Considering Kona2 for movie online — HDCAM quality questions.

[Walter Biscardi]

[mugwump] “Okay, so using Kona2 for HDCAM capture, which codec to use in Final Cut? It looks like HDCAM is only 8bit, 3:1:1 at 25MB/sec. “

8 or 10bit Uncompressed 1080i HD. It’s your choice whether to go with 8 or 10bit. 25MB/sec is 10bit SD, not HD. 1080i HD Uncompressed is about 125 – 150MB/sec.

[mugwump] “And what kind of RAID speed are we looking at for this 8bit material? It looks like a 3-5 SATA RAID would do it.”

Fibre Channel is what you need. A 3-5 SATA RAID will not cut 1080i HDCAM. too slow. See my answer above.

[mugwump] “inally, the JVC is only 720P. I’ve read before on this forum how the Kona will not upconvert it on the fly from 720 to HDCAM 1080. What situations is the up-conversion is the Kona2 good for? Otherwise we’d get the LH. (Still PCI-X here)”

720 to 1080 is NOT an Up-Convert. It’s a Cross-Convert. The Kona 2 UP-Conversion is used for SD material that you want to upconvert to HD. You will want to go through a Terranex Converter to get the 720 to 1080i.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Director, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Tony]

What frame rate did you shoot the HDCAM material at 23.98psf, 24.00psf or 59.94i.

If the JVC HDV material is not the same frame rate then you will have to figure out how to conform it to match the HDCAM material in terms of frame rate and spacial resolution.

Tony Salgado

[David Battistella]

The last time I check the JVC material was not yet supported in FCP. I think that the only software package that lets you edit this footage natively is Lumiere.

Are you transferring all of the JVC material to HDCAM for the edit?

Walter is right.

You need speed when it comes to drives. Also, if you are doing a Davinci online, why not pick up Silcon COlors Final TOuch HD. It is a davinci style color corrector that works with the existing media on your hard drives.

One big thing to consider. You need double the hard drive space when you are color correcting inside the Mac. You will need the space for the capture and the space for the final render. The render files are the same size as the film.

So for example.

538 gig original @24fps for a 90 minute film for 10 bit uncompressed HDCAM
538 gig renders @24fps for a 90 minute film for 10 bit uncompressed HDCAM

leave about 20% for headroom. SO you need at least 1.5 tb for this job.

David

OK. I’m taking the Steelers, 23-21 !

[Mugwump]

Thanks for the info. Interesting that 720 is a cross-convert. Do people find the uprez capabilities in the Kona2 / 3 card useful? I’m thinking of just rendering the 720P sections in the timeline to the higher resolution.

Regarding drive speed, I think there is a bit of misinformation floating around here. A 5 drive SATA RAID minimum speed is over 200MB/sec, which should always be fast enough for HDCAM, which is shot at 8 bit 3:1:1. Maybe some PC systems loaded with antivirus, spyware, and malware software can’t handle the load and drop frames?

I’m thinking about picking up one of these:
https://www.sonnettech.com/product/fusion500p.html

One of these:
https://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_sata_x4p.html

And 5 of these:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148108

I do find the SATA-2 3gb standard to be a bit bunk, with no real performance gains. But hey, the 4 year manufacturer warranty is a plus.

[Mugwump]

I [i]hope[/i] the enormous camera crew did the right settings! Sheesh, between the DP, the operator, the camera “tech”, the two AC’s and the silly Paintbox dude — you would think so! Ang Lee at a recent DGA event: “Shooting the movie is the shopping for ingredients, and the editing is the actual cooking.”

The HDCAM is 23.98, and the JVC is a bit funky. It shows up at 24, though it was set at 23.98. I conformed it to 23.98 with “cinema tools”, and it seemed to go through okay. Regarding the resolution, I was thinking of just rendering it into the 1080 timeline in Final Cut Pro.

I find QC with the JVC HD50 deck to be a bit temperamental. The deck has a personality that requires a tender approach — something that the sony hardware doesn’t require — it just works!

[Mugwump]

Thanks for this reply.

Regarding the coloring of the movie, I’ve always just assumed it was best for an artist to do it. But maybe times are changing, since many of us do know how to get 80% of the way there, and end up coloring many projects anyhow. I just think with a feature products the results could be stunning with a pro doing it? Can an editor really get the good results?

That Final Touch looks interesting. I spent an hour watching the dude at HD Expo a few months ago, and it looks fantastic. Though I wonder how difficult it would be to jump in and use it well. Also, does it even work well without the hardware addons?

Coloring is an important issue, and one that I approach with hesitation on full length projects.

But yes, that JVC is difficult to handle at this point. My workflow was the following:

~Capture from HD50 deck using HDVxDV software. — I consider the .m2t files from then on as the camera negatives.
~Export out as DV quicktime for editing.
–Original Timecode is lost, it puts out new timecode! But I’m expecting that a re-export at full resolution using the same process will yield the same new timecode.
–Audio drifts out of sync! On this project I’m using separate production audio anyhow. Otherwise, to eyeball it back in is not the end of the world.

~Sync up each scene with production audio. (The JVC was the b camera of on the steady cam, so the sound guys rarely ran audio into it.)
~Batch export out to create new synced master clips, using the existing timecode from HDVxDV.
~Batch conform them to make sure they are 23.98, takes a few seconds.
~Drop them back in, and edit!

For the online, re-export from the .m2t originals at the proper codec. Thanks to your post I now realize that it’s going to be a long export render, but they used that JVC HDV camera much more than they planned to, which will take some time to handle. Either pay during the shoot, or pay for it later…

[David Battistella]

Mugs,

You can always bring in a professional colorist to work on Final touch. More and more pro colorists are using it with the JL cooper Davinci style controller.

You can set up a project so a Pro colorist comes in an does the color work using FInal Touch.

That is would be a great way to go.

David

OK. I’m taking the Steelers, 23-21 !

[Mugwump]

Interesting idea, bringing in a color artist. How challenging is Final Touch to learn how to use? I’ve seen it in action and the rotoscoping, tracking features seem high end.

Is it possible to master a fair bit of it, even to understand how to get going with it in a fair amount of time?

Also, I’ve seen the JL Cooper controllers — can it be used with just the mouse and keyboard, or is this too limiting?

Thanks for the info!

[David Battistella]

I am not sure about the software learning curve, it might be a bit dense but I am sure one can get around the controls, etc.

What you can not do in a short period of time is gain the experience of a what a good colorist brings to the table. It’s a bit like setting up a pro tools room and saying you are a sound mixer. Sure you ahve protools and you can push faders, but do you understand the frequency response of the sounds in your mix and how to really make dialog punch over effects and music. Do you get the density of the sound and how deep it reaches into the picture. You see where I am going with this.

You could learn the software and it will deepen your understanding of the effects of color, but will it bring the best to your film, maybe not on the first project you sit down to do, but probably over time.

David

OK. I’m taking the Steelers, 23-21 !

[Mugwump]

Ah, I see now the confusion over HDCAM. It’s a compressed codec that records internally at 18MB per sec. It then goes uncompressed over the HD-SDI connector which requires 240MB/sec at 10bit 4:4:4 uncompressed.

Here’s a chart:

https://www.dvxuser.com/articles/hdedit/

I would think the Sony editing system can handle HDCAM in it’s native compressed form, but who’s really using that editing system?