Post workflow suggestions for XDCAM HD422 series

[Rafael Amador]

Hi David,
That would be the same than off-lining DV50 with DV.
I don’t see the point.
My recommendation is that you work directly with your footage, you will save tons of time and money.
To incorporate Canon material, pass it through compressor changing the time-base to p24 and exporting to Prores.
Best,
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Will Salley]

I agree with Rafael and will add that cutting a low-res proxy (which is basically what you are proposing with the SD DV) won’t give you the optimal “feel” for pacing and clip placement. With SD (even letterboxed), quick 10 frame cuts, snap pans and color flash transitions are tolerable, in HD they can be nauseating. Of course the time-savings of not having to transfer to DV and conform again is huge.

My system (listed below) can easily handle the XDCAM 422 / Pro Res HQ multi-camera timelines (not at the same time – mutlicam in FCP can’t mix codecs on the same timeline).

Mac Pro 2×2.8 Quadcore – 10.6.2 – QT 7.6.3 – 22 GB RAM – nvidia8800GT – SATA internal & external storage – Blackmagic Multibridge Pro – Open GL 1.5.10 – Wacom Intous2 tablet – AJA io
SONY XDCAM EX3 – Letus Elite

[Mark Raudonis]

David,

We’ve been using that camera and the XDCAM HD format for years. For a certain level of production, it hits the sweet spot of affordability, quality, and convenience. (Boy, do I sound like a Sony sales rep!)

You do know that the XDCAM format creates it’s own low rez proxy, don’t you?

In any case, even though we use the classic “off-line to on-line” workflow that you’re suggesting, I’d recommend NOT doing that if at all possible. Storage and bandwidth costs have come down to such affordable levels, that you REALLY have to have mountains of media to use the “Off-line” codec. (Yes, we have mountains of media)

The amount of time, effort , and stress saved by avoiding this “conforming” process is well worth the additional cost of storage required. That’s my opinion.

Mark

[David Meth]

Thanks all,

Looks like the consensus is to work with the XDCAM HD422 material.

Though our systems won’t be running 22GB of RAM!

Much appreciated,

David

[Rafael Amador]

Hi David,
I work with XDCAM-HD 422 from the NAO-flash. Normally I shoot 100Mbps but some times 160 or even 220Mbps..
I work with a MBP (two years old) and a RAID connected by e-SATA.
No problems here.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Paul Jay]

With an external firewire drive you can ONLINE all XDCAM formats on FCP with a macbook pro 13″ with 4GB ram easily..

[Richard Cracknell]

Hi there,

I’m trying to organise kit for a shoot using this exact workflow, including the potential use of Canon 5D for some extra styilized shots. Assuming this shoot has now finished I was wondering if you had some advice on how it went?

We are planning on moving quite a lot and backing up the discs as we go with a macbook pro, a couple of rugged lacies and the disc reader over a couple of weeks. What I wanted to know was what the approximate copy times are of disc to external harddrive? And then what sort of times you were experiencing on Log and Transfer importing of the footage into FCP for editing and the space the new .movs took up compared to the original raw media? I’m assuming it simply re-wraps to .mov so size should be similar to the originals? Also whats the re-usable lifespan of the discs?

I’m planning on setting up the edit on an Apple ProRes 422 1920x1080i50 sequence (we have to deliver interlaced) and wanted to check that the sequence works with the XDCAM footage, and with the 5D footage once I turn that ProRes (I normally use mpeg streamclip). I normally find that knocking the ‘video processing’ to 8-bit stops a green render bar appearing on similar but mixed codecs (such as 422 and 422(LT))

Long and rambly first time post but thanks for patience!

[David Meth]

Hi,

Unfortunately, I can’t offer much advice about field transfers. One of the main reasons we decided to use the F800 XDCAM HD camera was that it shoots to disk and we wanted to avoid having to do field transfers or not have a permanent copy of the footage. At most, we’ll reuse a disk once if for some reason we don’t want to keep the footage on disk – but that’s quite rare. Sorry I can’t offer any insight into how the disks hold up to multiple uses, or how long they would take to transfer to external HD.

