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Editing for Skydivers
Hey, I’ve been working for the past few months as an editor at a skydiving dropzone. I have been using my Mac Pro and Final Cut and it has been working very well until now.
First let me share my typical workflow here; A load of tandems goes up with 4 or 5 videographers. The videographers each film; a beginning interview with the customer, footage in the plane and second interview, the skydive, landing, and a final interview. They all come back and give me their dv tapes and a CF cards at the same time. I capture the first tape and start copying and burning the stills. Each uncut video is 6 to 8 minutes long so I can usually copy and burn most of the stills while the first tape is being captured. I start editing the first video while simultaneously capturing the second tape via AVCVideoCap. Next, I start burning the first video in DVD Studio while editing the second in FCP and capturing the third with AVC, etc. Usually the first video is ready to give to the customer after 12-15 minutes and each additional one takes 6-7 minutes. It’s also necessary to back up the video and stills for a least 6 months.
The problem is that all skydiving videographers are now switching over the CX-100 which captures in AVCHD to flash media. This is really the only camera choice for skydiving because OIS and Hard Drive systems don’t work well in freefall. This camera brings up a few problems with my current editing setup. First, FCP can only Log and Transfer if the entire AVCHD folder structure is intact, so in order to back up the footage I can’t just copy the mts files I need, I have to copy the entire card. Some of the videographers wipe their card after each jump and some never delete a video. It’s also impossible to store the converted footage since when converted to ProRes or AIC it takes about 1GB per minute of video. Secondly, despite the fact that converting the files to AIC via USB is faster than the realtime capture of DV tape, when it comes time to render the project and send to DVDStudio I lose any time advantage I gained since it takes 4-5 minutes to render.
I think the way to go is to start using a Windows based system using Sony Vegas. I’ve been giving a budget of 1500 for the tower so I am looking into getting one built around the i7 920. I am a bit unfamiliar with Windows systems but from my understanding Sony Vegas can edit mts files natively (no conversion, and most importantly without having to keep the AVCHD file structure intact) as well as being able to have multiple, completely independent, copies of the program open at once. Since the most important thing in this industry is being able to edit multiple videos quickly and simultaneously, I would love to be able to finish my first video and let it start to render and then open a separate copy of Vegas and start to edit the second video. What kind of GPU should I be looking for? Is a single i7 920 good enough for HD? 6 or 12 gb ram? Is Vegas even the solution?
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2 Replies
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Will show you exactly what you’re wanting to do.
Simply put, there is no way whatsoever, that you can be speedy in the Apple environment like you need to be for tandem video output.
Pretty absolute, but it simply cannot be done.Load goes up with three tandems, if you want to deliver those three videos in less than 10 minutes, you need three Apple system. Ugh.
Or, one Quadcore running Win7 with one copy of Vegas.
At Elsinore, we’ve got a system that has four burners in it, for burning three SD DVDs and one Blu-ray at one shot. Unfortunately, we can’t edit the videos fast enough to keep up with the 48X burns, so really, only two burners are necessary.What’s your home DZ? Happy to help get you going. You’ll need:
2 HDD’s
At least one burner
Quad core proc
8GB RAM
Vegas Pro
Production Assistant
Workspace MacroProThen, you’ll be automated.
Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASSTCertified Sony Vegas Trainer
Aerial Camera/Instructor -
Hi Douglas Spotted Eagle,
nice to hear the system you’ve got running. I’m working at a tandem operation near Paris and we’ve got the GoPro coming in and that’s slower than the sony.We’ve got an i7-940 running vista64 4 hard drives and vegas 64. The rendering of the SD files from the CX-105 take about 3 to 4 min (for a 12min video) then the burning. Generally I get 2 videos done per load with one burner.
rendering AVCHD files I get 100% on the CPU’s and about 70% rendering an SD file.Questions
How does Production Assistant help you. I seen and advert but don’t know more and what about Workspace MacroPro. Does it slow things down burning DVD at the same time?Mike
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