Tony

James Wood
HD Productions

And why buy this camera at 10K

To me the camera to get is clearly a Panasonic HPX-170, DVCPRO HD, with HD-SDI out. $6K

Then get the new secret box, the AJA Ki Pro, and record Apple Pro Res 422 natively on a 250 GB HD

Several issues solved:

- Goodbye MPEG-2 Long GOP as an acquisition codec, and hello Apple ProRes 422, a full raster codec, very important

- Goodbye long transcodes in Final Cut Pro from MPEG-2 (a playback codec, an obsolete one IMO)

- Goodbye expensive P2 cards or SxS cards, a joke really. The Ki Pro 250 GB hard drive is 500 bucks or so, but beats the heck out of $700 16 GB P2 card or SxS card.

To me this is the new, great workflow, HD-SDI out, Apple ProRes 422 recorded in the KI Pro, walk over to your Mac and drag the ProRes files into a Final Cut Pro ProRes 422 timeline and start editing. Output to H.264. Done. Can even play the outputted ProRes file from the Ki Pro itself to a large screen, in a digital theatre, no more expensive film transfers. IMO this is where the industry is not only going, but already started.

6K + 3K for the KI Pro

XDCAM HQ is 35 Mb / sec (megbit, not megabyte).

MB = megabyte

Mb = megabit

Have to be aware of that

To get megabytes from megabits, divide by 8, so 35 / 8 = 4.35 MB, so this is totally correct

ProRes HQ is 220 Mb, 220/8 = 27.5 MB

ProRes is 145 Mb, 145/8 = 18.12 MB

From what I hear and have seen in the industry concerning ProRes 422, it is hard to discern ProRes HQ and ProRes. I just use ProRes.

macguitarman@mac.com

Hard drives are not good for the long term, take my word for it!

http://www.suitetake.com/2009/04/06/nab-preivew…

I don't know if you are still monitoring this post, but I wondered what your archive process looks like. Right now we pretty much store entire projects to our server which can be quite large. Disk space is pretty cheap, but I'm always looking for a better way to work.

Steve

And my experience with letting FCP size HD images into a SD timeline has been pretty darn good. I'm pretty picky about image quality and signal path, and I have not been disappointed yet. So that's all I can go on. In fact, just recently we had some SD anamorphic footage that was scaled up to 720p inside the timeline, and I was shocked how good it looked.

We did a lot of testing before proceeding with this workflow, and it works for us and our needs. But everybody needs to do their own test and make that decision for themselves.

My question is probably a “duh” question but here it goes.

I was able to use the “Log and Transfer” to import all my footage into the FCP project file. Now my question is when you start a new project what settings do you use? I know it varies for each type of project.

We shot Sony XDCAM 1080 30p

Under easy setup I found and am trying — FORMAT: Sony XDCAM HD – USE: XDCAM EX 1080p30 VBR – RATE: 29.97

Is this the correct setup or do you recommend a different one or way?

Our final output will be to dvd for the client. Which obv. wants the highest quality they can get. (Should I follow your previous post/comment as my answer?)

Thanks,

Josh

Everything we shoot is HD now, regardless of final output. So there are several times when we just need SD on the output. What we normally do now is create a NTSD (or PAL) SD sequence, set it to 16×9 anamorphic (so we can retain the wide screen aspect ratio) and make sure the sequence codec is ProRes (non-HQ in this case). Now, as we edit our HD footage into the SD timeline it is automatically scaled to fit. We can edit fast, most things will play back in real time (although I have to admit we have pretty new Mac Pros and fiber raids) and if we ever need to do any scaling up of images there is all the room in the world to blow things up and have them look great. When we're ready for output, we render everything and export a self-contained QT movie that's already in the SD format.

There are a few other benefits to going this route. If you have any graphics to create and render, you only need to do them in the SD format. DVD compression goes much faster since you're dealing with SD files and your SD image will look awesome. We've had great experience with this workflow.

As to your multi-cam question, I have to say I can only tell you what I would try myself. I have not actually had this problem yet though. Given everything you've said, knowing I'm not only going to SD but I'm also in need of doing multi-cam with a client in session, I would almost certainly have transcoded my footage to ProRes and worked in ProRes instead of native. Again, I say that without having actually done it myself, but that would be my first thought.

If somebody else has a better (maybe even first hand) experience, please feel free to chime in here.

Actually, I do intend to go to SD but only after the edit as there is one
back camera with which we were deliberately conservatively wide and I hope
to be able to punch in a little on the scale at certain times in the show to
mask out unwanted things at the edge of frame and bring up the size of the
action. Nothing huge but I had supposed that there would be plenty of
latitude for this given the ratio of pixels HD:SD-wise. If I converted to SD
first and then did this scaling afterwards I know this would not work. So I
am wondering id there an intermediate solution (ProRes, Apple Intermediate
Codec etc.) which would make my workflow easier.

An interesting thing I have noticed is that when I put my multiclip down on
the native sequence (and this happens whether or not I set the render
settings to “same as sequence codec” or ProRes), turn off my external video
and set my RT to Unlimited and Playback to Dynamic or Low, I get a green bar
across the top of the sequence. This allows me to edit away in multiclip
once I set the Playhead Sync to Open. However, if for any reason I render a
part of the sequence or, as happened, I go away for a while and come back to
find that auto-render has rendered the whole thing, I then have a purple bar
above the sequence but playback in multiclip no longer works, no matter how
I mess with my settings afterwards. It took me a long time to figure out why
it was no longer working – nothing in the manual hinted at this. I had to
make a new sequence and copy and paste the entire sequence into it to regain
my green bar and allow myself to continue editing in multiclip mode. Now I
have auto-render off. It’s troublesome because soon I will have a client on
my shoulder who will need to see the thing playing in multiclip in order for
us to make fine adjustments, yet wherever I do punch in scale-wise on a
camera, I have to render in order for the picture not to be horrible. Should
I “media manage” the whole thing into a different project with a different
codec?

Thanks again,

Éamon

LittleVision

I think your DVD problem might be that you’re doing the encoding inside of DVDSP. While they say it uses compressor in the background, I’ve always found I have much better results using the “best” settings inside of compressor. Then, bring the already compressed elements into DVDSP and burn your DVD. I would be shocked if you didn't see a huge difference.

Hope this helps. Tom

Thanks in advance for advice,

Éamon

I've recently started looking into using Episode Pro as a replacement for compressor, because I don't think the quality from compressor is always the best it can be. Programs like BitVice do a much better job when it comes to MPEG-2, but that program is more of a one-trick-pony.

Enjoy the camera. The more we use it, the more we love it. For the money it's hard to beat.