P2 Workflow for TV series

[Dylan Reeve]

[Adam Smith] “Not to derail the discussion, but is it possible to import the MXF as normal and at a later date rebuild the project from tape clones?”

Yes, I believe it is, in both Avid and FCP. But there are going to be practical difficulties. It will require that the clips, as well as have a reel number that relates to the tape they were archived to (probably not going to be available until after the original NLE ingest) and it will be important that those archive tapes include accurate timecode cloned from the original sources, and that it not be duplicated on a single tape.

In practice I think this would be a huge pain. Footage would have to be brought into the NLE and then laid out to tape, except it’s going to be really difficult to get the archive tape to match the source timecode (while technically possible in Avid, and probably FCP too, it’s seldom as easy as it seems).

In reality, the easier way, I think, is to layout source footage in ‘reel lengths’ in an NLE and then layback to new source master tapes. Then redigitise those tapes to use an edit source tapes. A better approach again would be using a P2-player to make those dubs.

I know this is a problem a number of program makers face with solid-state acquisition on commissioned show for a few large international cable networks.

[Steve Gruskin]

Thanks Adam,

We fall into the “problem a number of program makers face with solid-state acquisition on commissioned show for a few large international cable networks.” category.

I think the best plan is to make dubs to tape using a P2 card reader. In our case it will probably have to be done at the end using the MXF data that we copy on location. With 38 shoot days, 2 cams/shoot, this will be a daunting task.

We’re going to try to convince our network to take a LTO tape with the entire project for each show as their archive copy.