8 Camera shoot – Looking for soem advice on Mega post Job

[Matt Devino]

Work in a ProResHQ 1920×1080 29.97 timeline w/field dominance set to None. This will output to your HDCAM tape nicely.

[Sean Kapleton]

I have a feeling this is possibly incorrect advice…beyond that I am hoping to get much more detailed information on how exactly to handle all the formats of footage (i.e. not just let FCP scale it up but possible conform?)

In terms of laying off to HDCAM we were thinking to do a conform at the very end when its time to deliver in After Effects converting it to 1080i for HDCAM.

Anyways, hoping to get some in depth advice on this project and as advised i did not start a new post in the forum : )

thank you

Sean

[Matt Devino]

There is no need to conform in After Effects at all, it’s a complete waste of time. Any i/o card (i.e. Kona 3, Blackmagic, etc.) will be able to output your FCP sequence to HDCAM as 1080i, whether your work in a ProRes sequence, a DVCPRO HD sequence, an XDCAM sequence, or an Uncompressed sequence. The only important thing is you pick a frame rate to work in and stick with it.

Everything can be converted to 1080i very nicely, it’s going from 29.97 to 23.98 that causes problems.
Because you have multiple frame rates going on here, and one of them happens to be 29.97, and you are finishing at 29.97, then you should work in 29.97. Your 23.98 material will convert to 29.97 by adding pulldown. HDCAM @ 1080i is just Uncompressed 8-bit video running at 29.97 interlaced. So work at 29.97. Also 30P timelines output to 1080i tape perfectly fine, trust me I do it all the time.

If you want to conform all of your footage to the same format you can do that, but I personally wouldn’t. FCP does a perfectly fine job of scaling 720P and DVCPRO HD 1080P material to 1920×1080 in the timeline. Also the timelines in FCP are open format, so if you were to work in a Pro Res HQ timeline at 29.97, and you turn unlimited real time on, you can edit in real time (you did say you had 4 brand new mac pros so the hardware is fast enough for this). Then you just do your edit and render when you are finished, and output that timeline to tape. Another reason to work with the original clips is so you don’t have 4 copies of every clip laying around (original clip, converted clip, and backups of both).

If you do decide to conform to one codec, I think you should go to ProResHQ 29.97. Progressive vs interlaced is your choice. Here’s why to chose either:

Progressive:
The only reason I said to set your field dominance to “none” was because all of your footage is progressive. If you work in 1080i the 59.94 material would look very similar to the interlaced video. This will cause the “look” of your show to change from shot to shot if you are viewing it on an interlaced monitor. If you simply work in a 29.97 progressive timeline, all your formats will look like they were shot 30P to begin with, and the 59.94 footage will look like it was shot 30P.

Something to figure out is what the intention of the of the 59.94 material was. If it’s for creating slomo clips from it then you will need to conform that footage to 29.97 using compressor or cinema tools. This will make it proper 30P and be a smooth slomo clip.

Interlaced:
You have a lot of 23.98 footage, and if drop the 23.98 clips into a 29.97 timeline it fills the gaps with duplicate frames (I don’t think FCP adds proper 3:2 pulldown to 23.98 clips just by dropping them in the timeline, unless that was added in an update I don’t know about.). This looks perfectly fine to most eyes, but it can look like the footage is strobing to some. To get around this you will want to make sure you add proper 3:2 pulldown to your 23.98 footage which you can do in compressor. In this case you would probably want to convert the 59.94 material to 29.97 before you start working with it or you will get that mixed looks problem I was talking about.

My biggest reason for working in a ProRes HQ timeline vs another kind of timeline is HDCAM tape is uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2, ProRes HQ is lightly compressed 10-bit 4:2:2. If you chose ProRes HQ your renders will look better and take up less disc space than working in uncompressed 8-bit, and you can edit in real time off of a firewire drive if you wanted to instead of needing a RAID for the uncompressed video playback. You also have a ton of ProRes video already because of the RED footage, so that material will be native in the timeline. ProResHQ is also a higher quality codec than the XDCAM and DVCPRO footage you have so you won’t be losing any quality by using ProResHQ. in the end if you are worried you can change your timeline to uncompressed after your edit is done and re-render it before you output, but it would be wasteful to do all your cutting in uncompressed from the beginning.