I haven’t tracked ingest & transfer times that closely, but I would say ingesting shoot disks using a U1 drive onto a FCP system with XDCAM Transfer, the disks seem to ingest at anywhere from 1.5x to 3x real time, usually around 2x – 2.5x real time. I never thought to check, but I think the size of the files are comparable.

For the post side, I can offer more advice. We have completed a limited first season of six 47min shows, and we are underway on a second season of eight more. In the first season, we did our “offline” edit on XDCAM HD422 sequences, in the native size & frame rate (1080p23.98). I did find the editors seemed to experience a number of odd system issues like FCP hangups and crashes. Also, when the sequences started getting longer, we began experiencing an odd issue with audio sync when exporting Quicktimes using the regular export option (vs. using Quicktime conversion). It appeared that without an additional render step, sometimes the video frame rate gets “misinterpreted”, maybe as full 24fps, while the audio did not, causing the audio sync to drift.

This season we are transcoding all our XDCAM HD422 footage into ProRes Proxy for “offline”, and we’ll conform for “online” using ProRes HQ transcoded from the XDCAM. I have to say that while this workflow takes more time in the early stages, so far it seems to be smoother. The render times appear to be noticeably shorter, and the editors are experiencing fewer glitches, FCP hangups and oddities on their systems. FCP just seems to play much nicer with the ProRes family. My outlook now is that XDCAM HD422, or really any GOP/interframe codec, is better suited to acquisition than to post, and if I can I will transcode to an intra-frame codec for post-production. On this production we have the time to do that, so we do.

I would, however, suggest that you keep the frame rate to it’s native setting if you can. So, if you are shooting 1080p25, keep your edit sequence 1080p25. You can always introduce interlacing as the final step of creating your delivery master.

I hope that is helpful. Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any further questions.

Best,

DM

[Richard Cracknell]

I find it surprising that the discs aren’t reused much in that it must become quite an expense to keep stock of so much footage on these discs? I’m choosing to treat it very similarly to how I deal with a P2 workflow in a constant turn around and re-use of discs with plenty of backups on external Harddrives.

Does anybody have any experience of FCP Log and Transferring from harddrive backup versions as opposed to encoding straight from the U1 drive? I’m hoping that it works like other file-based systems that the folders I copy the disc contents into become the ‘reel’ and are treated like a disc.

I had heard some stuff about XDCAM sequences having very long playout times at the roughcut stage and similar audio slipping issues so I am planning on encoding to the straight Apple ProRes codec and offlining with this, hopefully removing the requirement for a conform or taking up even more space with the (HQ) codec.

[Rafael Amador]

[Richard Cracknell] “I’m planning on setting up the edit on an Apple ProRes 422 1920x1080i50 sequence (we have to deliver interlaced) and wanted to check that the sequence works with the XDCAM footage, and with the 5D footage once I turn that ProRes (I normally use mpeg streamclip)”
Yes, no problem.
XDCAM works great on a prores time-line.
I work with EX stuff from 35Mbps (EX-1) to 280Mbps (NANO-Flash).
Depending on your system performance, some times when working multi-layers may be convenient to transcode to Prores.
What you should avoid is to render to XDCAM. That only if you need to deliver on this format, if not, always render to Prores.

[Richard Cracknell] ” I normally find that knocking the ‘video processing’ to 8-bit stops”
What a heck means “8-bit stops’?
Probably you are talking about rendering in “8b YUV”, or “8b RGB”.
Sure you will get the Green line.
Prores is 10b YUV. If you set “8b” you will force rendering, and a poor 8b rendering instead of 32b-Floating Point.
Set it like this:
– If there is only Prores footage in the time-line, “Render all 10b YUV..in High Precision YUV”, would be enough.
– If you are dropping Prores and XDCAM (or any other 8b codec), you should set “Render ALL YUV material in High Precision YUV”.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com