Creating workflow for feature length documentary

[David Roth weiss]

Just capture and cut as hdv, and when you’re done just change the compressor in Sequence>>Settings to ProRes and re-render. Bingo, your entire seq is now ProRes, and exporting a QT movie at current settings produces a ProRes file identical to the timeline in every way.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Steve Eisen]

You can do what David says or spend some cash on a new RAID (RAID 5 is what I would suggest). If you are dealing with this much footage, you must be charging enough to edit this doc (I hope). I’ve seen 2 TB HD’s between $130-$150. Invest now or pay later.

Did you learn anything from your previous job?
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/27/858383#858383

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[David Bogie]

David,
You’re suggesting working in HDV live and depending on the Macintosh to process it in realtime?
I’m not going to suggest that’s not a good workflow, I don’t really know, never shot HDV (never want to) but I’ve been reading for several years that HDV should get converted to something more directly editable. Have I been reading all of those posts incorrectly? (Quite likely, I have zero experience with HDV so I could have been easily confused. That happens to me a lot these days.)

I do have a couple o’three suggestions for the OP.
Working with huge amounts of footage is nothing new. Documentary workflows are not secrets and there’s no reason to reinvent anything. Spend a few hours on Google and you should come across dozens of suggestions for managing your huge volume of documentary material. However, just because you have 200 hours of material doesn’t mean you have to capture and store all of it and remember what all of it looks like.
In the olden days, we’d burn timecode window copies to VHS and spend a few days working on a paper cut, deciding what’s crucial, what’s worth keeping for b-roll, and what we can easily file away as c- or d-roll.
Your camera tapes are precious. Be sure the producers have them carefully stored. Might want to make backup dubs of them.
Decide early on file naming conventions. Never use any of these terms in your filenaming: latest, final, best, current, new.
At every important juncture of the production process, increment your project version.
Be sure you understand how the autosave vault works.
Be sure you understand in your contract who is responsible for creating and maintaining backups of your project and exactly what the term “backup” means.

bogiesan

[David Roth weiss]

[david bogie] “David,
You’re suggesting working in HDV live and depending on the Macintosh to process it in realtime?
I’m not going to suggest that’s not a good workflow, I don’t really know, never shot HDV (never want to) but I’ve been reading for several years that HDV should get converted to something more directly editable. Have I been reading all of those posts incorrectly? (Quite likely, I have zero experience with HDV so I could have been easily confused. That happens to me a lot these days.) “

Hey Bogie,

You’re absolutely right, the first choice for those of us, “in the know,” who work with HDV, would be to capture to an iframe codec before editing. However, without a Kona or BM card, and when doing a really big job that is estimated to be 13Tb of ProRes from the start, vs a mere fraction of that with HDV, is simply better off editing the HDV. HDV isn’t the best editing format, but it’s not really a deal breaker if have to bite the bullet.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[David Bogie]

[David Roth Weiss] “You’re absolutely right, the first choice for those of us, “in the know,” who work with HDV, would be to capture to an iframe codec before editing. However, without a Kona or BM card, “

Ah, I missed or skipped over any references to possible hardware support. That would make a huge difference, yes.
Thanks for the help on this point, David.

bogiesan

[Scott Busch]

Alright, thanks guys for all the posts! This definitely clears some things up for me.