expert advice prior to purchase

[David Jones]

Sounds like you have everything needed to complete this project already.
If it were me I’d just use what you have,
and pocket the income rather than blowing it all on new gear.

It’s amazing and sometimes disappointing how now that I am a business owner
I must justify equipment purchases.

[Steve Martin]

Hi Chemix,

I don’t know that I’d call myself an expert – but I’ll I’ll give it a shot…

1. Are there any advantages to using a capture device like IO or KONA for a project if 95% of footage is DVCAM?

I’ve seen folks argue that point on this forum for some time. Any advantages in video quality are neglible at best in my opinion. HOWEVER, if you plan on creating overlay graphics to superimpose over the video, there is an advantage to capturing your DVCam footage as UC 8bit or 10 bit. By doing so, your FCP timeline would also be 8/10 bit UC which means that your graphics wouldn’t suffer from 4:1:1 DV compression – which depending on oyur graphics might make a significant difference in the final product. If you are happy with the way the graphics lok with DV compression, I wouldn’t spend the $$.

2. On an IO system, will DVCAM footage be captured through Firewire or analog YUV inputs on the IO?

Kind of both… You see, with the Io, regardless of the codec you capture with or which connectors you use on the back of the box, it’s conected to your mac through a single firewire connection. When i firs heard this, I was confusing firewire with the DV25 codec. The firewire port is capable of transfering 400MBit of data. That’s pelnty of bandwidth for 10 bit uncompressed video (approx 270 mbits), 2 channels of audio as well as deck control and time code info.

3. Will DVCAM footage look any different if edited onto an UC 10 bit timeline rather than the DV timeline?

See #1 above

4. What about disk storage? will Xserve RAID be overkill?

Good drives are never overkill in my opinion. Xserve is a pricy option and there may other options that are softer on the budget that will also work well. If you go uncompressed, you’ll need storage that’s fast enough to keep up. I spent a fair amount of money on my HUGE Raid system 2 years ago and am pretty happy with the performance. One advantage of a raid system is data protection. If you are embarking on a large project with lots of footage a good raid may be a grat idea – even if you choose to edit in DV25.

Hope this helps…

Steve

Production is fun – but lets not forget: Nobody ever died on the video table!

[Lee Berger]

1. Are there any advantages to using a capture device like IO or KONA for a project if 95% of footage is DVCAM?
No, not if you are editing in DV/DVCam codec. In fact I have read some posts which claimed there is a softening of the video on the YUV outputs of DVCam decks. I haven’t tried a side by side comparison.
2. On an IO system, will DVCAM footage be captured through Firewire or analog YUV inputs on the IO?
You can do either. On DVCam only projects I capture directly to the Mac via firewire and then use the IO to monitor on an NTSC Monitor (it converts from DV to 10-bit component analog on the fly). On Betacam projects I use it to capture at either 10bit, 8-bit uncompressed or DVCPro50 depending on the final output. Unfortunatley you cannot have the IO and your capture deck connected to FireWire at the same time (even if you have a PCI card). You have to swap cables or get a FireWire A/B switch. Read the AJA Io FAQ at https://www.aja.com/support_Io.html#faq
3. Will DVCAM footage look any different if edited onto an UC 10 bit timeline rather than the DV timeline?
No, however your graphics and renderings will look better at 8 or 10 bits, then using the DV codec. If you’re going to do a lot of rendered compositing, then your composites should look better if you capture to 8 or 10 bit via YUV.
4. What about disk storage? will Xserve RAID be overkill?
I bought the Xserve RAID and Io figuring that as long as I’m shellig out for and editing system, I might as well be able to handle any type of SD. The cost per GB is very economical with the XServe and the drives are very high quality.

I hope this is helpful.

[Miha_pece]

[Lee Berger] “3. Will DVCAM footage look any different if edited onto an UC 10 bit timeline rather than the DV timeline?
No, however your graphics and renderings will look better at 8 or 10 bits, then using the DV codec. If you’re going to do a lot of rendered compositing, then your composites should look better if you capture to 8 or 10 bit via YUV. “

This is the main point with your project. If you think that uncompressed is the way to go, than YUV is better method than software decompression. You can also apply one additional enhancement, which will also help footage not only graphics. You can try g-nicer filter, look here: https://www.nattress.com/filmEffectsGNicerTests.htm

Miha

[Chemix Ferreiro]

Well, thanks a lot for all the feedback

Chemix

BUNKER studio

[Bob Woodhead]

Excellent points made above re: 8/10 bit, graphics, etc. I just wanted to add the incredible warm fuzzy feeling you get when using a RAID that supports data parity (aka, RAID 3/5/6). A major reason I went with a Huge Systems RAID; any single drive in the array can fail, AND NO DATA IS LOST. (reread that a few times) If you’ve ever lost a drive, remember that horrible sinking feeling you had. Now multiply it because it’s your business on those drives. Sure, you can redigz footage, but what about all the project files, scripts, graphics, etc etc? For years before moving to FCP I worked on Quantel NLE’s – veddy veddy expensive boxes that have used RAID3 for like 15 years. I’ve lost a handful of drives during my time on Q, but NOT ONCE lost data. Sold me on the concept! Lol – if I had to make the choice, I’d store footage on non-parity drives, and everything ELSE on the RAID3 box.

Bob Woodhead / Atlanta Gun fer Hire / http://www.Woodhead.Net
Quantel-Avid-FCP-3D-Crayola
G5 DP 2G, 10.3.4, 3.5GB RAM, FCP 4.5, Aja IO, Huge 320R [raid3]

[Steve Martin]

Amen!

Production is fun – but lets not forget: Nobody ever died on the video table!

[Jeremy Garchow]

Well, it still leaves the question of how you will master it to Beta SP? I would at least go with the io la so you can make your Beta master straight off the timeline in FCP without passing through the DSR45.

In my experience the footage doesn’t look any better when digitized over firewire /8 bit/10bit. But GRAPHICS look much better, so it depends on your project.

You can save yourself some money on the disk space. We use and have been very happy with our lacie drives. My personal machine runs a SATA RAID, and I have had great experience with it, even allowing me to edit 8-bit Uncompressed HD off of a 4 drive array. Sure, they don’t offer data parity, but we haven’t had any problems. Just make sure to back up your project files, and AE renders regularly. We keep a spare internal drive in our G5 for this purpose alone (the spare SATA drive will also actually play 8&10 bit SD media off of it no problem). If I were you I’d look into a 2-4 disk SATA Raid and a SATA Raid controller that will offer some parity and save you thousands. Then, I would take the ‘extra’ money you didn’t spend on the Xserve and upgrade your CPU to a G5 with some extra ram as you will notice more of a difference in editing performance, than you would buying an Xserve to edit dv25. Do you have a reseller in the canaries :). They might be able to help you as well. Feel free to ask anymore questions.

jg

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AJA Kona2>HD10C2>D10A

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