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Workflow Advice Request
Next month I will attend a big international festival as a journalist for a tv-station. During ten days I will make about 4 or 5 reports which I will edit and send to the tv-station by satellite linkup. Because we want to be flexible and mobile during these two weeks, my cameraman and I are thinking of using the HVX200. Now my question is: what would be the perfect workflow?
I will have a MacBookPro with FCP 5.1, and will shoot and edit on a daily basis with the HVX200, 2x8GB P2-cards and a P2-store. I am thinking of shooting in 720p, although the tv-station still broadcasts in SD Pal. I will send my edited items to the station by FTP or satellite link-up from location.
It is a vast question, but does anyone have already experience with this new way of working in the field? My alternative is good-old Betacam SP or Digibetacam, with heavy recorders and oldfashioned tapes. -
9 Replies
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If your station is broadcasting in SD, why waste bandwidth and space on those expensive cards with 720p?
Are you planning to keep it for later use as HD?If so, you could work in 720p
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I just wrapped up a location shoot here in Chicago, using exactly this setup. We used two external drives
for backup, just using the Store for reading, not storage. It was indeed an experience!The biggest problem I encountered was viewing/verifying the files.
We are presently tied to FCP at this point, in terms of viewing files.
I got TONS of phantom error messages, only debunked by rather
time-consuming troubleshooting: restarts, reboots, reconfiguring.
All files on the cards turned out to be fine, but just try telling that
to FCP! Yikes.I do not know if the culprit is the Universal 5.1 FCP, the laptop
or the nature of the MXF files. We were working very quickly,
turning over our four cards as fast as I could. We were shooting a feature,
and there were times we had to slow down shooting due to the workflow.
The problem is the patchwork nature of the viewers now, apparently
not the actual cards/format.On location, I would recommend sticking with battery power.
God help you if you lose AC power, our system freaked out.
Also make sure to unmount the P2 Store before you eject/insert
a card. The cameras might “hot swap” fine, but the Store DOES NOT.
Trust me, don’t even think about it.The pictures are sweet, but we need a third party vendor to step up
with a cross-platform software viewer designed around this format. -
I intend to shoot 720p because I would like to use the footage in the next two years or so, that’s why I want to avoid shooting SD. I hope that NAB will see FCP 5.5 or even 6 with full DVCPRO HD support, but if understand well, today I won’t be able to use FCP when I shoot 720p in PAL?
Furthermore, what sound and light could I use with this camera. I am thinking of using a Sennheiser wireless G2-series (two transmitters, one for a handheld mic and one for a lavalier mic). I wonder if there’s space on the HVX200 to somehow attach the transmitters. And what about light? Should a use a torch with a seperate battery, or can I use the cam’s battery?
Once again: this is a vast topic, but I intend to post my experiences of next month on my website, so I can share the knowledge that I – hopefully – will have acquired at the end of May 2006. Thanks again.
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My advice is to shoot on DVCPro50 codec. It gives you double storage with best results for Broadcast SD.
Rainer
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But is that in 720P? Or just regular SD? I would like to shoot in 720P, so I can use the footage later too.
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The tape deck will only record DV 25 not DVCPRO 50.
When you shoot SD using the DVCPRO 50 codec it
actually uses more space than shooting 720p 24pN.
You can always downrez the HD footage for SD use. -
My workflow for the last 2 months has been successful. Shoot, download, backup, edit. I would recomend more cards but maybe firestore will be an option by then. I will say it is a new way of shooting, especially if you are a small crew. Instead of thinking of next shot or setup, you have to constantly be thinking of downloading and having enough space on the cards to continue. And a 8 gig card takes a while to download. Anyway, images are great and with any luck we will soon be saying I remember when I had download 4 8 gig cards………….
Todd McMullen
Flip Flop Films
Austin
Cinematography Forum Leader -
Todd, thanks for the insight, please elaborate on the download time, how long exactly? Are you finding that the cards fill up faster than you can download/verify?
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It seems to be about a gig a minute to firewire. And I haven’t had time to verify, but, it has been no problem.
Todd McMullen
Flip Flop Films
Austin
Cinematography Forum Leader
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