• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  HDV or prores?

  Posted by Alexander Gittinger on November 23, 2009 at 9:13 pm

  Hi and kudos to all the great minds on this forum, you all rock!
  Here is a little conundrum I’m in in terms of deciding the workflow of a big project.

  Everything is shot in HDV and has been captured in HDV.
  The project will ultimately end on a SD DVD. We are making a master file in DVDSP for the duplicator.

  There will be SD footage intercut with the HDV footage, and there will be lots of stills that are going to be animated in Motion. (what would be the best output there?)
  I’ve been searching for an ideal workflow solution and found many different opinions posted. Some say HDV is fine, some say get rid of HDV and cut in prores.

  The possible workflows we have come up with are
  1. keep footage in HDV and set sequence render to prores
  Can we stay with FW drives in this workflow?

  2. Transcode entire footage to prores and work in pro res sequence.
  This will take up way more drive space and from what I understand needs a RAID storage solution. Or does it?

  Or is there another workflow that may be better?

  As of yet we don’t have a video card, but we’re going to get one. Thinking of either Black Magic Deck Link Studio or AJA, depending on costs.

  We are at a point of major upgrade and we would like to have some input from the gurus on this forum. You are really very impressive with all the knowledge you have.

  Thank you all so much for the willingness to share your wisdom.

  All Best
  Alex

  Mac pro Quad Core 3 GHz, 6GB Ram OSX 10.5.8
  FCP 6.06

  Caflama Films
  3157 Donald Douglas Loop South
  Santa Monica, CA 90405
  ca*****@*ac.com

  Aaron Neitz replied 16 years, 5 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Aaron Neitz

  November 23, 2009 at 9:23 pm

  Just seeing your subject line I already has an answer: ProRes!

  You can edit in HDV, but it’s slow and render heavy (long GOP MPEG nonsense). Going ProRes right off the bat will makes things go much smoother and faster overall. And you DO NOT need a raid for ProRes. It will play back just fine over any decent FW800 drive.
• 

  Alexander Gittinger

  November 23, 2009 at 10:26 pm

  Aaron, thanks for the fast response.

  It seems the way to go, and I am very relived to hear that we don’t need a RAID array for this.
  So I’ll go ahead and transcode all the 18 hours of footage to ProRes. I have never done that before. Any suggestions on how to make this as painless a process as it can be?

  Thanks

  Alex

  Caflama Films
  3157 Donald Douglas Loop South
  Santa Monica, CA 90405
  caflama@mac.com
• 

  Aaron Neitz

  November 23, 2009 at 10:37 pm

  If it’s already HDV files, I’d use Compressor. Just do batch convert with the default ProResHQ encoder. Obviously do some tests on 1 or 2 clips to make sure it’s looking correct.

  Also get a decent drive(s) for ProRes. A western digital, while FW800, will probably sputter. I personally tend toward G-Tech products and avoid Lacie.

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