Workflow questions for 200+ hours of h.264 and ACVHD

[David Roth weiss]

[Jeremy Garchow] “30TB of storage is not going to be cheap when assembled in a useful manner. A “loose” 30TB made up of a bunch of drives is going to be downright unmanageable and might as well be impossible. “

Jeremy, 200 hours of ProRes 422 more like 13 to 14Tb. Are you calculating backup too?

But I do agree, doing this job with daisy-chained firewire drives would not be fun.

[Jeremy Garchow] “My suggestion? First, buy fcp7. No questions.”

I think Khashyar has a G5, so FCP7 ain’t a happening thing for him without a new computer.

So, all things considered, this is why I suggested he bite the bullet and simply transcode to ProRes, and his only other real alternative is AIC, which is doable, but just not a great codec.

In any case, no matter what, he’s looking at (8) 2Tb drives at the very least and an 8-bay enclosure or RAID.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[David Roth Weiss] “Jeremy, 200 hours of ProRes 422 more like 13 to 14Tb. Are you calculating backup too? “

I get 12TB, but if you’re going to drop some dough, might as well spend it smart. An 8 drive raid5 with 2TB drives formats to 14TBs. That is not enough overhead when your footage is 12 TBs alone in ProRes. He said he wanted backup, too. At this point if all that footage isn’t already backed up, there’s a problem. The backup could certainly be spread out over single drives.

[David Roth Weiss] “I think Khashyar has a G5, so FCP7 ain’t a happening thing for him without a new computer.”

Missed that little detail, thank you. Ok khashyar, buy a new computer, or a new used computer. Basically, get yourself an intel Mac. You are using modern production tools, your post tools must reflect that. Yes, dslrs are cheap, but the footage is expensive to process.

AIC could work, but that would be a nightmare. I agree an 8bay raid5 (14tb usable) and get yourself a solid offline workflow. I’d use ProRes proxy myself.

Jeremy

[Khashyar Darvich]

Thank you, Zane…

It is possible that we can use a new Mac, and use FCP 7.

Since this first step will involve A LOT of transcoding (over 200 hours of footage), I didn’t want to use the time of the newer MAC.

Do you think that the newer versions of ProRes available on the newer Macs looks noticeably better than the FCP 6 versions of ProRes?

Thank you again.

[Khashyar Darvich]

Thank you for all of your great advice, Jeremy.

I will take a look at Grinder.

[Khashyar Darvich]

Thank you again, David, for the expertise and advice.

I think that what I might do is:

1) First, transcode all of the footage (long process 🙂 )

2) assemble a rough cut, and then copy all of the used video clips onto a new single drive, and then copy any new clips onto the single drive that I am using eclusively for editing the project.

Thank you for the kind advice.

[Khashyar Darvich]

Thank you, Jeremy.

Yes, I already have a backup of all of the originally shot footage.

I think that once I have all of the footage transcoded, I may back that up as well.

I think that I will go step-by-step with this project, the first step being the transcode all of the footage as ProRes 422.

Thank you for your thoughtful advice.

[David Roth weiss]

[Khashyar Darvich] “1) First, transcode all of the footage (long process 🙂 )

2) assemble a rough cut, and then copy all of the used video clips onto a new single drive, and then copy any new clips onto the single drive that I am using eclusively for editing the project.
“

That’s pretty close to what I was thinking… Good luck on your project Khashyar, I hope everything goes smoothly for you.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Khashyar Darvich]

Thank you, David, for the thoughtful advice, as well as the good wishes.

[Steve Eisen]

As an alternate, by the time you finish looking at the footage, FCP X will be out.

Just need to buy a new Mac Pro, upgrade FCP and edit natively.

Of course, none of this has done this workflow. So as of today, ProRes is the way to go.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group