Workflow Decision Time – XDCAM EX

[Bob Flood]

Anthony

I too have been doing XDCAM ex and using FCP7 / leopard and i have found that either pro res OR xdcam require rendering, so i do not know if convertinf everything to pro res is going to save you a bunch of time.

besides its just one more place where the media can get f***ed up!

Wht the convenetional wisdom has been, and I have found this to work out, is to work in XDCAM ex, BUT use ProRes 422 as your compressor in your sequence settings. It renders faster than an XDCAM EX compressor,

I would do some tests as to your best codec to export with. I ran a test once and it seemed that either one was about the same speed (the only difference was that the indicator bar moved more steadily on the Pro Res export) Your mileage may vary

but the xdcam sequence withan alternate faster render codec has proven succesful to many

hope this helps

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Anthony,

I work with XDCAM EX material every day and would chose Option 1 for sure. Converting everything to ProRes will take so long that I’d be surprised if it saved you any time at all.

[Anthony Koelker] “When I’m done, I’d export a 720p version for broadcast.”

Do broadcasters in the US accept 720p deliveries? I’m in the UK and all HD programmes I’ve edited are delivered 1080i, even when shot 720p – your Kona card will handle this conversion excellently.

All the best,
Alex Elkins

[Mark Raudonis]

I agree with BF.

We’re currently using the XDCAM HD codec for just about ALL of our work. (1 hr reality TV shows) While most of the material is shot XDCAM HD 50 , there’s a fair amount of material coming in from EX 3’s as well. Even with this mix of codecs, our workflow is the same. We work in an XDCAM timeline, but set rendering to PRORES.

I’m aware that plenty of people have had issues with XDCAM timelines, but we have been able to develop worklfows, practices, and procedures to minimize the pain. For example, we do a “proactive restart” at lunch time. We “Bake in” complex effects, speed changes etc.

It sounds like your systems are new enough and up to spec to handle this format.

Good luck.

Mark

[Jason Porthouse]

I can only chime in here with my experience. I, along with many others, have had terrible problems with crashing working natively with XDCam. We had a meeting at the production company yesterday with a local FCP guru who has had issues too; his workflow now is to trascode all XDCam to ProRes (not HQ) and work in that. It’s something we’re going to adopt across the board in order to try and stabilise things.

Now, this is in PAL land and there are many who don’t seem to get the issues we’re finding. If that’s the case for you then working natively may be the way to go; unfortunately you won’t know ’till you try. If you do go that way and experience random crashes, then turning off thumbnails in the TL and not using Icon view in the bins seems to lessen the problem. I think it’s an issue in writing the icons (they change whenever in/outs are altered) but as I say many haven’t encountered this issue.

In your shoes, given my experience, I’d transcode to ProRes 1080 before starting. But YMMV, and you may use option 1 with no issues at all…

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Steve Connor]

I’m one of those people who are working with all flavours of XDCam, using native timelines (but ProRes to render!) with no issues.

However I don’t use Icon view in the browser (old habit) and I’ve switched off thumbnails in the timeline.

Steve Connor
Adrenalin Television

Have you tried “Search Posts”? Enlightenment may be there.

[Michael Allen]

The problems must be related to the EX part of the equation. I have been using the Sony F350 since it first came out and have experienced no problems with native XDCam HD editing. In fact, I am very impressed with the imagery and workflow. Now crashes what so ever with regular XDCam HD editing over here in the last 2 years. Is the EX codec a little different?

Mike

[Bob Flood]

Mike

My understanding is that XDCAM HD is a variation on MXF, ie MPEG2 compression, but all I frames, so each frame is independent, just like any motion jpeg codec.

HOWEVER EX is more like HDV, in that its MPEG4 using I B amd P frames, so the CPU has to work a lot more to “fill in the blanks” when ediitng, making up B and P frames and making them editiable.

hope this helps

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Bob O’brien]

If picture quality isn’t a big issue while editing, you could also set your render settings to 50%. Renders will go much faster. When your done editing, set them back to 100% and render overnight.

Bob

CAMERAS
Sony EX3 & Sony DXC637/PVV3 Betacam-SP

PORTABLE EDITING
*MacBook Pro – 2.33Ghz – 2Gb RAM
*Matrox MXO / 23″ Cinema Display

DESKTOP
*DualG5 2Ghz w/2.5Gb RAM
*UL4D SCSI Card
*HMV800 DualMax RAID0
*AJA IO
*Sony 2800

SOFTWARE
*OSX10.4.11, QT 7.5, FCP 6.0.4, Livetype 2.1.3, Soundtrack Pro 2.0.2, DVDSP4.2.1, Adobe CS3 Prod Suite