Planning ahead, to make my edit simple – some technology Q’s

[Bouke Vahl]

Max,
Dunno about connections, but:

Shooting Pal for a NTSC project is plain stupid. Standards conversion will kill you. (In render time and quality loss, or in money to outsource it.)
Those cams ‘should’ be able to shoot 24P.
Use that. (And experiment before commiting yourself!)
24 (well, 23.976) works nice on DVD. But i don’t know how the Pal versions capture 24…

Next problem you have is the lack of TC locking.
If you shoot a concert or something alike, where the cams are far away of each other, make sure the cams ARE NEVER turned off, or you’ll go crazy syncing the stuff. Also, make sure at least ONE AUDIO CHANNEL has decent location sound.
If you have a budget for a few transmitters, use AUX TC. (Put LTC on one of the audio channels of each cam.)

My digital slate can provide you with common LTC (as well as visual TC), and my FCPauxTC reader can get you to sync the material quite fast. (See my site for those products)

If you ain’t got the budget for those gadgets, google all the tricks to get you some sync points! (Flash photography is one of them.)

Others will chime in for sure.

hth,

Bouke

https://www.videotoolshed.com/
smart tools for video pro’s

[Rafael Amador]

[Max Huggett] “So now, I have been advised that as the final delivery is SD, that i should capture SD PAL ( i will be capturing via firewire on a new Macbook Pro 15”). Would this be correct? “
You need something much more powerful than a Mac to convert NTSC to PAL (or vice) in real time.
Bouke pointed the the easiest and faster way and without any picture degradation.
If you can record p24 with your camera, you only need to “Comform your footage to p25”.
This makes that the files get read as p25. Speed the footage up a 4%, but nobody will notice that in an interview.
This process imply no rendering. is just a click to the mouse. After you only need to edit your footage as p25.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Walter Biscardi]

[Max Huggett] “I have also been advised that as the firewire card uses the same bus as the USB, i should capture to my internal HDD and then transfer to a external HDD or transcode to proRes to the external HDD after the ingest has finished. (It will take me a while to ingest as i also work FT and i realise that the internal space is limited so i would do this after a 3 or 4 horus of ingesting). “

Absolutely terrible advice. NEVER capture to the internal Mac hard drive whether it’s a laptop, iMac or Mac Pro. That’s the worst thing you can do

At the very least pick up a FW 800 RAID like the G-RAID’s or better yet, an eSATA RAID with the card for the laptop.

You can capture to ProRes from HDV via firewire, just go to the Tutorials section and look up Chris Poisson’s tutorial.

Converting from PAL to NTSC is best done through a hardware converter such as a Terannex. You can purchase Graeme Nattress’ Standards Converter, but this will probably take a few days of rendering on your laptop to make the conversion and I’m not sure how clean it will be.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

Read my Blog!

STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!

[Tom Brooks]

Let’s separate things out a bit.
Shooting PAL: 25P can be easily converted to 24P in Cinema Tools. No loss in visual quality, but audio is slowed down 4%.

Shooting SD: Seems to make sense to me in this case, considering your lower end edit system and your SD final output. Would you possibly gain something by shooting HD at 25P? Maybe. It’s not clear to me how color grade, lower thirds and graphics would be affected by ingesting HDV to ProRes as opposed to starting in SD. My bet is that the easier workflow in SD offsets the possible gains.

How to capture: You have one FW bus on the Macbook Pro. You might be able to capture from the camera to a FW800 drive, but I wouldn’t guarantee it. Better bet, as Walter said, would be an Express34 eSATA adaptor to an eSATA drive, leaving the FW bus with only the camera on it. USB is unrelated and irrelevant.

So my proposal is this: You shoot SD 25P and edit as such. Color grade. When done, change sequence compressor to ProRes to bump up quality of titles and graphics. Export QT self contained. Conform that to 24P. Make NTSC DVD. If you need to go back and make changes, you back up to the 25P sequence and make the changes there. The 25P project will be archived for future use.

