XDCAM HD TV project on FCP

[David Battistella]

Hi,

The best way to mix ony two formats is to capture all of the sources with the same codec. In this case I would do one of two things depending on your delivery needs.

1. Downconvert everything to an SD codec and output to d -beta as you have been doing.
2. Master everything in the HDXD CAM HD codecs and pconvert your SD.
3. If you do number 2 then get a Panasonic 1200A deck and set it to upconvert all of the footage. Make sure it has an SDI board. Capture all of you SD, DV, DVCAM material to the HDXDCAM codec via SDI
4. IMPORT your HDXDCAM from the disks.

Now that all of your footage is one resolution, edit. Avoid software upconverts, it will take a lot of machine time, get the deck, it is the best way o go for the amount of material you are going to be dealing with.

David

Peace and Love 🙂

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

I hesitate to say this here, but it really does apply to projects like this.

You could consider using Avid, and none of this would be an issue. All of the resolutions could be imported in their native form and freely mixed in a sequence, as long as the frame rates are the same. Xpress Pro HD would run on the systems you described, although it won’t use the Decklink cards.

Hopefully Apple will address the issue of mixed codecs and mixed resolutions on a common timeline in a “future release” of Final Cut. With new formats seemingly appearing every week, this is becoming a much more acute problem.

[Mark Maness]

[Skywalker] “I’d love to hear form any one who has done longform work with these cameras and can offer the pro’s and cons of the format and work flow. Can I really just transfer the files from the disks to my storage and start cutting? What kind of extra hardware will I need?

First, let me say that the XDCM HD equipment is excellent! I’m a firm believer in the XDCAM system. BUT there are some serious challenges with XDCAM SD and HD working with FCP. XDCAM SD is perfect for your particular needs since you are working with SD only. The main challenge you will have to work with is the case that you need to get this HD footage into SD footage. Sony’s F70 machine will do just this for you. Personally, I would suggest upgrading your capture cards to HD capable cards since you are going to run into this real soon anyway.

Sony does have software that will allow you to lift the data off of the disks and place them onto your RAID, but, you can only transfer data written in its native form, meaning, you can only transfer HD footage as HD video and it includes all eight channels of audio only. You cannot select what audio channels to import. You’re needing to record HD and downconvert to SD. In your situation, only the Sony machine can do this for you.

[Skywalker] “How best can I mix these formats?”

This will be your biggest challenge. FCP will only allow one format per sequence (in realtime).

[Skywalker] “For our next project in the new year (a 8 x 1 hour series for broadcast) the production company has been offered 3 XDCAM HD cameras to shoot the series which, like the previous projects will be high shoot volume shoots in far fetched corners of the globe. This will also be mixed with DV and DVCAM second camera footage.”

You mentioned using DV and DVCAM to mix with XDCAM HD. This isn’t a good idea. Your B-Roll will look very fuzzy and soft. Your A-Roll will look very sharp even after downconversion. My suggestion is to sell off you DV equipment and look at Sony’s HDV for a low cost B-Roll camera. But I’m sure the B-Roll you are speaking of is already existing footage, am I right? If that is true, you’ll just have to work through it as best as you can and let the quality difference just roll off your back.

I would have to ask, how profitable is this project and will it benefit me to upgrade now. Upgrading your equipment is something you are going to have to do real soon as the market is changing more rapidly than every first expected. We had anticipated upgrading to HD in one more year BUT we have had too many requests for projects shot in HD to let this happen.

AND that’s my two cents!

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com

[David Battistella]

Mike,

1. Is Avid now doing hardware based resolution mixing. IE, if the files are captured DV then you can just play them back in any sequence?

OR

2. Are you just importing all of the footage into a single AVID codec and editing that.

Because in the case of point number two FCP can be set up to do the exact same thing. Its is just much more flexible in terms of what codec you want to choose to edit natively in. I like this idea because, in a sense you are always working with original digital material, it has not been transcoded into something that only AVID can work with.

David

Peace and Love 🙂

[Luke Price]

Thank you David, Mike and Wayne for your responses. All very good advice.

Wayne – the B-Roll material will be shot for the series so we do have the option to go HDV. We have a couple of Z1’s and are looking at the Sony HDR – HC1 HDV Camcorders for ‘Video Diary’ material. Would these be the kind of cameras you’d suggest?

