XDCAM & HDV tapeless workflow question

[Andy Mees]

Well you seem to have a handle on the crux of it … as of the time of writing, there is no way within FCP to mix formats in the timeline AND take advantage of the tapeless workflow.
Couple of choices:
1) forget shooting in HQ and instead use SP on your XD’s … you’ll still be getting far superior pictures to the run of the mill HDV, due to the better chips and pro optics with that camera. if you shoot SP then you can mix both footages on a native HDV timeline without any need for transcoding or rendering. this is your all tapeless workflow solution.
2) use a third party capture card to convert one (or both) of the acquisition formats to a common one, for editing.
3) look to an alternate NLE, one that can mix formats.
or
4) you can hope like hell, along with the rest of us, that Apple (or whoever) finally addresses the mixed format issue in FCP, in one way or another, at next month’s NAB shindig.

cheers
Andy

[Mark Maness]

[Andy Mees] “4) you can hope like hell, along with the rest of us, that Apple (or whoever) finally addresses the mixed format issue in FCP, in one way or another, at next month’s NAB shindig.”

I’m praying for this one…

To add to the answer for Colin. We’ve been doing just type of situation for the past year now with XDCAM. In September, we upgraded to XDCAM HD because of a thieft of our XDCAM camera while on a shoot in Canada.

XDCAM HD is an awesome format but Andy is correct. You’ll have to record everything at SP (25 mb/s) to keep everything compatible. But, you’ll have to wait for NAB to get the full compatibility of the new Sony HDV drive unit. This drive records M2T files that FCP cannot understand at the moment. I may be wrong on this, maybe the drive can write Quicktime files, I’m not sure. Let me give you a word of warning though… Although these are awesome cameras and the tapeless workflow is awesome, you’ll still have to put up with conforming your timelines before output and the render times can be quite lengthy if you have a long program to output. And one more thing… You can only work with HDV and XDCAM inside of FCP. Outside of FCP, your video will look pretty crappy (that’s been my experience).

To combat that, myself and many others out here, have been digitzing all of our footage into the DVCProHD codec which saves time on output since there is no need to comform and the compatibility with other programs is excellent. You’ll have to do this especially if you wish to shoot in HQ mode. This is the workflow myself andf my company has chosen. Our programs have taken a major jump in quality since doing this.

_______________________________

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

[Dave Jenkins]

Hi Wayne, can you expand on the programs you have had trouble with?

[Wayne Carey] “You can only work with HDV and XDCAM inside of FCP. Outside of FCP, your video will look pretty crappy (that’s been my experience).”

[Mark Maness]

Well, you can’t export a clip to Quicktime, then use AfterEffects to do any kind of work on it and render it to the XDCAM HD codec, it jumps and skips frames badly. Almost looking like it missing frames of video.

Now, let me say that you can send a clip to Motion and back just fine using the “Send to Motion” command. It’s just exporting the video to Quicktime and using any third party programs independent of FCP. Maybe I’m doing something wrong but I haven’t gotten them to work with the XDCAM HD codec.

BUT I can export the clip to Quicktime, use AfterEffects and render it to something other than the XDCAM HD codec, I’m fine. But then I have to render in FCP in order to view it.

My whole issue is time. I have to work in realtime as much as possible and rendering takes some of that away.

_______________________________

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

[Colin Powers]

Thanks everyone for helping clarify this. I had sort of figured we’d shoot most of our stuff in XDCAM SP for compatibility and save HQ for our one hour special docs. Then go with the Kona capture card and DVCPROHD codec.

Just to confirm, Wayne you are capturing in real time through your capture card to the DVCProHD codec from either an XDCAM or HDV deck, then saving time in rendering afterward? Therefore losing the tapeless advantage, but saving in render and output time. (And getting a little boost in quality.)

Also disappointed to hear about the M2T files on the Sony drive unit. Didn’t factor that in…

[Mark Maness]

[Colin Powers] “Just to confirm, Wayne you are capturing in real time through your capture card to the DVCProHD codec from either an XDCAM or HDV deck, then saving time in rendering afterward? Therefore losing the tapeless advantage, but saving in render and output time. (And getting a little boost in quality.)”

Yeah… It does seem to loose the tapeless concept but there are many advantages to this method of madness.

How long are your programs going to be?

The reason I ask is that for a thirty second commercial, it takes about 5 minutes to conform on my Mac Pro Quad 3.0. AND, here’s the kicker also… All reltime effects have to be rendered before the conforming process, which means, if you color correct your enitre program, you’ll have to render the entire program before FCP will conform your video for output.

_______________________________

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

[Colin Powers]

We’re making mostly half-hour shows. For the next six months we’ll be mastering to BetaSP and JVC D9 formats via component video. My understanding is that, with a Kona card, we can output component video from an HDV timeline without significant render time. We will be doing color correction, mostly straight cuts and dissolves, and very little other effects. I expected that if we want an HDV master we’d have to render overnight, but that can happen after time-critical show delivery on the other formats.

After six months or so we’ll delivering our shows via some digital (I presume SDI) pipe, directly to a broadcast server, but the delivery codec is yet to be defined. I fear it will be HDV which will then be further compressed (via hardware compressor) for HD broadcast. This will mean we’re back to the long render times. I’m hoping we can deliver in a higher bit-rate format to sidestep this.

Thanks for all the thoughtful comments and suggestions.

[Colin Powers]

Another related question has arisen: How are people ingesting the XDCAM SP material? Firewire through the auxiliary iLink/HDV card on the PDW-F30 deck? Throught the SDI out on the F70 deck or the F350 camera? Or via component HD? Is there significant degradation going component into the Kona card?

Thanks for your thoughts on this.

Colin

[Andy Mees]

> for a thirty second commercial, it takes about 5 minutes to conform on my Mac Pro Quad 3.0

wow, just for comparison, it take sme about 7 minutes to conform 2’30” of XDCAM HQ on my MBP 2.16 Core Duo (w/ 1 gig of ram)

[Mark Maness]

[Colin Powers] “Another related question has arisen: How are people ingesting the XDCAM SP material? Firewire through the auxiliary iLink/HDV card on the PDW-F30 deck? Throught the SDI out on the F70 deck or the F350 camera? Or via component HD? Is there significant degradation going component into the Kona card?”

Well… Personally speaking, I stay away from the HDV codec for many reasons. One the render times are terrible. Two, HDV is not an edit stream, its an elementary data stream, and that is why FCP has such a hard time editing with it.

As for ingesting your media, you can use any method you wish. I have found for our purposes that digitizing the old standard way to be the best for our company since we mix HDV and XDCAM HD. I prefer this because I don’t have to conform on output and if I need to composite any video outside of FCP then I don’t have any issues. We catputre everything at DVCProHD 1080i60, even though we shoot XDCAM HD using HQ settings at 30p and our Z1Us are set to Cineframe 30.

As for the Kona card, I use a Kona 3, so, in order to capture my HDV I need a converter box (AJA HD10AVA) to convert my analog component video and audio into an HD-SDI signal (or SDI if using DV to upconvert). As for degradation of video… I don’t see any of it at all. You could probably see it on a scope but when it airs, you’ll never know.

_______________________________

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