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The Dreaded Question About Workflow…
Hi All, new to “the cow” but I’ve been reading it for a while. I am hoping to get some opinions in a specific workflow for a large multi-format project I’m working on. Backstory: We received almost 1TB of XDCam EX, RED and 5D footage. Our Editors (keep in mind these two are new to FCP and don’t like it very much) don’t want to spend time rendering so we usually convert everything to Pro Res 422 HQ at it’s native size and frame rate. In this case we have to transcode the XDCam EX to XDCam files and then to Pro Res 422 HQ and convert the 5D h.264’s to Pro Res 422 HQ. The RED r3d’s transcode directly to Pro Res 422. This way, they don’t have to worry about multiple formats. Due to the volume of footage we have (totaling around 3TB, duplicated for two editors to work on) it has taken us a lot of time to transcode, convert, organize and copy. We have three Mac Pro Octo-Core’s doing the work and it is averaging about 2 days before the editor’s can get into the footage from the time we get the drives, till they can edit on the files.
Does this seem convoluted to any of you? Also, would working with Proxy’s or another workflow be more beneficial? My first thought was to leave the XDCam as is, use Pro Res for RED cam and convert 5D to Pro Res. I’m not 100% but I think the XDCam and the Pro Res would work okay together since they were the same resolution and frame rate.
Thanks for any input you may have to offer.
D
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5 Replies
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Hey Doug
Yes your guys should find the XDCAM EX footage easy to wrk with directly in a matching ProRes timeline … if you decide you still want to transcode these clips anyway then please clarify your “transcode the XDCam EX to XDCam files” step as the need for that isn’t clear. The 5D footage you would certainly want to transcode as FCP is not at all happy editing with H264 footage. As to your editors who are “new to FCP and don’t like it”, well if this is a typical workflow then I can understand their reluctance … and again, if this is typical, you really might want to consider a more suitable tool for the job?
Best
Andy -
I agree that this “sucks” when we have this type of work flow on large projects, but is there a better way that you can think of to do what we are trying to do? With all this talk about editing with proxy’s I keep hearing about, is there something I could have done from the beginning that would have cut down on the time it took to get all this stuff transcoded?
As for the “Transcode XDCam EX to XDCam files” I was specifically talking about using the XDCam transfer software to take the raw XDCam files and turn them into QTs. Since the Transfer Software won’t allow you to turn it into ProRes from the beginning, you have to make all the XDCam QTs and then convert them to pro res.
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If you’re not taking advantage of the speed increase in Compressor afforded by Qmaster, checkout this link on how to set it up. Most folks seem to think 4 is the correct number of instances.
John
MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.2, Motion 4.0.2, Comp 3.5.2, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.2)Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO & 192 Digital I/O, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN
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Thanks for the tip. Since we have about 6 Dual G5’s and 4 Mac Pro’s I will have to figure out how to tie them all into the network for use in helping us transcode large amounts of files like this in the future.
Thanks again for the link. -
Hi Doug,
I agree with Andy.
Unless you intend to work with few layers and many effects, don’t bother in convert the EX footage.
The D5, sure you have to.
rafael
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