Cutting Feature Film Online????

[Richard Sanchez]

If they plan to finish 1080p and not 2k or 4k, and if you have enough hard drive space to handle it, and if that hard drive is fast enough (a large RAID via esata, Thunderbolt, or other higher bandwidth connections) then yes it’s certainly possible. If you’re not familiar with Media Composer, I’d download a trial and watch some tutorials pronto, since it doesn’t work like Premiere or Final Cut, and if you try to force it to, you might have problems.

Richard Sanchez
Los Angeles, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Nate Tam]

Thanks! I was hoping for that answer. I’ll be receiving footage from telecine as a 1080p avid codec. Most likely Dnxhd 175x or something similar. We will be storing that on a raid of about 8TB. If needed we can purchase another internal drive for footage making it 11TB.

I just don’t want the hassle and the drive space needed for an offline to online workflow.

Nate Tam
Freelance Film Editor
natetamiam.com

[Michael Phillips]

What is your primary deliverable? Seeing as a telecine was involved, I am going to assume film sources. I would be considering a DNxHD 444 in some form of “log” to get as much dynamic range of the negative to a 444 color space on digital video. Going to DNxHD 175, you have not restricted it to Rec.709 and 422 color space, albeit 10 bit (175x).

My recommendation for the workflow would be to DNxHD 444 and transcode from that to DNxHD36 for offline and editorial, then a relink to “highest resolution”. But it is certainly possible to edit at DNxHD 444 provided you have enough storage and if editing on MC7 can apply a Log to Rec.709 LUT to have dailies that look good but allowing you access to full dynamic range by removing the LUT.

Michael

[Graham Tees]

You might want to look at this thread on the Avid forums regarding MC’s ability to import 1080P.
https://community.avid.com/forums/p/123480/709117.aspx#709117

[Michael Phillips]

I don’t think that thread adds much to the discussion other than reiterate that Media Composer does yet support 1080p/50 and 100p/59.94 and as with all new features, it is unknown as to when. At least with Avid, you have a better idea of what is coming or not versus Apple that is very tight lipped. Adobe is now in a different situation with subscription so I believe the Sarbanes Oxley rules do not apply as tightly as per upgrade cycles.

As mentioned in my previous response, it is a trade-off between raster resolution and motion resolution (for editorial).

Michael

[Dan Stewart]

I agree. Ok so you have nice high quality footage (yes go better than dnxhd175 if you can get and store it) but for those months of cutting why NOT use Dnxhd36/45 proxies? The system load is drastically reduced and the relink for finishing should be trivial. Good enough for Iron Man..