-
New to XDCAM question…
Hello XDCAM world!
Being a FCP/AVID guy I scratch my head a bit at the half-way work flow between the XDCAM and say Final Cut Pro – respective to inability to use the proxies for offline and then finish with a final conform by simply feeding the original discs on the back end.
Question 1
If I understand correctly, Sony Vegas is the only editor out there that does the above workflow? Can someone correct me if I am wrong?Question 2
Also, has anyone heard of any rumors of any third party solutions to bridge the gap? Or better yet any rumors of better integration in a future release of Apple/FCP?Question 3
Has anyone run into any snags or had any long term regrets about backing up and/or making a second master source disc to a hard drive? I am in the process of copying a handful of XDCAM HD discs for co-location editing and wonder if in some way I am inviting problems down the road by simply copying the XDCAM discs from the original disc via PDW-U1 to a new hard drive?
**** It just seems toooooooo easy ***** 🙂Thanks much in advance for any insight
j -
11 Replies
-
The original format of XDCAM is so small in terms of data- why is not having the proxies a big deal? It’s like identical to DV in size which is about the least intensive data rate you can do and still online. Why go offline then- just cut to the chase and get your project done on time. I don’t speak for Apple but for this reason I’d suspect the camera proxies will never be supported outside of Sony’s Vegas.
Noah
My FCP Blog. Unlock the secrets of the DVX100, HVX200 and Apple Color and Win a Free Letus Extreme.
Now featuring the Sony EX1 Guidebook.
https://www.callboxlive.com -
[Noah Kadner] “Why go offline then- just cut to the chase and get your project done on time. “
Well, because some projects just have SOOOO much media that it’s too expensive to maintain that much on-line storage. One of our shows shot over 4,000 hours of media last season for a 13 hour episode run. According to my math that’s around 60 terrabytes of storage. High, but certainly doable. Unfortunately, we may have 2-5 of these size shows going simultaneously, so the size of the storage pool quickly reaches the stratosphere.
Too often the response from folks on these lists to problems inherent in the “off-line” workflow is “why do you want to do that?” or “Storage is cheap. Just stay at full rez”.
While I’m happy abandon the “off-line” paradigm when possible, on some projects it just isn’t practical to do so. I too question why Sony and Apple can’t figure out how to get the proxies to play nice with FCP. It’s a shame.
Mark
-
Doesn’t Sony XDCAM Transfer Tool support the import of proxies into FCP?
-
4000 hours, wow. I don’t think you have a storage problem. I think the problem is just viewing the whole bunch. And do you really have 4500 16 GB sxs sticks ? wow again
Or else what kind of backup plan do you have ?René Hazekamp
(as for now 2 sxs 8 GB stick owner)portfolio https://www.renehazekamp.com
-
My math must be different because if you’re staying with the native footage 4000 hours is more like 8TB not 60. So you’re looking at 40TB if you’re working on 5 shows all with 4000 hours raw. Through in the extra 20TB for renders and graphics and you’ll reach 60.
But if you’re transcoding to different codec I can see where you’d easily eat up the drive space.
-
[Craig Seeman] “Doesn’t Sony XDCAM Transfer Tool support the import of proxies into FCP?”
No. The transfer tool imports proxies only to Sony’s XDCAM Transfer tool. Once the proxy is loaded into XDCAM Transfer you can then make subclips, name clips, add metadata etc, then when you import XDCAM Transfer loads the actual full resolution XDCAM(HD) footage as shot.
—-
I agree with Mark there are definitely reasons to edit with proxies, namely working with large libraries of footage. It seems that with XML being the common denominator here, that an elegant offline-online workflow could be achieved with minimal effort… but then again I have no idea – I don’t write code.
j
-
XDCAM HD (35Mb/s VBR) = approx. 15.5 GB/hour X 4000=62.0TB
-
[rene hazekamp] “4000 hours, wow. I don’t think you have a storage problem. I think the problem is just viewing the whole bunch. And do you really have 4500 16 GB sxs sticks ? wow again
Or else what kind of backup plan do you have ?Ren� Hazekamp
(as for now 2 sxs 8 GB stick owner)
“R-
I and I think Mark are referring to the XDCAM HD disc based system, not EX1/3 sxs cards. The XDCAM discs themselves become the archive… pretty brilliant hu? BTW – nice website!j
-
Yep you are right. I did my math with 400 not 4000. Guess it’s time to go back to elementary school.
-
Hmm, yeah maybe Craig was talking about of 4000 hours of disk material.
But then still.
20 XDcam disks cost round U$ 600 dollar, you can easily buy four 500 GB harddisks for that price, store them in 3 different places and keep a managable project or media managed (or whatever you call it) harddrive for yourself and reuse the XD disks. Looks safer and much more convenient to me, but I’am no proxy fan.René Hazekamp
portfolio https://www.renehazekamp.com
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up