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HDV / Pro Res Documentary – In need of some strong tech advice
Hey everyone,
I posted a week ago about this project which I am about to take on and now I have some more questions which need to be answered for the director by the end of day tomorrow. This is a 90 minute documentary for festival delivery and maybe broadcast in the very end – during the editorial process as more footage is ingested and edited additional reels will be created for funding purposes.
About 10 hours of footage has already been captured in Berlin (HDV 1080i 50) and now the drive along with the FCP project file are being sent here to NYC.
45% of the footage is shot in HDV PAL:
25fps
pixel format HD (1440×1080)
Compressor 1080i505% Anamorphic DV PAL
50% HD not yet shot but director waiting for funding to finish shooting (not sure yet what they will shoot with but i am guessing it will be PAL – P2 or XDCAM)
I am being asked to organize the Berlin footage and project file off a lacie drive and log and capture the rest of the HDV footage (another 10 hours worth of tapes) here in NYC all onto 1 Lacie 500 Gb Firewire drive.
I am trying to figure out what work flow makes the most sense for this project and I have actually just finished watching Lynda.com’s tutorial on HD work flow in which Pro Res ingesting of HDV as well transcoding of already ingested HDV footage is discussed in terms of delivery.
I want to know whether it should all be cut in HDV off the Lacie firewire drive until picture is locked and then just transcode the final sequence to Pro Res or if I should transcode the HDV footage which has already been ingested as such (10 hrs) and ingest the other 10 hours as pro res. Also something to consider is that another 50% of footage which has yet to even be shot will be in some format of higher HD (i.e. P2 or XDCAM) – and how this will best be incorporated.
I guess the most important consideration because time and money matter on this low budget doc is what i need help with. Can I even edit off that drive with pro res – does it make sense to edit in HDV and just transcode the locked final sequence to pro res for delivery and what about the HD footage that hes yet to be even shot – how will this effect my workflow???
I really need some pro help here guys…
so any help / advice would be awesome.
Best
Lisa
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6 Replies
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In HDV (and XDCam) sequences, you can render to ProRes in the sequence/render settings. If you have already captured HDV, then perhaps it’s best to stick with HDV and render to ProRes.
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i need some more exact advice / help – can you or anyone get more in depth with my questions – i can provide my email / cell or whatver i need to start capturing tomorrow am and i really need some expert advice
please help
lisa
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If you are working in FCPro 6.03(4) Continue working in hdv for 2 reasons 1) The drives you are working with may have trouble dealing with 422 Pro Rez and 2) At this stage you can save capture time. (10 hrs already captured) The advantages of ProRez show up in effects, Time remapping, Color correction, GFX, etc. as long as most of the stuff is mostly cuts it takes less hard drive power to stay in hdv. When final funding is arranged then you can move it all to Pro Rez.
While in hdv go to the User preferences – Render Control Tab – set Codec to Pro Rez, this will speed up renders and improve quality.
I hope this helps.
DrewChaos is the beginning of everything.
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Hey that’s very helpful thank you.
I am still a little confused however…
1) would i only up res the final locked edit/s and if so how do i go about doing this? I assume the whole point is that i dont waste time making ALL the footage that’s hdv into pro res but instead only do the sequence/s which need to be output for tape / dvd.
2) How do i include the DV and yet to be shot HD footage into the PAL HDV time line properly – and what considerations should I keep in mind.
3) what other workflow considerations should i keep in mind for this work flow.
thank you
Lisa
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If the director doesn’t have money yet to finish shooting, then you should tell them to shoot HDV. This is a movie without a plan, and most likely it will crash and burn.
Keep it as simple as possible, and tell the director to get their mind on the story and forget about adding any more formats into the mix.
I’ve been down this road, and it’s a stressful ride ending with a crash into a brick wall.
Keep It Simple. “The important thing is to get it done, not to screw around with multiple formats. If the story is important, it will survive. Fussing over formats is a sure sign of a director that doesn’t know what they’re trying to say.
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You got solid advice here, Lisa and sorry if you didn’t understand me earlier.
I wold stick with HDV as has been mentioned. Within an HDV sequence, you hit apple-zero to bring up your sequence settings and then hit the render control tab. Change the codec drop down menu to Apple ProRes 422 for HDV and XDCam settings. This will avoid a transcode to ProRes at the end and also avoid any long gop renders/conforms when editing. A single Fw400 drive will not handle 1080iProRes very well though. You are doing just fine and I would shoot everything with the same camera (or same type of camera). The dv PAL I would suggest getting professionally up converted with a dedicated hardware box such as a Teranex or alchemist. DV to 1080 is a huge jump in resolution and you will need the best tools you can afford to make it look decent.
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