Offline a Multicam Edit, is it possible?

[Jaap Verdenius]

6xProRes 1440×1080 is anyway too much for a FW800 Lacie, so in that sense going to offlineRT would help you.

[Michael Sacci]

It is your drive not your computer that cannot handle the 6 streams. FW800 will struggle with any codec out there. But has long as the TC is exactly the same it should be no problem. We don’t offline anymore but in the old days we would capture DV, edit, then recapture just the timeline as Uncompressed SD.

So if you transcode all the footage to the new codec, with the same names but to a Offline RT folder, do you edit, take footage offline when down, reconnect to the original footage.

[Mark Raudonis]

Ben,

We use this classic “off-line RT to on-line” all the time. Some of our shows use up to 12 cameras, and in HD, that’s a lot of bandwidth… especially with a team of 15 editors working. So, we HAVE to go to off-line RT to make it through the day.

The uprez process is dependent on what format you use (tape or tapeless). In our case, we’re using Sony’s XDcam disc based format, and the up rez is MUCH, MUCH faster than tape based.

So, don’t fear the off-line process. It works well. We’ve been using it for almost five years now, on hours and hours of network TV shows.

Good luck.

Mark

[Ben Brodbeck]

Mark,

Thanks for the encouragment here.

I’d like to double-check my workflow with you.

I plan to export my ProRes clips out of FCP using Offline RT HD.
Then I’ll create a Multiclip from my Offline RT HD materials.
I’ll edit the multiclip.
Then to reconnect, I’ll select the media in the timeline, choose reconnect media and point it back to the ProRes media.

Can I do the reconnect media part if I’ve made my offline edits from a multiclip?

Thanks for your help!

Ben

[Mark Raudonis]

Quick answer: You’re on the right track.

Long answer: Typically, people use Off-line RT to solve either storage or bandwidth issues. In our case, it’s both. So, we never keep the high rez media on the drives long enough to do anything but transcode it to Off-line RT. From your post, it sounds like you’re doing that step in FCP. It’s much easier and faster to use Compressor to do that step. Read up on how that works. Hint: If you have multiple computers connected to a network, compressor can take advantage of this “cluster” and using distributed rendering
chomp through mountains of media in minutes. That’s how we do it.

Back to your situation: If you have the space on your drives, then there’s no harm in keeping the high rez media available. I’d suggest doing an experiment with a couple of “test” clips to experiment with how media manager and reconnecting works.

Good luck.

Mark