P2 AVCIntra import into Final Cut Pro

[Eric Peterson]

You can transcode the files to any codec you want through Compressor. I don’t know much about AVC intra, but shooting 720/24 with the HVX200 file sizes were only 1.5 time bigger than standard DV files. I don’t think that is a bad trade off for working in HD.

[Simon Morgan]

yeah, usually I work in 720pN with P2 cards, but I have to shoot either 1080p DVCPROHD or in AVCIntra100. Looking for a way to save space in post… if I have 100 hours of 1080p shot at AVCIntra100 and bring it in to FCP at Pro res 422 I will need 8 TB to store that footage. If I shoot it at 1080 DVCPRO HD I will need just over 6TB to store it. I will more than likely have 200 hours or more of footage for a full season of a show (and may need access to all footage all of the time) so I need some way to be able to offline at a lower codec. I think compressor will just take way too long.

[Glaremedia]

With file based footage the offline online workflow is tricky as you will have todo a conversion from high quality to low quality which takes time.

200hrs shooting on P2 would also be a challenge i would have thought.
That footage will need to be on a big raid and probably backed up to firewire drives anyway

My feeling is your shooting with the wrong camera !

You would be better off shooting either DVC PRO 100 tape
HDCAM tape
or maybe XDCAM HD

Good luck, you will need it.

[Mj Schirmer]

Is there a clearly documented post flow for AVC-100 through FCP 2 (6.0.1)?

I am ACing a feature starting next week on the HPX -3000 P2. It seems like there might soon be an FCP update for AVC HD native support… but till then, what do we do?
I cannot see the AVC files in our tests on Log and Capture- is there another way to open
and transcode?

Right now we’re leaning toward shooting in DVCPRO HD codec, 59.94i @ 24PA,
1280×1080. This is a bummer since we have a camera that can capture true 1080p
on AVC and work with the material.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
– MJ

[John Heagy]

Don’t hold your breath for native support for AVCintra. The encoding proccess is way too computensive. That’s why ProRes is not H.264 based. Most hardware H.264 encoders have a 1 to 2 sec latency so software encoding is years away. Pile on the need to maintain realtime effects and it pushes it back even further.