[Sean Kapleton]

Hey Matt thank you so much for the detailed response – I need a sec to dissect it all but I know I do have a couple quick questions about this workflow : )

If there are any thoughts from others in this forum please let me know asap as I am about to get this started with an editor.

thank you for your time thus far everyone – really appreciate it!

Sean

[Sean Kapleton]

Hey Matt,

I have a quick question – the client also is requesting that we put all of this tapeless media onto HDCAM or HDCAM sr tapes as a backup for them – they will want the finished spot delivered on HDCAM, all of the tapeless media on drives which they sent, as well as all of this footage on HDCAM tapes?!

Any thoughts on what that will mean in terms of getting all of this media on tape as an archive for them?

cheers

sean

[Matt Devino]

Do you guys gave a Kona or Blackmagic card in your system? If so I would rent an HDCAM deck, buy a bunch of tape stock, and get ready for a few days of outputting. I would split the footage into 1 hour long timelines based on original frame rate. So all your 23.98 footage will go on a 23.98 timeline, and all your 29.97 footage will go on a 29.97 timeline. Output the 29.97 stuff to tape as 1080i, then for the 23.98 stuff set the deck to 23.98 PsF and output it as 23.98 so it stays native. If you plan to do this through a post house instead of renting a deck you can just ask them exactly how they want it and you can hand over sequences for them to output.

[Sean Kapleton]

Hey Matt,

thank you for the response I apologize for the late reply.

I am a little confused now about the process of archiving all of the footage to HDCAM and am hoping you can clarify this for me. So i got some more info on this request and in talking with my boss the thought he had was to just put everything on one timeline grouped in order of what camera it was shot with (i.e. all the RED, then all the p2, etc).

It turns out that the client wants all of this footage on HDCAM in order to ingest and edit with on an AVID system and then once they are ready they will send us back to finish – we are all FCP and have done this back and forth with them before but not on such a big scale with SO many formats. SO I want to make this process as smooth as possible

My boss suggested that I just put a one frame slate in front of each and every shot which says the shot name, format, in & out timecode & duration – he wa thinking to just put it all in one ProResHQ 1920×1080 29.97 timeline w/field dominance set to None BUT it seems you are suggesting laying off individual tapes according to what format they are NOT what everything will be conformed to in order to edit with.

Any thoughts?

Thank you in advance : )

Sean

[Sean Kapleton]

Hey Matt or anyone who might know the answer to this,

hoping you will get this post : )

So it seems the consensus from the client is that they would rather have all the footage in one format (1080i HDCAMsr) ans I wanted to ask you about what you suggest and what to be aware of for this type of procedure.

I plan to put a 1 frame slate in front of each clip and group them all by what camera they were shot with / format which should mean 5-6 60min HDCAMsr tapes.

Also I am curious about a previous post you had where you suggest to actually work in “a ProResHQ 1920×1080 29.97 timeline w/field dominance set to None. This will output to your HDCAM tape nicely” So I am just curious whether this meant that when it was time to actually output to HDCAMsr I was to set something differently in either sequence settings or output settings in order for it to be 1080i?!

thoughts?

thank you for your help?!

Sean

[Matt Devino]

Hi Sean,

So I think what I need to know is who is doing the offline and who is doing the online edit. It sounds like the Avid people are doing an offline edit and then sending their project over to you to conform the online edit in FCP? Is this correct? This could get messy if this is the case, even if you automatic duck the Avid sequence into an FCP sequence to do the conform some effects won’t come across when you online.

If i’m mistaken about what is going on then ignore that last bit.

Just give to the tape to your client however they want it. If they want all of the footage in the same format then just layoff to a 29.97 1080i HDCAM tape. If you are using a Kona card for output then having your sequence set to ProRes HQ 29.97 no field dominance will work fine, just set your easy setup to “AJA Kona 3 – 1080i 29.97 Apple ProRes 422 (HQ)” just before you output to tape.