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XDCAM Workflow …Not Again?
I know this has been covered in many ways, but I just did a search and have not come up with an answer specific to my needs, so please be patient with me.
I’ve just ordered my first HD camera, the new Sony EX. I do mostly event video, so I know I’m just a bit ahead of the needs of my clients. The typical finished length of my projects is about 1 1/2 hours. My intention is to edit in HD, archive the finished file, and then export an SD DVD for my client with the understanding that they can come back later on for an HD DVD, once that becomes viable. So, with all that in mind, what would be the fastest workflow? Ingest the raw files and edit in XDCAM native, then downconvert to SD on Export? Buy a Kona card and convert to DVCProHD or Prorez and archive in that format? Or, downconvert to SD from the camera and edit in SD, then re-link the files in an HD timeline later-on. I don’t think that will work, will it? I think I will same more time by avoiding the rendering or conforming on the back end rather than saving time in the capturing process. (I usually start with about 3 hours of raw footage).
I was just at the HD Expo yesterday, and no one was able to answer this for me.
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8 Replies
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[Chris Babbitt] “Ingest the raw files and edit in XDCAM native, then downconvert to SD on Export?”
YES.
But anything you render from after effects has to be done with the animation or other codecs. Apparently there is a problem rendering back to the XDCAM codec for graphic work.
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Thanks Bjoris. What do you think we’re looking at timewise to downconvert a 1 hour-plus program?
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I’m on a Quad-core MacPro
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Downconvert to SD?
on my g5 quad it takes about 4x longer than the length of the video to do that. That was with 720P 60fps P2 footage downconverted to SD 29.97fps, though the frame rate conversion took much of that time.
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Chris,
I do exactly what you are talking about everyday and have been for the past year now.
We capture and edit in HD, could be XDCAM HD or DVCProHD. Then we downconvert on the output to SD for broadcast air. We keep a HD copy on the shelf for archival purposes along with the SD Master fro broadcast.
I have a Mac Pro Quad 3.0 using an AJA Kona 3 card.
XDCAM allows you to do what ever you feel most comfortable with, workflow-wise.
_______________________________
Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com
https://blogs.creativecow.net/waynecarey -
Hmmm…
Should be faster on a MacPro
I guess I could live with that, considering the savings in tape-based capturing time. I just don’t want to take one step forward and two steps back. -
I found this thread while investigating exactly what Chris was in 2007 and wonder now how this has panned out for Chris. What isn’t clear from the thread is whether the downconvert to SD should be done out to tape and then redigitized for making an SD DVD or simply exported in an optimal format for applications like DVD Studio Pro. I have just done a test on an XDCAM timeline, exported it as a non-self-contained movie directly from FCP with all settings same as timeline and then imported to DVD Studio Pro which then encoded it. It looked okay-ish until anywhere the camera zoomed or revealed even subtly, then all straight lines became watery for the duration of the move. Clearly that wasn’t the right way to do it. I have shot a live show on three EX1’s and want to deliver an SD DVD. I will be playing out to Digibeta tape at the very end but must I wait until then to make a DVD? I’m worried that by making poor quality DVD’s even of rough cuts will put the client off.
Thanks,
Éamon Little
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Hi Eamon,
I spend WAY more time on this forum asking questions rather than answering, so it is nice to be able to answer someone with what i think will be very helpful.
In 2007, we did our first show shot on XDCam (full size discs, not the EX chippies) and HDV. I worked on and XDCam timeline sequence, and upon completion of each episode, rendered out a single DVCProHD file, took that file on my trusty LaCie drive to my local post house and we dumped the DVCProHD file into their FCP system without a hitch and outputted (2) HDCam master tapes for HD broadcast. This worked great every time (as long as I rendered everything correctly).
The client only wanted an SD DVD copy of each show, so back at my place i would drop the single DVCProHD file into an SD timeline, output a nice SD Quicktime file (with chapter breaks of course!), then dropped it into Compressor, and voila! Beautiful SD DVD’s, happy client.
I’m about to embark on a new show with identical production formats and was just perusing the forum to see what has changed in the XDCam / FCP workflows, and it appears that nothing really has, except maybe that Sony has improved the XDCam Transfer software a bit. I’m going to dig around and see if it will save me any time to work with the proxies (which i’ve never done before), or if i should just keep it in full XDCam mode all the way through post. If you hear anything on that note, let me know.
Hopefully this helps!
Thanks again!
J. Tad Newberry
Big Ya Productions
Power Mac G5
Dual 2 GHz
http://www.bigya.tv
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