HD workflow question. Offline on AVID, online on FCP

[Jerry Hofmann]

Do yourself a favor… Capture and edit on the same platform. Offline on FCP, Online on FCP, capture the uncompressed HD on an FCP system that can do the job.

Or do it all in Avid… you’ll run into a couple of problems otherwise…. if you online with FCP with media captured from Avid, you’ll have problems playing it back in FCP, let alone the problems of playing back uncompressed HD in general… You’ll need some pretty fast drives for that… a 4 disk array at least. Don’t know if you captured the HD using the DNX codec as far as how fast the drives need to be. Loading the avid codec on your FCP system might work… but still wlll have to lay it back to tape, right? So this means buying Automatic Duck to go back to Avid for the layout.

What I’d do is capture it all to ProRes and live with the entire cut that way. Forget the recapture, forget the platform changes… Or capture it all using the DNX codec in Avid, and stay there. You have no way of capturing it from the HD directly to ProRes on an FCP 6 system? Man I’d sure look for that…

Jerry

Apple Certified Trainer

Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here

8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO, CD’s

[Walter Biscardi]

[Markus Etter] “- how will I be able to import the captured HD Media files from the AVID system into my FCP for reassembly?”

You won’t. Avid codecs are not supported on FCP.

If you really want to offline on the Avid and online on FCP, then you need to recapture the media on FCP. We do this all the time with Avid projects. The Avid editor exports an OMF or AAF (AAF is better), we use the Automatic Duck Pro Importer to import that into a new FCP Project. We recapture the media usually in DVCPro HD or Uncompressed HD and finish the edit on FCP. It works pretty much flawlessly and it’s a great way to work between the two platforms.

But as far as being able to capture in Avid and edit in FCP, that won’t work.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!

[Markus Etter]

Hey Jerry

thanks for your reply

My main problem is the availability (or rather unavailability) of an AVID online suite for a longer period of time.
My film involves quite a bit of CGI. Meaning: After i am done with the offline I will have to have the final cut in online quality available for at least 2-3 weeks so I can do all the post production on it (Loads of green screen with camera motion tracking, fitting in 3D sequences and other composition jobs). Unfortunately I cannot Do this on any AVID system because I simply don not have access.
On the other hand I don’t have access to a suite that can difitize my HDCAM tapes with the EDL from the oflline dit directly in FCP (prores). I am still searching as I know that this is the only way to do it properly. Too bad that the only place I have at hand to digitize HDCAM, is hooked up to AVID – causing me headakes!
On the other hand, I don’t have to play back the online assembly on my system in realtime. It is only there for post purposes and I can do preview renders to see what i am doing.
But after wat I hear today the digitize-on-avid-and-load-to FCP-solution might not work after all….

[Markus Etter]

Hey Jerry

thanks for your reply

My main problem is the availability (or rather unavailability) of an AVID online suite for a longer period of time.
My film involves quite a bit of CGI. Meaning: After i am done with the offline I will have to have the final cut in online quality available for at least 2-3 weeks so I can do all the post production on it (Loads of green screen with camera motion tracking, fitting in 3D sequences and other composition jobs). Unfortunately I cannot Do this on any AVID system because I simply don not have access.
On the other hand I don’t have access to a suite that can difitize my HDCAM tapes with the EDL from the oflline dit directly in FCP (prores). I am still searching as I know that this is the only way to do it properly. Too bad that the only place I have at hand to digitize HDCAM, is hooked up to AVID – causing me headakes!
On the other hand, I don’t have to play back the online assembly on my system in realtime. It is only there for post purposes and I can do preview renders to see what i am doing.
But after wat I hear today the digitize-on-avid-and-load-to FCP-solution might not work after all….

[Markus Etter]

Hey Walter
Yea just what I thought. I actually mentioned this in my response above.
The keyword is availability. I will need a HDCAM deck on a FCP and I don’t have access to this. Further I am bound to do the online and post on my own FCP Mac, because it will take around 2-3 weeks to tweak all the things I have to do with the online footage.

But if you guys tell me that I simply wont be able to open any AVID digitized HD footage in online quality on my FCP Mac (in realtime or not doesn’t matter), then I believe you. I guess I will have to find myself a place where I can digitize HDCAM in FCP.

[Peter Mcauley]

Remember what Tom said about drives and there ability to sustain playback. In HD (depending on what codec you choose) you need fast drives. Standard external firewire drives won’t cut it.

Peter McAuley

[Jerry Hofmann]

Could you send a drive out with the tape, and have someone capture it for you? Then put the clips on a drive? Makes a lot better sense to me…

Jerry

Apple Certified Trainer

Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here

8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO, CD’s

[John Pale]

You didn’t specify your location or budget, but renting an HDCAM JH-3 (player only) deck for the day is not as horrifically expensive as you might think. The full blown recorders are extremely expensive, but you only need that for mastering…and then maybe you can just bring your finished product as a Quicktime on a drive to a post house for layback to tape.

[Peter Richardson]

Hi Markus
I want to do somewhat the same thing as you. We have all of the Avid hardware, and HD tape machines. I have international groups that are editing on FCP. I want to capture using my Avids in HD DXN145, consolidate to a Mac Drive and ship the drive to the international groups. I have heard that FCP can install the DNX codecs, and that it is a free download from Avid Web site. See this Thread near the bottom https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/859345

We have FCP 5 on an IMac, and MacBookPro. I just have not had the time, and I am a PC guy, learning Macs. I don’t want to blow up my Tiger install. I need to find away to Snapshot the Mac drive. We don’t have any Mac Experts.

But it seems that this would be your best answer. You need to capture in DNX145 which uses the MXF wrapper. Then it seems like the workflow is to export the MXF files to QT on a Mac Formatted drive. Though I don’t know this for sure. It might be that you can leave the files in MXF and export a QT reference file. Then my understanding is with the DNX145 codec installed in FCP you should be able to use the Avid captured files. If you leave the files in the MXF wrapper I believe the FCP will extract the data from the MXF and put the QT wrapper on the data. One way or the other time consuming.

Good luck let me know how it works.

[Dylan Reeve]

Get access to an FCP suite for as long as is necessary to digitise your footage into FCP natively. Anything else is just going to be a huge pain.

Or better still find a way to get the time you need in an Avid suite. Avid sequences transfer seamlessly from one version to another, so the upres is very easy. While Automatic Duck does a good job of moving Avid sequences to FCP there are a bunch of things that won’t come through (depending on how much you’re doing in the offline in terms of effects and things like speed changes this may be a big or little issue).

While I’m sure there are ways to get Avid media into FCP, and some might work out okay, but chances are it’s going to come back to bite you big time at some incredibly inopportune time.

You can offline on Avid and online on FCP without too much difficulty, but sharing media (especially any great amount) is going to be impossible.

Also, the way FCP handles media means it’s going to be more or less impossible to relink you edited sequence to the media files you’ve got from Avid. FCP just doesn’t work that way.