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Offline/Online Process
We’re capturing a whole lot of Varicam footage for a client.
They’d like to do their own cut on their laptop, but would like to do so at DV res for performance and disk space reasons. They then want to provide project and media to their motion gfx company who will take the edit but with the original ProRes HD footage into their graphics process…
In Avid this would be really simple for me, I’d just Transcode a copy of all the clips for the client, then the graphics company would relink his sequence to the full res media. No problems at all.
With FCP, I’m not so sure – so far, it seems like my best option is to use the Media Manager to ‘duplicate and recompress’ the media to a new project… But are the graphics company going to have problems reconforming the sequence to the ProRes media later?
One thing that worries me is that to capture the offspeed footage I have to disable device control, so I get no timecode, and it seems that FCP isn’t setting a Reel number on the clips either (regardless of what I have set in the Log/Capture window).
So I get clips that lack unique timecode and have no reel number – what I would consider to be the two most important pieces of metadata for being able to relink to new media later.
I’m currently experimenting, but I’d really like more information.
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2 Replies
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[Dylan Reeve] “One thing that worries me is that to capture the offspeed footage I have to disable device control, so I get no timecode, and it seems that FCP isn’t setting a Reel number on the clips either (regardless of what I have set in the Log/Capture window).”
No you don’t. With DVCPro HD you would use the Frame Rate Converter. But you can also capture off-speed material from the Varicam by adjusting your In / Out points for the Capture. You will have to tweak what you’re doing, but generally you double the clip length to ensure you get all the material.
So if you want to capture from 01:00:00:00 to 01:01:00:00 on the raw tape and it’s an offspeed shot, change your Out Point for the clip to 01:02:00:00. When you actually capture the shot, FCP will have only captured to 01:01:00:00 approximately.
The big problem you run in to is when you get near the end of the raw tape, you’ll eventually not be able to capture entire clips because you’ll run out of tape before the capture is finished. It’s a complex thing, but it can be done.
This is one of the big reasons we don’t edit in ProRes yet for DVCPro HD material. We stay with DVCPro HD so we just capture everything to 59.94 and then use the Frame Rate Converter to change the footage after it’s captured.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR
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Unfortunately the Framerate Converter only works with NTSC framerates – for those of us in PAL-land it’s basically useless (unless we want to take all the clips into CinemaTools and reset the framerate of the converted clip).
In fact, in general, Varicam is a gigantic pain in the ass for people in PAL regions.
In this case I’ll have entire tapes shot at 60fps for 25fps output (42% speed or something).
To capture at present I need to figure out how long the clip I want is (so say 20 minutes of source footage, or 48 minutes of 25fps) and then capture for the target length regardless of what is actually playing off the deck. I hit ‘Go’ then wait 48 minutes and hit stop (despite the fact that the tape ran out 20 minutes ago). I get a 48 minute clip.
So far, in my opinion, the only NLE I’ve used that does Varicam right is (believe it or not) GVG’s Canopus Edius 4.5 — I can capture Varicam footage into PAL framerates via Firewire, in the time it takes be to watch it – I even get appropriately sync’ed audio (slowed to the same speed). Nothing else does that. Nothing.
Sadly, Edius is not the most usable app for serious long-form editing, and converting from it to other NLEs can be painful.
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