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Teranex uprez — best practices for archive, creative control
Hi, I’m a video editor whose company has been making the transition to a file-based workflow for the past few years. We are adding a large shared storage server and matching ingest equipment for studio recordings. When not connected to cameras we want to ingest our SD tape library, perhaps streams from four decks at a time. The primary rewards for doing so are as follows, roughly in order of importance:
1. Random access to digital footage
2. Logging and sorting of assets
3. Uprez of SD to HD assets
4. Noise reduction of assets
5. Asset archiving to LTO
6. Deep storage of tapes; claim tape library spaceAll opinions are welcome, but I’d really like to hear from people who have addressed the absorption of their legacy tape libraries into their DAM/MAM/PAM environment. Are companies using a Teranex to reduce noise and maximize the available data by uprezzing SD assets to HD? I’ve discovered that once that decision to uprez has been made, several options present themselves, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, especially dealing with 4:3 aspect ratios being stretched (or not) to 16:9.
One immediate division of SD uprez strategy is intended purpose of the asset — either it is a unique asset (historical, situation that would be impossible to reshoot) that will eventually need to be incorporated and “mixed” with new HD productions, or it might be an entire sequence or program of SD content that can be given a uniform treatment.
We have tried to envision the conversation with broadcasters who will eventually tell us that, in order to rerun an SD program with a 4:3 aspect ratio, you will need to ___________. What? Stretch to fill 16:9 and reframe? Fill pillars with a blurred duplication of the 4:3 image? The edge stretching features in the Teranex that maintains the aspect of the center of the frame?
Is there a strong argument for capturing SD as 4:3 media and using a non-Teranex, software-based uprez to creatively address the situation?
Thanks for your insight.
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3 Replies
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Any Teranex users? Who needs to archive their SD tapes? I’ve got a demo unit and I’m looking for best practices to present to my group.
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I could see this as a major, if not THE major market for Teranex. I’ve just begun the process of testing the Teranex workflow for just the same reasons. I have historic documentary, commercial, and art footage running from 3/4″ and Betacam, to mini-DV, DVCPro SD, and H264 DSLR was well as Sony XDCam HD. So far it looks very promising. A lot of my final edits will go to the web, YouTube, etc, or educational uses which I would imagine would be networked mass storage based. They tapes aren’t getting any younger, and neither am I. Much of this stuff really deserves editing.
Would like to hear more. Message me email.
Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.1.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.5, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1 TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz 24Gb RAM GTX-285 120GB SSD, Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD -
Ray, the argument could be seen both ways.
In the future there may be better tools to deal with the SD to HD (4KHD 8kHD) conversions. This is why a lot of archives such as the BBC will only archive uncompressed in the definition of the master. Now, most archives can simply not afford that the process. Keeping a 1:1 copy of the data in a digital platform is ideal but is not really achievable for most non-profit archives on a cost level.
People will even argue you are better to ingest your DVCAM as DV rather than convert it to prores. Why? Because with the DV codec there is no quality loss. This does not mean that DV is a good codec for the long term it just means that you are making a 1:1 digital copy from the tape. DV is a dying codec, I doubt it will ever truly be irretrievable as it was used for so many years. We could say that Prores is worse in this sense as it is technically propriety to Apple.
So, you have to strike the balance between Archive Theory and Practical use. Sure, having your entire archive ingested as Prores 422 HD 1920 x 1080 through a Teranex is good as it will make things a lot easier. With these archives we are essentially making new masters as people really don’t want to have to go back to the tape ever again. The important thing is to keep the tapes as well though as they are an excellent backup.
I know that if I had to make an documentary and had all my SD already converted through a Teranex it would make things a lot easier. With the tests that I have done the Teranex did a better job than FCP / Premiere in scaling. Even more advanced SD processing such as using Compressor with frame controls adjusted did not render results as good as the Teranex default settings.
You may never get the chance to ingest all of this material again and that is the danger. In the future there will be incredible software processing that can upres and pixel manipulate footage to look amazing. This may mean that you are better off not doing that original Teranex conversion.
Will the human eye ever actually notice this in the long run. I doubt it.
It is a tough one to call.
Let me know if you decided anything on this or have some other insight.
Scott Goddard
Neo Verite Limited
https://neoverite.com
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