LArge HDV Project Questions

[Walter Biscardi]

I never recommend capturing entire reels. At the very least, break them up into categories / sections during a log. You might only have 5 clips in the entire reel, but at least you can have “Baja Mile Mark 100,” “Jim Truck 12 Chase,” etc… so you have a rough log to start with.

Capturing entire reels means you can accidentally delete a subclip and take the entire reel with it. Or if a reel becomes corrupted, you have to recapture the entire reel again. At least break it up to 15 minute chunks to make it a bit more manageable. I always find it faster to log as much as possible first and then digitize.

I used Shane Ross’ method of creating a Capture Project and then breaking up our current documentary into multiple section projects to make it more manageable. His Getting Organized in FCP DVD is well worth a watch before you get started, that’s what I did, especially his section on managing large projects. He has about 4 different methods in there if I recall and one of them will work for you or at least get you on the path to a system that works best for you.

3TB isn’t enough storage I don’t think for a project this size coming in at ProRes. It might be for the raw material, but then you have renders, graphics, audio, etc…. You want to keep from going over 75% full on your array if at all possible. I have 8TB and another 8TB available for our documentary with 75 hours of footage all coming in at 720/60 ProRes.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
Credits include multiple Emmy, Telly, Aurora and Peabody Awards.
Biscardi Creative Media

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[David Roth weiss]

Michael,

The technique of capturing HDV to ProRes on the fly via firewire might be just what you need. It automatically captures the entire tape, but creates separate clips from camera start to camera stop. I’ve been using this method for on most of my work for the past year or two, and so have many others. It requires adding reel info after the fact, and recapturing requires and EDL, but if you backup your media files or have a RAID 5 with protection, it’s a no-brainer.

Here’s the tutorial on how it works:
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/poisson_chris/hdv-prores.php

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Adam Taylor]

Couple of years back i was given a demo of CatDV, which is used to catalogue video material. https://www.squarebox.co.uk/catdv.html

The demo included being shown how an entire tape of material, digitized in one was, was then fed through the software and intelligently (and quickly) subclipped into individual shots.

It has tons of other useful features, so might be worth having a look.

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Michael Harrington]

Thanks for the tips.

I thought I’d digitize via FW in Pro Res (not HQ), I understand the benefit of Raid 5 but not in the budget for now. I’ll add my 1.25GB ESATA via HDMI connection and FW800 drives as need.

Am I crazy?

Another problem I’ve encountered is importing the Sony MC-1 AVCHD, it does not play smoothly and appears to jump back to a previous frame every 15 frames. I can literally edit out the 1 frame each 15 frames and it plays smoothly.

I converted several AVCHD files while in the field on my Mac Intel Core Duo Laptop and those play just fine while the AVCHD files I convert on my Desk Top Intel via FCP Log and Transfer display the problem.

Michael Harrington