Offline to Online Question

[Neal Broffman]

Capture your footage at offline RT (photo jpeg) taking care to correctly label reel numbers.
Edit your piece and then use media manager to recapture at full resolution.
This tutorial will help: https://www.lafcpug.org/FCP_4_trim_dang_it.html

[Nick Price]

Hi Pete,
A rather easier workflow would be:
-Capture using DV codec, with firewire.
-Edit, finsh titles and everything…
-Use media manager to discarde unwanted footage (not actually necessary)
-Then change the timeline settings of the new project to uncompressed (if you are going to digibeta or other full res SD)
-Render, hey presto you have an uncompressed version.

There are lots of posts on this topic, but the concencus seems to be that capturing dv using firewire versus capturing uncompressed makes no difference. But you need uncompressed for decent titles, so hence the rerender to uncompressed

best wishes
Nick

[Mark Raudonis]

Trying to use the classic “off-line to on-line” workflow with mini-DV tapes can be very challenging. The biggest problem is the timecode on your tapes. Unless you’ve been VERY careful with your camera starts and stops, it’s quite possible to have multiple patches of the SAME timecode. For example, 00;00:00 to 00: 01:30:00 and then on the next camera cut: 00:00:00 to 00:02;45 etc. This happens when you roll the tape over the “end” of the first clip and start over on “virgin” tape. The camera interprets this as the begining of the tape and resets the tiimecode generator back to zero.

So…. when you try to digitize this kind of tape, you will end up with multiple clips with the same code. Fine…as long as you get it in the system, you can work with it. However… if you hhave to go back and try to REDIGITIZE at full res, you’re in for one frustrating experience.

You can “restripe” the timecode by making a clone of the original with a new code… but that’s a pain.

I think the best advice is bring it in at DV resolution, and then discard what you don’t want. Any other approach is going to be very difficult.

mark

[Peter R harris]

Great thanks! The article is more geared to FCP 4, althoug I am using 5 i am happy that the media manager interface has not chnaged that greatly.

Thanks again.

[Peter R harris]

Hi Nick,

Thank you for such a rapid response. The way in which you have described the process seems so easy! The only question is how can it upgrade the dv footage to uncompressed? Would the captured content not have to be uncompressed in the first place?

KR,

[Peter R harris]

Nice one Mark,

you did lose me the first time I read through your reply but I understand what you are getting at after reading it again. I am sure you will be quite horrified to hear that I do not have a DVCAM deck and therefore will be capturing directly from the PD150 which I am sure is another potential minefield related to your reply.

I am going to start capturing over the weekend, unfortunately for you guys that may mean there will be a few more posts relating to this thread!!

Pete.

[Shane Ross]

[Peter R Harris] “The only question is how can it upgrade the dv footage to uncompressed? Would the captured content not have to be uncompressed in the first place?”

The footage is compressed 5:1 in the camera to tape. The compression has alread occurred. When you capture with FCP, no further compression occurs…it is a simple file transfer of 1’s and 0’s. If you need this footage to then be converted to 8-bit uncompressed, for example, all you need to do is drop it into an 8-bit timeline and render (possibly resize).

What is your final delivery going to be on? What format?

Shane

Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net

[Peter R harris]

Hi Shane,

Thank you for clearing that up. The final output will be to digi beta, I was thinking that it would be fine to export it back to DVCAM from the timeline (as I do not have a digi beta deck) then from there transfer it to DIGI Beta.

I have to say I am so impressed with the level of expertise and how helpful everyone has been. I have been working a lot with HDV & FCP5 so I will keep an eye for any queires regarding that and hope I can give back to the COW what I have learnt.

All the best!

Peter.