Yesterday’s Emmys & FCP X.

[Shane Ross]

Well, not sure what FCX had to do with that Emmy at all, it was used to cut the show, but all the research was done with other tools. So your subject line is a tad misleading.

There was a big team on the research side of this, as they were looking for the very rare and “lost tapes” around the incident. The best finds were the NASA Rehearsal tapes shot on VHS that really were never seen outside NASA…and then behinds the scenes footage of CNN rushing about trying to figure out what was happening.

All those who were involved in the research were: Tobiah Black, Liza Maddrey, David Tillman, Patrick Southern, Tom Jennings and Ellen Farmer. These guys (and other researchers) produce THE LOST TAPES series, and find great, never before seen footage.

I’ve worked with this company for just about 8 years now…and online all of their shows (using Resolve)…including that one. Along with this award they won a Peabody award for MLK: THE ASSASSINATION TAPES (also cut by David Tillman)

Shane
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[Bill Davis]

Was actually just on-line in a forum with David congratulating him a few minutes ago and he mentioned he felt X was a direct piece of “mining” the massive research archive they set up in it to find the bits and pieces needed to tell the story.

He’s the Keynote speaker at the FCP X Creative Summit in Cupertino at the end of the month. So on the heels of this, I’m sure the nature of any link between the tool and the award will surely be discussed.

We’ll see. ????

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Andy Patterson]

[Shane Ross] “There was a big team on the research side of this, as they were looking for the very rare and “lost tapes” around the incident. The best finds were the NASA Rehearsal tapes shot on VHS that really were never seen outside NASA…and then behinds the scenes footage of CNN rushing about trying to figure out what was happening.”

That is why I like having the Blackmagic Design Intensity Shuttle. It is hard for me to watch VHS tapes or even interlaced HDV tapes on a computer monitor. I would never want a client to have to view it like that either. I don’t doubt there was very interesting content on the old VHS tapes even if the quality is not that great.

If I remember correct I think you stated the GUI of FCPX will not allow for video capture using 3rd party hardware. It would not be that bad using BMD Media Express but it would be nice to just stay in FCPX.

[Shane Ross] “I’ve worked with this company for just about 8 years now…and online all of their shows (using Resolve)…including that one. Along with this award they won a Peabody award for MLK: THE ASSASSINATION TAPES (also cut by David Tillman)”

Sounds like your company worked on some interesting projects.

[Shane Ross]

[Bill Davis] “he mentioned he felt X was a direct piece of “mining” the massive research archive they set up in it to find the bits and pieces needed to tell the story.”

OK…searching the NLE for media that was researched, acquired and ingested into FCX. The thing that won the Emmy was the initial research…FINDING that footage. Not locating it in the NLE….that’s completely different. That is not what the Emmy committee was referring to. Not arguing that searching for media is fast and amazing in FCX, I hear a lot about it. BUT, it is not what the Emmy was for. What the Emmy was for had NOTHING to do with FCX.

Shane
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[Shane Ross]

Andy, NASA had archived this footage as data files, so when we got the footage, it was already captured. But I know we had to capture other footage…for that I had a Beta deck and AJA hardware, upconverting and capturing in, of all things, FCP 7.

Shane
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[Brian Seegmiller]

I capture S/VHS tapes, digibeta, betacam, into FCP X using a Canopus 300.

[Andy Patterson]

[Brian Seegmiller] “I capture S/VHS tapes, digibeta, betacam, into FCP X using a Canopus 300.”

I think Shane had mentioned FCPX can work with DV and HDV devices. No drivers are needed for those devices. The Canopus ADVC 300 is like a DV device. I have the ADVC 110. I wanted to get the ADVC 300 but there were none left. I think I bought the last ADVC 110 from B and H Photo. The Canopus Products are less likely to need a TBC as opposed to the the BMD Intensity Shuttle but the Shuttle can do a lot more than the Canopus ADVC products. I think the ADVC 300 has a TBC built in. As far as I know they are no longer manufactured. I miss the IEEE Fire Wire converters.

https://youtu.be/oqAa-9LpMx4

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[Shane Ross]

[Brian Seegmiller] “I capture S/VHS tapes, digibeta, betacam, into FCP X using a Canopus 300.”

Yes, and that is very doable. But it captures all those formats as DV, which is a decent format for SD, but really not the best format of SD.

The projects I work on, the one that we are talking about that just won the Emmy, are in HD, and now have a 4K deliverable as well. So I need the ability to capture SD tapes, BetaSP, Digibeta, VHS, S-VHS and upconvert them to HD. For that I need a Terranex and capture cards. Hardware upconverts via the likes of Terranex and some AJA hardware produces a superior image to capturing SD as SD and letting the software scale the image…capturing SD as DV and then scaling to HD, or 4K…you’ll really notice the stair stepping of the DV resolution.

So when we onlined the Challenger film, if a tape was provided, I captured via the AJA KONA 3 into FCP 7, hardware upconverting the Image to Pillarboxed 1080 HD. If a digital file was given, I’d output from one machine to another and again hardware upconvert. I could have also captured with the AJA Media Center software.

Note, this is something FCX cannot do…capture and upconvert via hardware, even through a Terranex. It can be the player out, but it cannot be the capture. Avid, Adobe, Resolve, FCP 7…and software via the card makers allow this. FCX only does DV and HDV. So that right there is a limitation in FCX when it comes to cutting archival…again, you need to use third party options as solutions.

BUT, we did fine. David did the offline, using the amazing organizational and search tools within FCX to find footage and cut a VERY compelling story, and I used Resolve and other tools to make that footage pretty.

Shane
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[Bill Davis]

[Shane Ross] “Note, this is something FCX cannot do…capture and upconvert via hardware, even through a Terranex. “

Hey wait a second.

I thought that on the OJ Speaks project Patrick worked on for Chuck Braverman they tested the beejesus out of the Terrenex verses just doing direct digitizations into FCP X -letting it do the scaling internally – without any intervening transcode boxes AT ALL – and came to the conclusion that the results were indistinguishable.

Are you saying a Terrenex workflow is measurbly superior?

Can you check on that?

I’ll ping Chuck on Monday and ask him as well.

This stuff is worth knowing cuz eliminating a processing stage in any device chain is worth doing – if the results are functionally identical.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Brian Seegmiller]

Thanks for sharing.