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Varicam FCP Film Out Post Workflow Help????
I am working on a doc feature shot 90% Varicam and 10% HVX200. The project is being cut on a G5 w/ 5.5 gigs of ram with FCP 5.0.4. We have brought most of our footage in using a mixture of firewire and HDSDI through a Kona LH ( we switched capture techniques mid stream due to VFR cadence issues with firewire). We are also using G-raid 1 Terabyte drives as storage.
Our ultimate goal is to produce an HD CAM master for viewing at festivals that can also be used to create a film print. Our original plan was to try and stay in tapeless workflow once the project was completed. Reasons for this were that we have a lot of footage shot at 60fps that was processed using FRC. However after doing some research I am overwhelmed with what the best way to finish this film would be. Everyone says that for the film to look it
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6 Replies
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I’ve had good look uncompressing in compressor.
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what is the best way to use copressor to do this and have you noticed any artifacts or shifts in colors. i am especially worried about some of my sequences that were shot in very low light.
have your projects been projected or been transfered to film. if so have they held up in these processes as well?
thanks for the advcie
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NO need to recapture. All you need to do is copy your sequence…create a new project using the 10-bit uncompressed settings….typically 1080psf at 23.98….then paste your footage into this sequence. Then highlight your footage again and go to the MODIFY menu and select SCALE TO SEQUENCE. This will resize it to 1080. Then render.
This is known as a software upconvert and it gets you exactly the same result as capturing the footage at a higher resolution with the Kona, but this is guarenteed to be in sync and time code accurate.
We did precisely this when we upconverted a portion of our show for promotions. And we are about 60% varicam and 40% HVX.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
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> Are you sure that the software upconvert is the same as capturing your selects through the Kona 3 uncompressed? I am not doubting your claim, just curious. It doesn’t seem to be the case, but you probably know better than me!
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[dfarrell] “Are you sure that the software upconvert is the same as capturing your selects through the Kona 3 uncompressed?”
That is what I am saying. It took a bit for me to grasp too. But essentially, your footage is DVCPRO HD, and that quality is the best it is going to get. If you capture it via a Kona 3 at the 1080 [b]8-bit uncompressed HD[/b] codec (10-bit gains you nothing but file size…DVCPRO HD is an 8-bit colorspace) then it will look exactly the same as if you upconverted via a software render. A post house I work with has done several tests and found this to be the case.
This does two things:
1) Saves time alotted for recapturing, as rendering is much faster than scrolling thru tapes, capturing and swapping them out.
2) Avoids the possibility of time code slipping…the system not capturing the exact frames you used in the cut, but maybe a few frames later, or just a completely different clip.Both, to me, are HUGE advantages.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
I did a test with some p2 footage where I brought the sequence into a 10-bit uncompressed (had to use apple’s) sequence and scaled it. On a dual 2.0 G5, a 10 second segment rendered in 1 minute and looked pretty darn good. Also, because it was a fairly well lit night sequence, the upconvert added a SLIGHT bit of grain that made it look more like film than any video I have ever seen!
So, my next question would be this:
If I shoot Varicam, capture and edit via firewire, can I take my cut, drop it into a 10bit/uncompressed sequence and export a QT movie? For VFX, what would be the optimal settings? Should I render out tiff or targa images sequences for the EFX shots? This is interesting…If I decide to do my own color correct, will getting a Kona 3 and a perhaps an SATA raid give me the power to color correct in FCP uncompressed?
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