footage found in that "to be imported" timeline and it would appear that DR did not duplicate footage but instead linked it all so that is great news!

I have created a Google Doc with setting and screen shots (commenting has been left on but not edit privileges) found HERE 
*If you have SD experience I would greatly appreciate it if you could look at the setting I have and let me know if some are not set correctly*

QUESTIONS REMAINING (for now):

Project Settings

1. Data levels - Should it be Full or Video?
2. Video Monitoring - Video Format - HD1080psF23.976 Is this correct?
3. Frame Interpolation - I have Optical Flow, Enhanced Better, and Medium (should that be Larger or Small?)
4. Image Scaling - Resize Filter- I have Smoother but should it be other?

Clip Attributes

1. Data Levels - should it be Auto, Video or Full (Full seems to have a less contrasty image but not sure if there is more data)
2. Super Scale - Still not sure about this, now I have it off but is there a way to make use of this?

Edited March 19, 2020 by Shawn Convey

[Thomas Singh]

6 hours ago, Shawn Convey said:

Data levels - Should it be Full or Video?

In video monitoring  the data levels should be set to "video".

In the render settings, 99% of the times it should be set to automatically which means video levels in most cases. That is what most applications expects even though they might remap to data levels internally.

 

6 hours ago, Shawn Convey said:

Video Monitoring - Video Format - HD1080psF23.976 Is this correct?

You can find the same frame rate without psF (Progressive segmented Frame) which probably is the one you should use.
 

6 hours ago, Shawn Convey said:

Frame Interpolation - I have Optical Flow, Enhanced Better, and Medium (should that be Larger or Small?)

Keep to the default settings.
 

6 hours ago, Shawn Convey said:

Image Scaling - Resize Filter- I have Smoother but should it be other?

Whatever you prefer, whatever you do to your image will override these settings anyways. In general, I advice you to stay with the default settings and focus more on the creative things.

 

6 hours ago, Shawn Convey said:

Data Levels - should it be Auto, Video or Full (Full seems to have a less contrasty image but not sure if there is more data)

Again, do not touch this. It should be set to Auto and the clip will be interpreted the way it should.