Problem with DVCPro HD footage

[Tim Kolb]

Raylight isn’t really that expensive at under 200.00 USD.

For that matter, the CineForm plugins (which I work with, in the interest of full disclosure) aren’t very expensive for what they do…

(How “fancy” any of this stuff is is relative I suppose. I need it for work, so it’s all “necessary” to me.)

What are you going to “Online” on? Since you shot DVC ProHD at 24fps (23.98), you only have 40 Mb/s after the redundant frames are removed…offline seems like an unnecessary step. You could just cut it natively of FCP, or transcode to an intermediate codec like CineForm or Raylight and just cut the thing on PPro…

TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,

Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net

[Shane Lawrence]

I’m a little iffy on Raylight as the documentation isn’t very forthcoming as to what it’s doing in terms of the codec. Also, the intermediate it produces doesn’t acknowledge the 4 channels of audio that the source media has, and that’s a problem for me. Cineform looks fine, but again I’m on a paper-thin budget. I’m planning on exporting my EDL to FCP and doing the master that way. I just really want to maintain the fidelity of my footage for when I go to colour correction.

Ultimately, I figure I’ll have to use one of either Raylight or Cineform, but I’m just throwing this out there to see if there’s another solution.

[Tim Kolb]

[Brokenstove] “Ultimately, I figure I’ll have to use one of either Raylight or Cineform, but I’m just throwing this out there to see if there’s another solution.”

Why don’t you go straight to FCP and simply online it in a native project? Offlining in PPro and onlining in FCP when you have DVC ProHD footage to begin with seems like a considerable detour to me…

I have no experience with Raylight,but Aspect HD is 8 bit VBR, which will hold up at least as well or better than DVC ProHD’s 8 bit CBR, and CineForm’s Prospect 10 bit VBR will out-perform both under stress of aggressive color correction.

I guess if it was me, I’d reconsider the workflow…

TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,

Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net

[Shane Lawrence]

I get what you mean, but it’s mainly a question of available resources. I don’t have quick access to a Mac, so doing the offline in PPro is much easier. When I finally do the online, I’ll throw it into FCP. As far as ProspectHD goes, I definitely don’t have the money for that.

[Tim Kolb]

Hmmm… Then why not just convert and online in PPro? Is there something you want in FCP that demands you output in FCP?

TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,

Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net

[Marcus Van bavel]

[Brokenstove] “Raylight as the documentation isn’t very forthcoming as to what it’s doing in terms of the codec”

Raylight is not an intermediate, it’s native DVCPROHD. It says so in the first paragraph of the website:

https://dvfilm.com/raylight

[Jeron Coolman]

From the Raylight web site’s first page…

“Plug-ins for both Adobe PremiereTM and Sony VegasTM to allow you to drag MXF files directly into the project!”

… for less than $200 is going to be your cheapest solution for PPro.

I’d have to ditto everything Tim says. Why not just spend $200 and do the whole project in PPro?