-
DV – HDV – ProRes workflow
I’m hoping someone can help.
I have a documentary that we have been working on for 3 years – as a result we have over 100 hours of material. We knew it was going to be a long project so we decided to film the material on the Sony Z1, with mini DV tapes capturing in HDV 1080 60i (NTSC).
The footage has then been digitized thru firewire using a Sony HVR-M15 deck, and captured at DV NTSC – 720×486 SD resolution. It has then been edited in FCP 6.06 in a DV NTSC timeline. The plan was always then to online this material in either HDV or the newer option Pro Res 422 HQ.
We are close to completion of the offline and I had a few questions before starting the online:
Is it best to capture the material at HDV 1440 x 1080 60i and to use FCP using a pro res 1920 x 1080 timeline or is it best create a EDL from the offline and recapture in Pro res. Unfortunately we only have firewire technology to work with (HVR-M15 deck) so we would have to cue the tapes up manually and online manually – which would be a very long and slow process. The material has been captured fairly raw and the style of storytelling is real and natural, so the color grade will not need be intensive, however the images will be getting treated and graded accordantly, so it would be nice to have some room to do that.
The desired output format is a uncompressed HD QT file for mastering to a HD tape – for distribution and DVD authoring.
Thanks for your help – much appreciated.
Dean
-
10 Replies
-
Have a look to this article:
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/poisson_chris/hdv-prores.php
rafael
-
You would have been better to capture the HDV as HDV as it is the same data rate as DV so same storage, but it would all be HD and ready to online.
What you will need to do is to Media Manage once you have locked off the edit. Create an offline project, change the setting to HDV 60i and delete unused media with 3 second handles.
What these settings do is to change all the scaling of clips and any text to an HDv timeline and break long clips up into just the shots in the final edit (plus the 3 second handles). Media Manager will also pass on any filters/ plugins and change field order to upper for the HD recapture. Recapture this as HDV via firewire and then you are ready for the online. That is the stage that I usually take over from the editor and then grade using Color. The final output from Color can be ProRes or Uncompressed so you end up with a final timeline that has rendered all the grades into the codec of choice.
-
I should add that recapturing as ProRes is not necessary if you render your grades as ProRes via Color or in FCP. The technique of capturing as ProRes to start with has great merit but it doesn’t capture with the tape timecode so use this techneque with some caution.
In your case of recapturing, I would not advise using this technique as it adds no quality to the process and takes up a lot more drive space.
-
Sorry Raf…that method won’t work for onlining. First capture only.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Shane Ross] “Sorry Raf…that method won’t work for onlining. First capture only.”
You are right Shane.
Fallowing the instructions of Michael should be OK.
And I agree that there is no need of capturing as Prores.
rafael -
Thanks guys – much appreciated 🙂
Kind regards,
Dean
-
I too shoot in HDV and capture via Firewire (either as HDV with renders to Pro Res or as Pro Res 4:2:2 1440×1080 via Apple’s method). I don’t do offline edits, but the above seems to work fine for everything EXCEPT Color. I think it is because Color is full raster, but the results are odd. Sometimes it works fine, but usually about half the shots don’t show up in Color and the other half show up fine and render out to Pro Res fine but are way out of sync. Not by a specific amount, could be frames, could be seconds. Am I doing something wrong? The last project (which I captured as Pro Res 1440×1080 24P) I ended up having to take all the shots and run them through Compressor to convert to 1920×1080, then they worked fine. But this method requires adding handles and basically reediting. I tried Media Manager re-render but that didn’t work. Any advice?
Thanks.
Jeff Mueller
http://www.ApertureVideos.com
Santa Barbara, CA -
Not my experience at all Jeff. I work in 25 fps and load feature length docos with up to 1200 shots. I am using Color 1.5.2 Do you have the latest or are you still on Color 1.0.x?
One of the reasons why i was so keen to upgrade to SL & FCS3 was Color 1.5 which I have never had sync or raster issues with.
-
Thanks for the response Michael. Yes I am on 1.5.2 and the latest Snow Leopard. I would love it if I can use the 1440 material. I have a huge (for me) project that I brought in as 1440/24P Pro Res that I’m almost ready to take to Color and dreading the problem, but as I said I just did a little 3 minute piece where until I converted everything to full raster I had both sync problems and specific shots that refused to show up in Color even if I put them in their own Sequence and sent them that way. Is there something else I could be doing wrong? I’m on an early Mac Pro Quad 2.66. Nvidia graphics card (trying to upgrade it), and as I say I just updated all of my Apple stuff (FCS and OSX).
Thanks.
Jeff Mueller
http://www.ApertureVideos.com
Santa Barbara, CA -
One more question: Although the two instances I mentioned above were projects that I imported as Pro Res, I’ve concluded that my preferred editing method is to use an HDV timeline with renders to Pro Res (I also generally bring in any AE material as Pro Res). Do you find that this method works for going to Color?
Jeff Mueller
http://www.ApertureVideos.com
Santa Barbara, CA
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up