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Massive Amounts of XD Cam files
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Oh… But, there is a way to do all that you are asking. Its very different from P2.
Working with the low-res proxies are a chore BUT can be done through the Sony Transfer Software, under the menu – Clip – Export Proxy Movie to File. You’ll have to select which you want and place them into a directory of your choice in the program prefs.
As for the file naming, name your discs with the Sony Transfer Software and choose an export directory and all of those files will go into that folder under the disc name. And if you don’t like the C0001 naming convention, just log your clips with the same software under the tab – Logging and give your clips a name. It will then be able to save it to the disc forever. Anytime you use this disc, all of the clip names and disc names will follow your forever. Not putting down P2, but Panasonic can’t do this…
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com -
[Wayne Carey] “As for the file naming, name your discs with the Sony Transfer Software and choose an export directory and all of those files will go into that folder under the disc name. And if you don’t like the C0001 naming convention, just log your clips with the same software under the tab “
That’s nice when you have time. In our case we had 14 discs to transfer and only had access to a camera for 10 hours. Barely enough time to actually transfer all the material so we did not re-name anything. We’re doing it now in FCP.
That’s one place where I really like the P2 workflow and it’s something we’ll be working on with videographers when we start our new series.
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!
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Very understandable, Walter. It does take time, but I’m sure that you could rent a Sony PDW-U1 portable deck. Its has a USB connection and is real cheap – about $3200, so I’m sure that rent has to be reasonable for this deck.
Just something to think about for the future…
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com -
[Wayne Carey] “Very understandable, Walter. It does take time, but I’m sure that you could rent a Sony PDW-U1 portable deck. Its has a USB connection and is real cheap – about $3200, so I’m sure that rent has to be reasonable for this deck. “
Actually no, we tried for three days to find a deck to rent in Atlanta, they’re not here. Bexel, the largest rental house I know of, has two of them in inventory but they’re not in town. The shooter tried to three days to locate a deck for us and found one in Florida, but it was too expensive. So last ditch, we rented his camera but could only have it for a very short time as he needed it.
I’m not purchasing any XDCAM equipment as this was the first request we’ve had for this format and the Producer has already said she’s not using it again because of all the problems we had trying to find something to play the discs back on. That’s why I say, we’re moving forward with the EX-1 cameras as it’s easier to find something to transfer the sticks than the discs.
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!
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Bummer… Having a hard time finding equipment to rent only means this stuff is so viable that keep XDCAM in stock is a challenge.
I don’t blame you for not purchasing any XDCAM equipment but if anything comes up just ask for a PDW-U1 deck and you will find it much easier to deal with.
Being a P2 shop, I could understand fully your reasoning in this. You had a bad time using XDCAM and we had a bad experience with P2 in ours… so its all in our regular workflows that makes the difference.
Just to give you a heads on the PDW-U1 deck… Sometime in the very near future, Sony is supposed to be sending out a firmware update to make that deck be a data compatible deck – meaning that you could write P2 files on the 50 gig Sony discs. Yes, it is in the near future and not now, but it is something worth considering for data storage.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com -
[Wayne Carey] “Anytime you use this disc, all of the clip names and disc names will follow your forever. Not putting down P2, but Panasonic can’t do this… “
Au Contraire. It’s FCP that can’t do this. P2 has some very robust metadata structure, FCP is just not smart enough to see it. Although Quicktime, Motion, and Soundtrack Pro are. Go figure.
Jeremy
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You’re right, Jeremy… FCP can’t do this BUT the Sony Transfer Software program can. Anyone who is using FCP with XDCAM needs this software to fully utilize it properly.
I’ll give you that… why is it that FCP can’t handle it and Quicktime and the other supporting programs can. Once again, we are held captive by a large company deciding on how we are to use their program, instead of using our input to better ourselves and them.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com -
[Wayne Carey] “I’ll give you that… why is it that FCP can’t handle it and Quicktime and the other supporting programs can.”
Edited for clarity and posterity:
The only thought I have about that is that the other programs in the Suite were written later and Quicktime has been updated A LOT compared to FCP. I don’t know exactly why, but it does hinder the workflow a bunch.
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Tom,
Don’t despair! There are still possibilities and work flow that may be right for you.
Example. We’re shooting the current season of MTV’s “The Real World” using Sony’s XD-CAM.
A typical season of this show will generate approximately 6,500 HOURS of media.Because of this massive amount of media, we employ the classic “Off-line to on-line” workflow. Here’s how it goes: Disc is brought in house. BOTH hi and low res media is copied onto our server using the Sony PDW-D1. As Wayne has mentioned, this is basically just a blu Ray player and it’s economically priced. We use five at once.
The low res proxies are split off into a separate folder and immediately made available to our loggers. They access the X-SAN via AFP using “PilotWare” for logging. The high res media is then recompressed using “Compressor” to “Off-line RT”. Using a the Q-master cluster approach, this step is done much faster than real time. We now have three files on our server: Full res media, Sony proxy, and Apple “Off-line RT”. The loggers can start immediately, the story department will request “selects” and we will then “recompress” selected media.
Because we can’t keep all of the full res media on line forever, we purge it after approx two weeks. When picture is locked, we have to media manage the sequence and redigitize the ful res media.
This may seem like a lot of steps, but trust me, this is much easier than our old taped based workflow.
Anyone who says that XD-Cam doesn’t work for you, hasn’t really tried hard enough. We’ve been using the format for years now (Back when it was taped based IMX), and I can tell you that it works.
I can also say that I wished FCP would play nicer with the Sony proxies, but fundamentally, there’s the problem of “off-line quality” audio. We take the steps that we do specifically to preserve the original audio quality.
As for DRW’s comment about why anyone would still use “off-line”, all I can say is 6,500 hours x 5 shows and you’ll be thinking about low rez too!
mark
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[Mark Raudonis] “Anyone who says that XD-Cam doesn’t work for you, hasn’t really tried hard enough. We’ve been using the format for years now (Back when it was taped based IMX), and I can tell you that it works. “
Here, Here!!! This was the point that I was trying to convey. With FCP, there is more than one way to do ANYTHING. Yes, I said ANYTHING.
We, too, have been using XDCAM since its earliest days when it was called BetaSX. And I can tell you that it is the best format that we have used. Keep in mind that every workflow is mostly a personal preference and company preference, its not for everyone.
We use XDCAM HD (35 mbit) and HDV (25 mbit) for our programs and for compatibility reasons and speed of editing, all of the footage is captured the old way using Log and Capture. Now, when a program comes along that is all XDCAM HD, we edit entirely in XDCAM HD. Our final product is then written back to XDCAM HD for program masters. But like I said, this is OUR workflow.
Anything can be done if you just experiment and give it some thought.
_______________________________
Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com
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