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Advice on HDCAM to Qrez to HDCAM
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[uncompressed] “my point is the desktop portion is ready to go today. for people doing SD, a kona, fast drive and fibre/scsi cards w/a G5 is not entirely out of reach. so, in context, my guess would be this guy is already doing SD since he has been on the boards he likely has FCP–so he would have fcp with a free upgrade to FCPHD……
…..so for around $9k you can do short form…even according to your own figures which are list and assuming you own nothing which will make to to your new suite and that you get nothing from ebaying or tax free donation of your previous system. i…..”I totally get your point. The Cinema display was for some type of computer monitor. Your original post implied total cost, rather than as an add-on to what he already had. My assumptions were different and based on starting from scratch, so I have a single display, when really my own preference was for 2×20.
I don’t disagree that it is within reach, but my point is that it is rather misleading to say you can do a quality job of uncompressed for $7-8K (total). I’ve recently participated in the installation of at least two brand new HD systems using Kona2/G5/FCP and I see what the “real world” costs are in doing this in a way that, a) gets the job done successfully and, b) won’t leave you with all your hair pulled out and left on the floor – because the system didn’t work.
Yes, you can save money in some areas. The biggest right now is what sort of drive array works and here, SATA arrays look very promising. I’m not trying to nit-pick. It just seems to me to be very flip to say it can be done so cheaply when that just doesn’t pan out in actual practice. You can certainly rent decks and will most likely have to, but a Sony deck that records and plays 24P will rent at around $1K per day and you will need it for quite a few days when you factor ingest for offline, ingest (again) for “online” and output back to tape.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
KingCut,
Getting back to your original question, there is another option. That is to use the DVCProHD codec. My own opinion is this is an “offline” quality codec, nevertheless I’ve captured Sony 24P footage through Kona2 to 1920×1080/23.98 DVCProHD. Because you are only capturing the valid frames, more of the codec’s bandwidth is being applied to fewer images and as a result looks very clean. I haven’t seen it with extreme lighting and color situations, so I don’t know if it will fall apart like I’ve seen in other situations. If it works, it appears to capture and play from FW800 drives and work. This seems to be about the cheapest way to go, but part of the answer will be what the final destination will be and how critical the QC judgements will be.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “My own opinion is this is an “offline” quality codec, nevertheless I’ve captured Sony 24P footage through Kona2 to 1920×1080/23.98 DVCProHD. Because you are only capturing the valid frames, more of the codec’s bandwidth is being applied to fewer images and as a result looks very clean. I haven’t seen it with extreme lighting and color situations, so I don’t know if it will fall apart like I’ve seen in other situations”
I’m cutting a broadcast series now shot on the Varicam and being posted in the DVCPro HD codec. This is definitely NOT an offline codec. Extremely clean, even pulling awesome chroma keys and with extreme lighting situations.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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[uncompressed] “Obviously not vectorscopes, textronix color correcting HD monitors, the actual HD camera itself and decks… “
If you’re cutting for broadcast, Waveforme / Vectorscope is a necessity and if you’re color correcting, a professional HD monitor is essential. Approx. $15,000 – $20,000 for an HD Scope (Leader or Tektronix) and at least $2,500 for the Sony PVM20L5/1 monitor (though the CRT’s are going away). You cannot “simply edit” using your computer workstation and expect to cut professionally for HD.
[uncompressed] “and i would guess a guy in this end of the pond would be renting the 1200a deck for $300-500 per weekend…but the desktop portion of HD is here for sure…. “
$650/day here in the Atlanta area. Not really sure where you would find one for $300/day anywhere.