My stab at it. Thoughts?

[Shane Ross]

[Max Huggett] “I have also been advised that as the firewire card uses the same bus as the USB”

That is incorrect information. USB and firewire are on separate buses. But FW400 and FW800 are on the same bus.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Max Huggett]

Thank you for all your useful information.

Just to clarify a little further. The reason i am shooting in PAL is because i’m in a PAL country and the final output is for a world wide delivery on DVD. I was told that all PAL DVD players can play NTSC discs, but many NTSC players, can not play PAL DVDs.

It has been suggested to shoot at 24P. I still don’t understand why as it will need to be compressed for DVD anyway to NTSC. Right?

Bourke’s suggestion of a camera flash is a great one. I understand i will need to keep the cameras rolling and look forward to reading more tips on his site.

My time frame for completion is quite long (2 months) so leaving my macbook pro on over night, converting to NTSC, is not really a problem and is something i imagined i would have to do, rather than spend lots of money on a realtime standards code.

Thank you Walter for the suggestion of using an eSata card. While it may cost a bit more money, i’m guessing it could possibly save me alot of headaches during my edit.

Tom, thanks for your ideas and advice too, but can you explain why i should conform to 24P after editing in 25 and are you saying by compressing my edit to ProRes, i will gain image quality? Your proposal sounds logical but I want this best possible quality i can get and if you thnkg i can get that by capturing HDV ProRes then this is what i will have to do. Will a new 15″ Macbook Pro handle it. Please keep in my mind that most of the time it will be 1 video track plus lower third, but at times i may have 2 tracks (PIP) and an overall color grade.

Thanks guys. I really do appreciate all of your advice.

Max

[Michael Gissing]

[Max Huggett] “The reason i am shooting in PAL is because i’m in a PAL country and the final output is for a world wide delivery on DVD”

If you have world wide delivery on both PAL & NTSC DVDs then my advice is to work in HD and pay for a professional downconvert (like Walter suggests) to both PAL and NTSC for the DVD version. That way you have HD covered for the future (or perhaps Bluray release) plus the best quality for SD.

If you wish to do a software conversion, again you are better off working down from a 25 frame HD final. By converting 25 to 24 you will have to deal with a 4% pitch change in the audio. Not impossible to do well, but not something you an do in FCP or STP.

[Max Huggett]

Thanks Michael. My clients project would not warrant Blue Ray. Its an instructional Sports DVD (3 disc). And the price of having 2 sets (PAL and NTSC)of Discs is something that they are not prepared to outlay.

I am going to look into if the A1’s shoot in NTSC, and if so, possibly shoot in that format.

Thanks again
Max

[Michael Gissing]

In that case shooting and editing NTSC makes the most sense

[Tom Brooks]

OK, I see where you’re going now. I’m leaning toward 24P in either SD or HD flavors. I shoot HD to future-proof a little. If the lower frame rate suits your material, that is. I suggested the conform in the event that you absolutely had to shoot in 25P and deliver an NTSC DVD (which would include 24P DVD). Here’s a great little tutorial: https://allbetsareoff.com/tutorials/conforming-to-24p/

Ahh, the comforting voice of good ole Aharon Rabinowitz. But shooting 24P is a better compromise worldwide if you’re restricted to one format only. Does your camera do 24P? My Panasonic shoots 24PN, which is a dream for this stuff.

As far as changing the compression to ProRes goes, it’s commonly done with DV (and HDV) sequences so that titles and graphics are rendered in the better color space. You don’t gain anything on your camera video, but your titles, stills, and Motion graphics gain a lot. So, you edit in DV, then change the final sequence to ProRes. Presto, your graphics get a huge benefit from the wider color space.

If you can take the time, test out all the ideas here that make sense to you. Take the workflow all the way from start to finish and see which one works best.