Thank you again Luke and BMD!

[Jim Leonard]

I really have to concur. Because of the DeckLink SP, I was able to produce two features in a realm of quality that a hobbyist like myself could normally never get into. My features have a specific niche market of *realtime* computer animation (ie. you MUST record the animation as it is happening — there is no rendering to disk/file/avi!) and without the uncompressed quality of the DeckLink SP’s component input/output I never would be able to maintain the “transparent” video quality of the computer->DVD workflow. Thank you BMD!

[Chriswhill]

Sounds like a cool project…. Do you have footage online people can view or purchase?

[Alex Udell]

Hi Chris…

this is a really exciting post.

Of the two solutions:

Premiere or FCP which did you choose and why?

I’m an ex-edit* editor and am learning Avid and Premiere right now.

I can easily see why, in terms of it’s solid feel and tool set, Avid continues to be used on feature films.

I’m not sure, in an editorial sense, I could say the same for Premiere. I like the way Premiere handles fx chains much better.

Image quality issues aside, I’m sure the BMD card is great regardless of it’s companion editing platform…

your feedback is appreciated…

Alex Udell
lead demo artist and trainer
PEI Graphic Technology http://www.profileeast.com
My Reel: https://alexudell.no-ip.biz
COMBUSTION EXCHANGE FTP: ftp://combustionexchange.no-ip
Logon: combustion_user
PW: learn

[Chriswhill]

Hey Alex,
I edited the film in Final Cut 4.5. I’ve used FCP since version 1.2.5, so I know it well. I prefer the MAC so Premiere is not an option for me. I have to say I was flying by the seat of my pants though in some aspects.

This was the largest film I’ve worked on to date, with a 1.3 million dollar budget, and although I was alone in the editing room aside from the director, there was a post supervisor, a large facility in Burbank handling the mix, a group at Sony handling the music, CCI Digital handling color grading, and a QC facility helping the Sony’s in-house QC department to deliver final masters.

This film was a western, they shot 2 Sony CineAlta HD cameras simultaneusly every day. With no assistant, I was expected to receive shot tapes each night, clone them to HD edit masters, log and capture takes based on script notes faxed from the set each night, and rough cut the days’ scenes for the next morning.

The crew had no time to watch dailies, so all they saw each day at lunch were my edits on DVD.

I digitized the footage into DVCPRO HD for the offline, and then uprezed to Blackmagic uncompressed 4:2:2 HD for the online right in Final Cut. I laid back the final Online to HD D5 tapes, and those became the masters of the finished movie, which the other groups used for color correction, and added the final mix to.

I had edited the movie at 23.98, which was the shooting frame rate. But the sound departments needed the movie on 3/4 inch tape at 29.97, and it had to be broken into 5 20 minute “reels” for theatrical projection. I also had to supply OMF files for each reel.

FCP and the Decklink HD really came through, especially when it came to “finishing”. After the picture had been “locked” for several weeks, and the sound mix was in an advanced stage, the producers decided to make more picture edits.

Problem… I had made my 29.97 version of the movie by laying back to Beta SP, then recapturing the film in standard def 29.97. Although Decklink HD can downconvert on the fly, I had to have 29.97 TIMELINES because the timecode on the OMF files had to match the tapes.

I had seperate timelines for each reel, and I used the original audio from the HD timeline, laid underneath the Beta Sp recature in each timeline. Since the audio was the original HD audio tracks, I could be fairly sure if the HD audio tracks were in sync with my recapture, the movie would stay in sync in the end.

This was a nightmare for re-edits though, and there were several rounds in the end. I had to output “change Lists” from cinema tools to give to the audio groups so they could track where changes were being made. Since I cut at 23.98, I had to make change lists at that rate, and Pro Tools was able to translate that into 29.97. It actually worked, and I was able to get the sound departments all the materials they needed to keep up with several rounds of changes.

And the movie stayed in sync at the end.

After going through that experience, I have complete faith in the FCP/ Decklink HD/multibridge combo. The system was rock solid. I should mention that I had a lot of support at the begining from the DR group in LA. I told my rep what I was trying to do, and he helped to set it up properly from the start.

Best,
Chris
FCP 5 Studio ( the movie was cut with 4.5)
2ghz G2
2.5 gigs RAM
Decklink HD
Multibridge HD
Mackie L1402 mixer w Yamaha Studio speakers
20inch cinema display
17 inch NEC LCD display
Hewlet Packard HD projector
Sony Wega 27inch NTSC
4x La Cie 500 gig each FW 800 drives ( for offline)
DR GROUP custom 8 bay SATA array, 2 terebytes ( for Online)

[Alex Udell]

Chris…

That’s a great overview!!! Thanks for that!

Congratulations again!

Alex Udell
lead demo artist and trainer
PEI Graphic Technology http://www.profileeast.com
My Reel: https://alexudell.no-ip.biz
COMBUSTION EXCHANGE FTP: ftp://combustionexchange.no-ip
Logon: combustion_user
PW: learn

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Chris,

Thank you so much for your post. I am thrilled to read about what you have done and also your later posts in this thread with the details of the technical hurdles you had to overcome in your film. It’s fascinating to read what people do with Blackmagic Design products and it’s wonderful to read about your good experiences with the DeckLink HD card and Multibridge.

Mostly people post there problems in this forum so it is really great to hear about good experiences and I’ll most definitely pass your message on to Grant and the engineers here when they return from IBC.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Trixter,

Thank you for posting your message and it is exciting to read that you call yourself a “hobbyist”. Who would have ever thought that a hobbyist could be involved in uncompressed video just a few years ago! It makes us very happy to be able to deliver broadcast quality products at low prices which are even within range of hobbyists. Thanks for your kind words which I will most definitely pass on to Grant and the engineers when they return from IBC.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Jim Leonard]

Thanks for the interest! Our last project has some samples online and is for sale at http://www.mindcandydvd.com — we’re trying to get the DeckLink-mastered project finished for sale around December, which is not ready yet.

The last project was *not* mastered with the DeckLink card and in some scenes it shows 🙁 This new one is just about as good as it can get with an analog pathway. Again, all thanks to DeckLink.

[Jim Leonard]

Also tell your engineers that they designed the DeckLink SP and drivers so well that, due to my budget, I am mastering my project on vastly UNDERspec’d hardware and it is still performing perfectly. The DeckLink SP I have is installed in a Pentium 2.6GHz machine with 1G RAM, with (currently) two IDE 300GB drives in a hardware stripe using a Highpoint RocketRAID 100 card. This works perfectly; I can capture 8-bit uncompressed SD without dropped frames and the editing is realtime. (I say “currently” because the original setup used two 120GB drives in a stripe 2 years ago, still worked fine!) No PCIe/PCI-X, no dual proc — just a regular machine.

Now, I understand fully this machine is *not* capable of 1080 HD material, but for 480i uncompressed SD it works just perfectly. I have never had any driver issues at all, no lockups, nothing wrong!!