.mxf flies to compressor

[Max Kovalsky]

MC plays a big part in our DVD production process as well. We do the compression on the MC workstation by feeding the QT reference. Most often the source media in DNxHD. All major encoders don’t have an issue with this. If you’re on a Mac and have the proper codec, if you share the drive that has the media and the QT reference, you should be able to play and compress the file over the network, although I’d recommend doing the encoding on the MC machine.

Max
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Author
New York
Area4.tv

[Glenn Grant]

We are not on the same network, they would put the files on an external drive. But it sounds like it should work.

They don’t want to hassle with the DVD side of things and it is extra income for me. So I want to keep things as easy for them as possible. I would also like to get this sorted out for future high def DVDs because going to tape will not be an option. It will be some time before I can afford an HD deck.

[Max Kovalsky]

Then the way to do it is to consolidate the media to your FW drive from within MC and THEN export the QT ref. I’ve had bad luck with DNxHD on the Mac though. Has Avid released a stable version of the codec for Mac?

Max
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Author
New York
Area4.tv

[Glenn Grant]

I don’t have much experience with avid, but you can get MC for the intel macs now. And you can download the codec from there site. So I hope it works.

So when you consolidate, does it also creates a new edl that references the consolidated media on the FW drive? Then from that you make the QT ref file? I just need to make this clear and easy for the guys on the other end.

Thanks,
Glenn

[Max Kovalsky]

You don’t need any edls. This is how he should do it:

1. Consolidate the sequence to FW and relink it to new files
2. Export a QT-ref that references the consolidated media.

Max
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Author
New York
Area4.tv

[Glenn Grant]

Thanks Max, you have been very helpful. I just want to be sure I completely understand this before I explain it to them. They seem convinced it can’t work, and I must be crazy because I use FCP.

So the point is to make sure the QT file references the files on the external hard drive and not the original files on their network?

[Max Kovalsky]

Exactly. But you are crazy for using FCP 🙂

Max
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Author
New York
Area4.tv

[Glenn Grant]

Thanks again.

I’ve been using FC since v 1.0 back when it was about $100K cheaper than avid. All this looking around at avid stuff to figure this out sure has taught me a few things. MC does look like a very nice system with lots of cool features. But FCP does what I need it for.