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FCS News Application…opinions wanted…
Hello:
We are a mid market TV station in the interior of British Columbia. Our newsroom is going to be moving from DVCAM linear edit suites into the bold new non-linear tapeless environment over the next few months.Here’s the plan: They’re going to purchase 4 new JVC GY-HM700U’s which shoot on SD cards, & build 3 new FCP edit suites. From what I can see the workflow will look like this: come in from the field, dump the clips from the SD card to the Macs, edit stories, export them to a server for playback. Sounds good in theory, however, from what I can ascertain, the cameras shoot digitally in HD only. Keep in mind, we are an SD shop and we’ve got 20 years of SD file tapes on the shelves that they will be accessing almost daily.
Going tapeless overnight is not going to be easy and will be fraught with challenges. I’m not worried about archiving yet, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there, I’m more interested in the workflow issues right now.
I wonder how mixing and matching the two formats is going to affect the editing process. Should they edit sequences in the native HD format and have FC upscale any file video, or create DV sequences and downscale the field footage? How much rendering might be involved because of this? Are the file sizes of the raw clips going to be prohibitive in terms of the planned storage? And, are the Macs they’re purchasing going to be adequate enough for this workflow? There’s no big budget here, and I think they’re going on “the cheap”, which could cost them in the long run. However, I don’t get to make those decisions…
Here’s the specs on the suites: 24″ iMac, 2.66 GHz processor, 2 GIG RAM, 320gb storage, running FCS 3 and each suite will have an ADVC110 B.O.B for DVCAM tape capture. I forsee some ‘issues’, and so, I’m soliciting opinions, suggestions, warnings from experts such as yourselves that I can bring to the forefront to help the guys out.
Thanks in advance for your time…
Cheers,Evan Fitzer
Kamloops, BC -
6 Replies
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A quick question first: Is your SD material in widescreen or is it 4:3? That’ll make a big difference to how you proceed.
All the best,
Tom
Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop” -
All the SD material is 720×480 4:3. For sure.
Evan Fitzer
Kamloops, BC -
Hi Evan
I’ve done Final Cut Pro training for Global TV in Vancouver, CHEK in Victoria and A-Channel in Ottawa. I can help you guys transition to a tapeless workflow (I started as an ENG editor in 1979)
Feel free to call me on my cell if you’d like to discuss this some more 604 319 2065
Cheers
John Christie
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Thanks, John. I will certainly pass your number on to the ‘powers that be’. Much appreciated.
Evan Fitzer
Kamloops, BC -
Hi Evan,
SONY had just released the new EX-1r.
Works like the JVC, but they had added all the SD presets.
You can go tape-less but keep in SD if you want so.
rafael -
Evan
whether to Urez my HD footage or downconvert my HD footage is a question i struggle with on each project i do. Using tapeless has led me down the path of working in HD and uprezzing my SD media, (some of which is 4×3) by using Instant HD or some other software equivalent
I know i could transcode all my HD tapeless to SD, but that takes time. and unless the TV game has changed since i was hackin promos at a local UHF, time is one thing TV stations never have!
i think the best workflow for you would be to ingest the files from your JVC native and work in HD (yer systmes sound fast enough)
As for your legact footage, I would suggest equipping at least one of your FCP systems with a Kona 3, which does upconverting in real time.
hope this helps
“I like video because its so fast!”
Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.
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