-
Avid and FCP offline workflow…
Hello everyone!
I have a studio where we work in very large projects. We do commercials, corporate, tv shows, short movies, documentaries… All sort of shows.
Our main format is Dv. Right now, we have 4 Terabytes of storage; Lacie Quadra drives and iOmega drives.
Because of this, specially when we do documentaries (hundreds of tapes), I´d love to work at offline resolutions. It may seem exagerated to work at lower resolutions if the source material is Dv, but the thing is I find myself buying more and more hard-drives to avoid the off-line to on-line workflow.
Of course you can do this with FCP, you have Offline Rt. Let me tell you why I don´t like to use it. I´m doing a comparision with Avid Media Composer, because I love both systems, and I want both of them to improve. Really!!!
1) The quality is really ugly. It´s not usable at all. I´ve done some tests with a short movie I´m about to edit, and there´s too much pixelation. Sometimes you can´t see the eyes or the faces of the actors.
2) You can change the quality of the capture in the capture presets(It´s set to 35%), but it´s not a good idea to tweak those settings. You need to asign the same quality to all sequecences you work with. Not any good. When you do this, you have playback of clips in the viewer or in a second monitor using Cinema Desktop, but not in both at the same time. The viewer only shows a freeze frame when using Cinema Desktop. Again, not usable. I´ve seen this happening since FCP 5.0. Not a good idea to change the quality of the jpeg codec to increase quality.
3) No 16/9 in Digital Cinema Desktop. When working in Offline RT, clips captured in 16/9 won´t show their correct aspect ratio in Digital Cinema Desktop. You can even read about this in the manual. So if I´m working with 16/9 material, I need to adjust the settings of muy secondary monitor to display the correct aspect ratio, but not all computer monitors have these options.
4) Nightmare off-line to on-line workflow. You already know. No nest, no speed changes, etc., if you don´t want problems. You need to create another project to make an off-kine of your sequence. Speed changes must be removed. You have to re-do the effect. Tought I don´t think FCP Media Manager is as bad as they say (you just need know its limitations and adapt), this is just another reason to consider not using Offline Rt.
5) Open Format Timeline. Whatever… Imagine you worked with Offline Rt and you just on-lined your sequence to the Dv resolution. Now the director wants to add something, so you go to the Offline Rt clips and edit some of them into your Dv squence. Guys, have you tried this? When you mix Dv clips and Offline Rt clips in the same sequence, the Offline Rt clips look terrible, even worst than the originals… Unless you render… This has been discussed in this forums.
Well, all these points make me never work off-line and buying more hard-drives.
Now, Avid:
1) and 2)
You can capture to multiple off-line resolutions: 20:1, 15:1, 15:1s and others. Each will give you different qualities. The 20:1 resolution will duplicate your Hd space, while keeping a very good image quality. You won´t see pixelation.
You can even start with a higher off-line, like 20:1, and then use 15:1 when you´re running out of storage. All those different off-line resolutions will happyly combine between them and with any other codec in the timeline.
3) 16/9 clips will show their correct aspect ratio using Full Screen Playback, no matter what resolution the are. You actually choose 16/9 monitors in the Composer Window, not as an atribute of the clip.
4) Bullet Proof off-line to on-line workflow. Really. Decompose your sequence and batch digite at the desired resolutions. All your effects, speed changes, everything you did, will be there. No need to recreate anyghing.
5) When mixing dv resolutions and any of the off-line resolutions, playback will be perfect and realtime.
I´m telling you about my spefific workflow: lots of dv tapes.
I love FCP, really, and I use it because it´s cheap. But then it´s not that cheap for certain workflows, like mine…
I could use Avid and spend more money on it, but, for me, for my workflow, it´s actually cheaper than FCP and lots of hard-drives.
So guys, don´t get defensive, I´m one of you… I want FCP to be my way, but it´s complicated… Of course Avid has its problems…
I´m not talking about Hd, where FCP clearly wins for now.
What can Apple do to improve in this basic funcionality?
Don´t be bad…
Flavio.
-
2 Replies
-
[Flavio G. Garc
-
I write my reply in the middle of offline/online project that has been ongoing for months, I have been dreading the conform stage, which in the end went very well. 21 clips (across 3 tapes) didn’t reload of 600, with a little investigation, we got to the bottom of the problem, tape tc problems and duplicate tape name (over 160 project tapes) not bad – having been very maticulous about workflow – the results were very positive – HOWEVER – I’ve had to move the project three times and consolidate to a portable drive and relinking, effects files holding low res info, corrupt project and media files are just a number of pitfalls I hadn’t foreseen. I’m used to working at full res. inhouse on Unity – so simple and integrated. FORGET LOW RES, BUY MORE DRIVES, GO FULL RES. EVERYTIME (and keep the project in one place!)
Tally-hoDon’t Cry Yet
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up