Quicktime from Final Cut

[Michael Hancock]

What codec are the FCP Quicktime files in? That will determine what will or won’t be readable in your Avid.

Michael.

[Steve Cohen]

It is 8 bit Uncompressed.

Sorry I thought I put that in the original post.

Thanks;

Steve Cohen
Editor
O2 Media Inc.

[Michael Hancock]

You should be fine then. The files will be huge, and it may take a while to import them, but they should be fine. When you get the files, try to open them in Quicktime. If they open and you see the video, you’re good to go. If you see a white screen, you’re missing the codec, but I don’t think that will happen.

Michael.

[John Pale]

They will not work in your Avid system unless Final Cut is also installed. The Uncompressed 8 and 10 bit codecs are only installed by FCP…they are not part of the standard Quicktime package. They also are not available for PC.

A workaround is to install the software codecs for the AJA Kona or Blackmagic Decklink cards, which are equivalent.

You could also just transcode them to the Avid codec on your FCP system, if available.

https://www.aja.com/ajashare/AJA_SoftwareCodec.zip
https://www.aja.com/ajashare/AJASoftwareCodec111Setup.exe

https://decklink.com/downloads/codecs/Blackmagic_Codec_OSX.zip
https://decklink.com/downloads/codecs/Blackmagic_Codecs_v4.9.zip

[Steve Cohen]

[John Pale] “A workaround is to install the software codecs for the AJA Kona or Blackmagic Decklink cards, which are equivalent.”

Thanks John;
Installing the Blackmagic or Kona drivers sounds like the best bet to me. This will be a weekly situation.

Don’t ask why but we are going to be digitizing a studio shoot directly a SAN using Capture Now in Final Cut, but because of an existing setup that we are coming into, the edit and final assembly is going to be done on Avid, so I need a solution that is faster then recording to tape and then digitizing but will accommodate both NLE’s

Thanks again;

Steve Cohen
Senior Editor
O2 Media Inc.

[John Pale]

Um…. Now that I hear the full story of what you are attempting, I gotta tell you that its going to be a world of pain for you.

Keep in mind, when you try to import this Quicktime footage into your Avid its going to be transcoded to OMF media (you are on an older Avid, right). This is going to take a great deal of time and chew through lots of disk space…. Remember, Avids do not edit with Quicktime media directly!. Even if you capture to the Avid codec directly (and you can’t in this case), you cannot get around this process.

you need to re-think this.

[Steve Cohen]

I appreciate that, do you have any other suggestions?

My original suggestion to upper management was to replace the older Avids with Final Cuts (I shouldn’t be saying that to an Avid guy, but as long as I’m laying my cards on the table).

The problem with that is their 2 editors that are cutting the existing show don’t know Final Cut and they don’t have the time to get up to speed on it, because this is a daily show that they are putting together.

As I said we are bringing 2 companies together that both have existing shows. I need to come up with a way to integrate the two worlds, but still kind of keep them separate.

Projects will not be switching from editor to editor or system to system.

The other issue is that their 2 systems don’t even work together properly. As I said they have an Avid Adrenaline Media Composer version 2.8 and an Avid Meridian Media Composer Version 12.1.2. I believe the problem there is 1 is OMX and the other is MFX. I’m not 100% sure, I haven’t worked with Avid in about 12 years so I’m a bit rusty on it and how they run.

Again; any suggestions that you may have would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again;

Steve Cohen
Senior Editor
O2 Media Inc.

[Michael Hancock]

[Steve Cohen] “The other issue is that their 2 systems don’t even work together properly. As I said they have an Avid Adrenaline Media Composer version 2.8 and an Avid Meridian Media Composer Version 12.1.2. I believe the problem there is 1 is OMX and the other is MFX.”

On your MC 2.8 systems, go into the Media Creation settings and set your capture type to OMF. The footage will be transferable, then. Just make sure you’re only capturing in the 2.8 version to a resolution that’s available on the older MC 12 systems.

Michael.

[Steve Cohen]

Thank you Michael.

I will suggest that to them.

Do you have any suggestions on my main issue?

Steve Cohen
Senior Editor
O2 Media Inc.

[Michael Hancock]

You’re in a tough spot. Capturing in FCP for Avid will give you numerous problems.

One, the import times will kill you. You may as well capture to tape and bring that to your Avid systems (or run your cameras through a distribution amp and run it into your FCP system as well as a VTR).

Two, you’ll lose all timecode, if that’s important. I guess if you’re capturing directly to your SAN you won’t have tape to come back to, but it may be something to consider. I read yesterday that Avid will support timecode import/export in the next release (not point release), but who knows when that will be.

At this point, I’d say either replace the older Avids with FCP and hope your editors can struggle through, or replace the FCP systems with new Avids.

If this footage is ultimately going to Avid, is there a reason you can’t take a Mojo or Adrenaline and capture directly to Avid, like you’re doing with FCP? That way you’ll have an Avid workflow from start to finish. Or, get a distribution amp and run your camera into both systems so it won’t matter what you need to cut on. Granted, this will double your footage, but you’ll be doing that anyway when you import the FCP Quicktimes into Avid.

Can you give us more details about how everything is setup? What are you shooting with? SD, HD? How much footage are you looking at? Are these still seperate facilities (buildings), or can you have a mobile capture station that floats between them on shoot days?

Michael.

Michael.