[Ben Cohen]

Hi Gary, I’m interested in figuring this out with you – I need to tackle this exact same workflow.

What I am planning to do is map the audio channels in Premiere by right clicking the video in the project browser, and choosing “Modify>Audio Channels” – then I will set the audio for the video as 5.1 and assign L,R,C,Lfe,Ls,Rs to the correct channels in their respective order based on the original file.

After I have done this mapping for the clip, I will bring the clip into a sequence that is 5.1 (the easiest way to do this is to directly drag the footage/clip from the project browser onto the “new item” icon at the bottom of the project browser window. This creates a sequence with audio settings to match the clip settings. Or, if needed, I can create a 5.1 sequence manually.

From there, I can adjust things, but assuming there is no editing or mixing to be done I can simply send the sequence to media encoder and encode based on whatever settings I think are best.

As far as I can tell, this workflow should not affect the original mix in any way. I’m still in the process of getting familiar with all the various Blu-Ray encoding settings at my disposal (MPEG-2 vs. H264, and all the audio options under Dolby Digital), so if you have any thoughts on that front I would appreciate some discussion on those best practics. But the above is my inclination of how to get your original media into Premiere, map your channels and get it to Media Encoder without impacting the original mix as provided.

What do you think?

[Ben Cohen]

Well, I promised I’d come back and give a recap of how it went:

We had 5 HVX200s and 1 HPX500. We had 3-4 P2 cards for each camera (a mixture between 4,8,16 & 32 GB). We strategically gave the cameras that were harder to access for our PAs the 32 GB. We had 3 computers with 1TB each for storage. I had 2 people transfer footage nonstop by creating Disc Images from each card. I found this be extremely smart (a suggestion from my Producer). This allows us to keep the footage at it’s most pure state as a backup forever, rather than transfering everything to HD. I’m not sure if this saved time, although I think it did purely because the folks doing the transfer didn’t have to deal with Final Cut or any software during their workflow.

I had very trustworthy, experienced and focused people doing this transfer for me so I didn’t need to worry about it all day.

Thanks for all the advice from Creative Cow, this was my first P2 experience and it worked flawlessly. Now I have a lot of HD footage to edit. I’ll come back again in a few months and give a plug to the final product which should be in stores near you soon.

[Ben Cohen]

Sounds like a very solid set-up and makes more sense then what I was picturing based on your first post. Unfortunately this concert festival is one week from this Sunday and both budget and time will prevent me from building anything remotely close to that. I’m definitely going to rent some additional P2 cards as well as get as many laptop stations as possible based on Richard and Jeremy’s suggestions in the thread so each camera will have 3-4 cards to ensure that my dumping station has plenty of time between cards.

[Ben Cohen]

That is a good idea, Nate. However, only 2 of 5 cameras will be on tripods and those will need to be semi-mobile because the concert is 10+ hours (I want to move the two tripod mounted cameras between sets to add some variety of shot perspective). So, I would have to deal with moving additional equipment on those two cameras. I would rather go the route of having a dedicated laptop/hard drive for each camera, except still use the dump and run method rather than the straight-to-FCP capture.

Still loving these suggestions though, so please, anyone chime in (see above for my upcoming project details) I promise to come back and update on how the shoot went to round out this case study.

[Ben Cohen]

Thanks, this is great help. I will rent additional P2 cards. Can anyone recommend their favorite P2 transfer method/equipment if I’m going to be dumping footage from 5 cameras throughout the day. I will have 2 laptops available on site – maybe more if I’m directed to do so.