I know I’m going to have to look at an upgrade of some of my hardware to HD, but did like the idea of just dragging the footage off disk rather than digitize, as we tend to have something like a 1:75 shooting ratio on these projects!! (I don’t shoot them just cut them)

Thanks again all.

Skywalker

[Mark Maness]

[Skywalker] “Wayne – the B-Roll material will be shot for the series so we do have the option to go HDV. We have a couple of Z1’s and are looking at the Sony HDR – HC1 HDV Camcorders for ‘Video Diary’ material. Would these be the kind of cameras you’d suggest?”

I can vouch for the Z1s. We use those in our productions and for making hunting videos, that’s the camera of choice!. Now, the smaller cameras for video diaries should be fine. I’m not sure if they will do the Cineframe mode or not, but you’re probably not interested in that.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com

[Walter Biscardi]

[Wayne Carey] “I can vouch for the Z1s. We use those in our productions and for making hunting videos, that’s the camera of choice!.”

I have to admit, I am NOT a fan of HDV, but when shot correctly, the Z1 does produce a gorgeous image. The only issue I have found is that there is a razor thin line between beauty and ugly with the format.

And one thing we found here in testing is that Auto Iris always blows out the image so be very wary of that. We’re cutting a new series right now that the first two episodes were shot with the Z1 and when it looks good, it looks really really good. When it looks bad, it’s butt ugly.

Make sure the camera people know how to use it correctly BEFORE they start shooting.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Andy Mees]

[Wayne Carey] “Sony does have software that will allow you to lift the data off of the disks and place them onto your RAID, but, you can only transfer data written in its native form, meaning, you can only transfer HD footage as HD video and it includes all eight channels of audio only. You cannot select what audio channels to import. You’re needing to record HD and downconvert to SD. In your situation, only the Sony machine can do this for you.”

Wayne, you’re going to love the long overdue update to XDCAM Transfer v1.1. You can set it to import only the ‘monitored’ channels. Great stuff.

Skywalker,

Mixing SD and HD material should be fine, so long as the SD material has been well shot. Which codec are you shooting with the XDCAM HD? If you’re using the HQ 35Mbps codec (the best one) then you’re going to have to figure in the time required to convert the SD footage into this format, either through a software based conversion process, or via an F70 deck with the SDI upconvert option board. If you’re using the SP 25Mbps codec, which is essentially an HDV variant, you will be able to import directly from the upconverted output of an HDV deck.

You might want to consider XDCAM HD purely as the aquisition format, but capture and edit the various footages using a 3rd codec such as DVCPRO HD, which will confer a number of benefits, not least of which is taking you out of MPEG as an edit format. Although that does mean you don’t get the benefit of speedy file transfer based workflow, with the XD material.

Alternatively, as already suggested, you could use a different platform to edit this project. Canopus Edius is probably the only NLE which can edit with the native MXF files, from the XDCAM discs, directly in the timeline. It can also mix footages of any other format directly in the timeline … in realtime. Very impresive. (Plus, with an as yet unreleased proxy file transfer utility, you edit with the proxies whilst auto-conforming to the high-res media as a background process. They’ve worked hard on this one and again, its pretty impressive) … bloody ugly interface though, takes a fair bit of geting used to 😉 If only FCP could and would offer the same.

Cheers
Andy

[David Battistella]

Andy,

You make a fantastic point. Increasingly, the solution seems to be to capture everything in one of the Panasonic DV/DVCPRO, DVCPROHS codecs. These codecs lokk fantastic, they consume little hard drive space, they are in the 4:2:2 color space and they render very clean. A very, very good compromise to get many formats into one project.

The M-peg based codecs are fantastic playback codecs, but completely fall apart when rendering, etc. HDV really needs to be transcoded or captured to a different codec to both save time and stand up to the riggers of rendering in post.

David

Peace and Love 🙂

[Mark Maness]

[Andy Mees] “Wayne, you’re going to love the long overdue update to XDCAM Transfer v1.1. You can set it to import only the ‘monitored’ channels. Great stuff.”

Andy… Do you already have a copy of this? If so, where do you download it?

I’ve been asking for this since day one of the software. I always thought it should have let the user select the audio tracks since the cameras could only record four channels. Seems silly to import eight channels when the cameras are only capable of four.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com