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Going into an AVID suite – HELP!!
I have also posted in the Avid forum, but have no replies as yet.
OK, heres my situation.
I have been collecting footage for the past year in HDV 1080 50i.
I am most of the way through logging, trimming and labelling 60 hours of footage in Final Cut Pro.
My footage is to form a documentary narrative that will weave in with the rest of the project, which has been shot in HDCAM at 23.98.
The producer has suggested recapturing my tapes, so they will play nice with HDCAM in the AVID.
I’m worried that now, I will have wasted all my time logging, and I am going into a suite where I cannot be hands on with the edit, as I don’t know the gear.
I have suggested that when I have completed my logging, I could somehow transcode the quicktimes to HDCAM 23.98 (I think I can convince FCP to ‘recompress’ on export). Hopefully this would then give me an identically labelled set of clips. I could then ‘offline’ at home on Final Cut, blocking out sequences, which can be brought into Avid with Automatic Duck, where we can use the HDCAM versions of the clips, and finish the project with an avid editor and system.
As may be obvious from this post, this is a new situation for me. I am comfortable being left to my own devices and editing in FCP, but the whole AVID thing, and frame rates / formats etc is new to me. Is there anyone here with experience in this kind of thing that can help me feel a little less lost?Many thanks in advance.
Miller. -
3 Replies
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My advice is “Don’t switch horses in the middle of a stream!” FCP is quite capable of “finishing” a sequence in any resolution: DV to HD. Your suggested workflow is a recipe for confusion, unnecesary complexity, and inefficiency. Other than than that, it’s fine!!
You can bet that when problems crop up, your “Avid” editor will blame FCP for “not being up to the task”. It’s not the system… it’s the workflow.
Rather than spend all the energy and effort converting clips, media, and metadata, why not find a qualified FCP online room? You’ll be much happier in the long run.
Just my .02 cents.
Mark
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Sounds like it’s because he’s the odd man out. The rest of the project is being edited on Avid in HDCAM 23.98.
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Its the format issue that is bringing up the problem. (Having said that, my contributions will be self contained chunks that lead into completely different style sequences, – so waiting until I’m done to ‘upconvert’ shouldn’t neccesarily be too big a deal).
I’m completely torn.
One part of me thinks I should dig my heels in and insist that I finish my section my way. – Thereby keeping it in my control, and on a system that I can work at any time for as long as I want until I’m happy.
The other thinks ‘what the hell – go into the Avid for a few weeks, let someone else man the controls while I concentrate on pulling the footage together.It’s the technical aspect of getting from where I am now, with 800G of footage all tidy and ready to edit, and feeling like I’m going to end up in the Avid watching someone else take control – and essentially ‘take it off me’, cos all of my organisation is gone and the sequences I’ve worked on cant be imported.
The cost of transferring the tapes, hiring the suite, paying the editor etc, just seems to be dead money to me too, when I can do this myself the way I currently am.
I’d like to get into a suite for colour correction and stuff like that, but only when I’m happy with my own edit.Anyone been through this?
M.
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