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PC to MAC workflow
In the studio I work at, we have both a PC editing suite (with Adobe CS3) and a Mac (using Final Cut Studio 2) and have began shooting high school baseball games and it is a very difficult project but we are learning how to do it. Anyway, in our setup we use 4 different camera angles and edit them in post (including multicam editing/switching, adding graphics, adding play by play commentators etc.).
The problem with this method is that the games are generally 2 and a half hours long and we shoot to mini dv tapes (60min) which gives us about 20 tapes in the end (4 per camera and the commentators are recorded to 4 tapes) So in the end we have about 16 hours worth of footage to capture in real time. To combat this, we have a portable firewire hard drive that one camera records to (it also records to tape in case the drive fails us) and that save us at least 2 and a half hours of capturing time. Another way we cut down on capturing time is by capturing to both editing stations at the same time. The editing is done on the Mac and I have the MAC able to link to the pc’s hard drives where the footage is captured. So for each multicam sequence there are 2 camera angles locally on the MAC’s hard drive and the other 2 are on the pc’s drive. I can directly import those 2 videos into FCP and create a multiclip but the problem is that FCP struggles to play all the angles at the same time without dropping frames and I am guessing it is because its trying to stream about 16 gigs worth of video via the internet based network. However, if I were to capture those videos to the pc’s drive then, drag and drop the files onto the mac, it would take about 40 mins to an hour per clip to transfer which in turn almost defeats the purpose of capturing to 2 separate computers at the same time.
Another problem I think FCP is having with this method is that Adobe captures into an AVI format which FCP supports but it warns you that it is not optimal. So essentially the four videos within the multiclip consist of 2 quicktime based MOV captured videos and 2 AVI based videos.
My first question would be, is the fact that I am importing footage from a network drive or the fact that the multiclip consists of 2 different types of videos that is bogging FCP down? Is it a combination of the 2?
Second, is there a way to capture footage in Adobe as the same format that FCP uses? If so would that help?
Third, We also have a storage server in the studio that both the PC and MAC can access and it has about 3 TB worth of space. It is nothing more than a big storage unit and does not run any software (other than the OS). Would capturing to and importing from this drive rather than from the PC’s storage drive help any?
Any help would be greatly appreciated and sorry for such a long post but this is a big and complicated project and if we are to do more of these I would like to set up our work flow to be as optimal as possible with the equipment available to us.
Also I should mention the MAC is a MAC PRO G5 running OS X 10.4.11. It has 2 3Ghz dual core Intel Xenon processors with 4gb of RAM.
Chad Mayeux
Metter, GA
Pineland Technology Solutions
Videographer/ Digital Artist -
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