[uncompressed] “HUGE HMV 320 S600M-$2349 “
The harddrive array you mention only holds 2 hours of uncompressed footage. Go back to the original post, he’s cutting a 90 minute show. Is he going to magically ONLY capture the exact 90 minutes he needs for the show? And where are the renders going to go? Let’s say he can just barely fit everything he needs on to this array, will the drive speed hold up through the 90 minutes of playback when it’s that full? The speed for the single drive arrays lists as 200mb+ on the Huge Website. Uncompressed 10bit HD will play back around 140mb/sec. That’s not a whole lot of overhead. In contrast, my Medea FCR2X (2TB) plays back at 325-350+mb/sec. It costs as much as your entire workstation listed, but I don’t drop frames and I don’t run out of room.
Too many people focus on the bare minimum when it comes to cutting HD. Sure your workstation up there can cut HD, but there’s not enough storage for a deadline oriented Post Production house and you’re missing the most important elements when it comes to professional editing, the external monitor and waveform / vectorscopes.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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[Walter Biscardi] “I’m cutting a broadcast series now shot on the Varicam and being posted in the DVCPro HD codec. This is definitely NOT an offline codec. Extremely clean, even pulling awesome chroma keys and with extreme lighting situations.”
Walter,
The reason I say this is that I’m currently cutting a concert video shot Varicam plus interviews. The latter were warmly lit with vivid reds. I see very obvious artifacts in both the camera footage and then compounded in the captute with DVCProHD. These artifacts are not compounded when I capture uncompressed. I have also done captures with DVCProHD that looked quite good, especially with HDCAM originated footage. Go figure. It seems to be dependent on what the video levels are to start with and what happens in post.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Oliver
DVC Pro HD runs at 60 frames per second even at 24p – does it not? So your data rate would be the same per frame if you project is 23.976 or 29.97? Right?
Calculating the data rate and comparing the quality to other codecs – I have to agree. Just like DV p[but with better chroma sampling] – DVC Pro HD is far from offline and not online either.
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[MPE] “DVC Pro HD runs at 60 frames per second even at 24p – does it not? So your data rate would be the same per frame if you project is 23.976 or 29.97? Right? “
You have to separate the DVCProHD discussion between camera acquisition and post. If you are talking about the Varicam camera or a DVCProHD deck, then yes, 24P/23.98P is always recorded to the tape at 59.94/60P and 100Mbps bandwidth is consumed the same regardless of the frame rate.
If you look at just post, though, and are talking about Kona2/FCP/G5, then it is possible to capture any incoming HD-SDI signal with 8 or 10-bit uncompressed or compressed with DVCProHD (DV100), at various frame rates (23.98, 29.97, 59.94, etc.) and at 1920×1080 or 1280×720. As a result, it is possible to capture Sony HDCAM footage shot at 1920×1080/23.98sfP (HDCAM codec) via uncompressed HD-SDI and store it to the hard drives at 1920×1080/23.98 using the DVCProHD codec. This is now a format for which no camera or VTR exists. It is in essence an intermediate codec. When you do this the 100Mbps bandwdith is only applied to the true 24 images/sec that have real footage and not redundant frames. Therefore, the actual data per frame is more than when you capture 23.98 footage with 2-3 pulldown on a 60fps tape (as in the Panasonic formats). The result is better image quality because there is less compression for each and every frame.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[MPE] “DVC Pro HD runs at 60 frames per second even at 24p – does it not? So your data rate would be the same per frame if you project is 23.976 or 29.97? Right? “
As far as the constant record of the deck or the Varicam, yes, all footage is techincally recorded at 59.94. BUT FCP can read the 24 fps flagged frames so your date rate for a 23.98 clip is different than a 59.94 clip.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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[Walter Biscardi] ” date rate for a 23.98 clip is different than a 59.94 clip.”
sorry, should read “data rate”
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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[Walter Biscardi] “BUT FCP can read the 24 fps flagged frames so your date rate for a 23.98 clip is different than a 59.94 clip. “
That is my point. It should be the same if you expect to allocate more data per frame.
Nevertheless, as Oliver explained, the codec while being used in the NLE can use any data rate – thus not compatible with DVC Pro HD decks unless converted back to 100 Mb/s @ 60p.
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