[Andrew Mckee]

Broadcasters still use interlaced because at a higher resolution, it still takes up the same bandwidth. So 1080i and 720p (at the same framerate) have the same data rate. The bandwidth of 1080p, which for me is the only HD format worth paying extra for, would be considerably higher which is why it isn’t yet an option. Personally I would like to see them try 1080p24/25/30 broadcasts as these should take a similar bandwidth to their 1080i equivalents (1080i50/60) but would be perfect for watching anything cinematic.

Andy

[Andrew Mckee]

Clips brought in via AMA do appear yellow in your bin yes but this is not necessarily a problem unless you encounter performance problems. It is yellow because basically Avid is saying “this is not an mxf inside my Avid Media folder”, but it can still play and edit and if the folder you linked to is on your media drive then there is nothing to worry about. This way of working really is going to take over so get used to it. I mean whats the point in duplicating all your footage using an import and negating the speed of your tapeless acquisition if your editor can handle the files that come straight off the camera? Your longer takes not playing video is a bit more of a mystery. Not sure what’s going on there. Maybe it would be worth transcoding those clips to DNxHD?

Andy

[Andrew Mckee]

With XDCAM footage all you need to do is drag the BPAV folders from your SxS cards into folders that read “Card 1”, “Card 2” etc on your media drive using Explorer or Finder. You can then use go to File->Link To Ama Volume in Avid and then select the folder that contains the “Card 1”, “Card 2” folders. This will bring all the footage in and then you can edit away. The only thing you need to do to import HDV footage into the same project is first change the raster (in the Format tab of your project window) to 1440×1080 and then just capture.

Alternatively I believe you can connect an EX1 to Avid using firewire and it will downcovert the footage to HDV so you can use the capture tool and it will then be the same as all your HDV footage. But usually this is unnecessary and just a function designed for people stuck in their ways with capturing.

Andy

[Andrew Mckee]

Edit on premiere so you don’t have to transcode? Just a thought, with this amount of footage its probably a fairly cost effective solution when you consider the amount of time and effort transcoding will take.

I can’t see a massive problem with transcoding to proxy, then relinking to H264, then transcoding the sequence to 422. But I wouldn’t rely on this being an automatic procedure. Clipfinder may help, but don’t rule out having to manually relink every single shot in your sequence back to the h264.

Andy

[Andrew Mckee]

You could take stills from Google Earth and the use this technique;

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/earth_zoom/

Not entirely sure about copyright issues with images from google earth though.

Andy

[Andrew Mckee]

I don’t think big sensor imagers are ever going to be compatible with run and gun shooting. These DSLR’s (and anything else with a big chip) only give good results if you put the time in to block, light and frame shots right. Run&Gun and Filmic are leagues apart. I dont think you will every have both, no matter what the technology.

Andy

[Andrew Mckee]

Sorenson Squeeze is primarly for compressing for delivery, not for storage. Video should be compressed as little as humanly possible untill delivery. Animation and Uncompressed are nice but usually impracticle because of size. I would say in most cases ahigh bitrate DNxHD would be sufficient.

Andy

[Andrew Mckee]

A camera doesn’t know what your scene is like. Any exposure reading will just be based on the average brightness it is detecting and so should always be taken with a pinch of salt. If a camera is in automatic mode then it will automatically adjust the aperture, shutter speed and iso to get as close to that “correct” exposure as possible. You can usually effect what it changes, by going into a different mode. Aperture priority mode, for example, will maintain your selected aperture and just change shutter speed and ISO. Ideally you should be in full manual mode (certainly for video work) and that choose what balance of aperture, shutter speed and ISO is right for you scene (although generally video work usually keep shutter at half your frame rate for consistency of motion blur).

Andy

[Andrew Mckee]

What exactly are you expecting from a 480p H264 file? It is, by its very nature, lower res and more compressed than your 1080i DNxHD footage. It will also be converting the colour space to RGB. You shouldn’t be importing this format back into Avid. It is a delivery format only and shouldn’t be used as a backup. A video mixdown, consolidation of you sequence or just a QT exported from Avid with DNxHD compression (in 709 space), are the only things you should consider as a backup of your sequence for later use.

Andy

[Andrew Mckee]

What if you just create a smaller canvas with the right aspect ratio (say 1152×216), edit using picture in picture effects on 12 layers, then once the piece is done you could just drag each layer into a new HD canvas, stretch it out and render?

Andy