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What format (codec) to deliver
We are currently shooting with HD Tape cameras. Sony HDcam and Panasonic HD Varicam. We are freelance shooters so at the end of the day we hand the field producers, or segment directors, or agency guy some tapes. Then they leave…
They take the tapes and often edit them on Avid systems either at their facility or at a post house.
Now we are considering purchase of the RED, Silicon Imaging, Vision research, type cameras. Where the output is on hard disks. So at the end of the day (or later that evening) we (expect/hope)to copy the images to a portable firewire drive, and send or deliver (fedex) the drive to the producer.
We see one cool advantage to this. While the drive is in transit we still have the original images on our computer so the footage can’t get lost on the way back to their facility. (since we have a backup)
These cameras make very nice images which usually use some (purchased or propriatary) wavelet technology and look pretty good from the original codec. We are not too sure how producers will feel about raw files in a wavelet compression. or how much difficulty this presents for them/us. Our intention is to send cheap portable firewire drives to the producer with the option of returning them or keeping them for the cost of the drive. So several related questions:
1. What are the likely workflows and digital format (codec) outputs we are going to need to put on the producers drives For Avid?
2. Will this require a lot of rendering time and our ownership of a really high end computer with Gflops of drive space? Can a high end pc and pc type software support mac. Avids. (we already have a pretty heavy duty pc)
3. About how many minutes per gig, are we going to be able to fit on the portable firewire drive that we send? (so we can see how this compares with sending tape: HD tape @ about $50 per 30min usual 2 hrs per day = $200 as opposed to loaning drives(which cost?) to the producer and paying fedex both ways.)
4. Can the producer/post house easily make a backup on HD tape of pieces they like but do not want in the show for their library.
5. Will this be appealing to Producers. why or why not?
Thanks for your help!As you can probably tell we are not editors or particularly computer savvy, Straightforward andwers are appreciated therefore.
Sincerely
Thomas -
1 Reply
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There is something to be said about formats that are also their own archiving format such as film, tape based HD, SD, etc. The same goes for the audio world – recording to a DVD-RAM or to a FireWire. In some cases, you just hand over the assets and you leave. In others it will require you to copy to another drive format for transport and archive. Think of the Panasonic P2 camera as training ground for all of this…
In the case of a higher resolution file based camera, regardless of camera manufacturer, archive and transport will present challenges (AKA opportunities) in the workflow. For a 4K workflow, anticipate lots of storage. First there are the drives that are on set capturing. These drives then get moved – most likely there will be an archive at the same resolution. Also, the archive may involve a transcode to a DPX type format depending on whether RED releases its native EAW format, or not. So same size drive, but speed of drive is not an issue since it is for archive. Could be tape or optical as well. Then there is the issue of what format will be used for editorial. No one will be editing 4K native due to size and bandwidth. The 4K files will be used for conform. So another transcode will be done to either SD or HD, most likely a low bandwidth HD such as DNxHD 115 or DNxHD 36. So that will need additional storage albeit not as much. DNxHD 36 will need about 305GB for 18.5 hours of material.
There is time involved with transcode so that will need to be scheduled, most likely something on the set within the video village. The capture drives may have the ability to play out over a dual link to an HDCAM-SR in RGB 4:4:4 mode for a submaster into post. This will be near 2K 1920 x 1080 in RGB space. This is what is being done now with other file based cameras.
Welcome to the world of files… and management… and backup, backup, and backup. Just an FYI, FireWire drives are not the most long term reliable format for archive – great for transport though.
Michael
anything 24fps
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