• Avid Media Composer

  XDcam HD & Avid MC 5/AMA

  Posted by Nick Ravich on March 9, 2011 at 1:34 am

  Hey- Guessing this one’s been covered before so I’ll try and be quick.

  Running MC 5 on “Nehalem” Dual Quad Core Mac Pros, OS 10.6.

  Got my first XDcam HD shoot coming up and trying to figure out best bit rate/res camera record format vs NLE ease of use. Baseline specs for all our field footage shooting are 1080 59.94i.

  Looks like I’ve got 2 options:
  MPEG HD422 (MPEG-2 422P@HL) (CBR: 50 Mb/s) or MPEG IMX (MPEG-2 422P@ML) (50/40/30 Mb/s)

  Assuming the IMX is the Avid friendly? Presumably I’d want the 50 Mb/s if I’m looking for highest HD res? Project is mix of tape-based DV25 media, DVCPro HD/P2 original, and EX “HQ” 35 Mb/s.

  And once I shoot, what’s my workflow into Avid? Original optical disk folders/media will be transferred to FW800 external drive. So AMA volume off drive? Or do I need to take intermediary step and MXF-ify them in Clip Browser like I do for my EX3 shot stuff?

  Thanks, Nick.

  Nick Ravich replied 15 years, 5 months ago 2 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Hector Berrebi

  March 9, 2011 at 6:50 am

  hi Nick

  from my experience with XDCAM it works smoothly via AMA
  same goes for DVCProHD – P2

  i don’t think on your system you will need to transcode in order to edit

  as for shooting options, can you test performance on both?
  i think Avid can deal with MPEG-2 422P@HL just fine through AMA

  open a project in 1080 59.97 link what you need via AMA,
  and bring the DV stuff in how you may (import/capture/link).

  check out the “reformat” column that was recently added to bins…
  it will help you with the DV stuff if its in 4:3 and you want it differently

  not sure about the FW800… its not a slow connection, but you’d be better off using eSATA, or internal RAID. will improve quality and speed of your work

  once you are done cutting, you can transcode your sequence (I’d go for a high DNxHD flavor) for mastering, laying off to HD tape, exporting AAF for Audio work etc’

  hope this helps

  hector

  Hector Berrebi
  prePost Consulting
• 

  Nick Ravich

  March 9, 2011 at 3:53 pm

  Many thanks Hector.

  Unfortunately, don’t really have the time to test those 2 XDcam HD formats. Shooter/camera & location are across the country. So I think I’ll go with MPEG-2 422P@HL

  Know what HL vs ML means by the way?

  Understood about in-Avid workflow.

  One question about AMA linked media in MC5. Do I have to transcode all AMA-ed media in order video or audio export (understood that I’d have to for tape mastering)? And if I have a mix of tape-based DV25 and AMA linked stuff in a single sequence, do I need to transcode all to some single unifying codec? What’s the smartest/drive space saving way to do this? Seemingly it’ll create a lot of extra files.

  Also, we still have a traditional in house offline/out of house online process. AMA-linkable, digital original media is still minority of media in our programming; bulk is 1080 59.94i DVCPro HD tape. So I’ll definitely be doing a lot of lo-res exporting for the offline, and that’ll presumably require a lot of transcoding. Say if I transcode a particular bit of AMA-linked media to DV25 (for offline), does that effect my ability to transcode to broadcast HD quality codec (like DNxHD) for hand off to onliner down the road? IE I can re-transcode this stuff?

  Thanks, Nick.
• 

  Hector Berrebi

  March 9, 2011 at 8:44 pm

  hey nick

  HL is for High Level

  ML is for Main Level

  the abbreviation world of MPEG and its variants (XDCAM included) is impressively vast…
  try MPEG2 white papers for a good numbing headache 🙂

  you’ll excuse me but i don’t have time to answer your questions in great length right now.

  however. about AMA relinking and transcoding.

  AMA linked files create master clips, once linked you can rename, transcode to offline (rename after transcode too) and eventually relink to original AMA media for re-transcoding to higher unifying codec (like DNX)

  not sure i understood all, but you do not have to transcode all media… just sequence.

  i believe exporting AMA sequences is possible… not always same as source, but i do it in different workflows and it works.
  its AAF/OMF for audio that is still an issue. in any case, transcoding will behave better and yield better results

  find the time to do a test. even a short one, use 3 seconds of each format you will mix in this project, and try out your workflow on a short 10 sec sequence, offline to online, it will help you feel more secure, and realize where nasty surprises might emerge

  good luck with your project

  hector.

  Hector Berrebi
  prePost Consulting
• 

  Nick Ravich

  March 11, 2011 at 10:14 pm

  No need to apologize. You got to a lot of my questions.

  Understood about AMA & transcoding. And yes, just the sequence needs to be transcoded.

  Agreed – an offline/online test is definitely in order.

  Nick.

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