[Bryan Roberts]

Ouch, just realized the price of a Kona 3 – is there a card out there that will allow monitoring in FCP out to a plasma AND do hardware acceleration without all the bells and whistles the Kona 3 card offers which I don’t need?

FCP / AVID EDITOR
Features : Television
http://www.DefiningFilms.com

[Bryan Roberts]

Thanks Doug, it sounds like you have quite an operation there and a great workflow worked out. I sort of have my own little niche market in that there’s a ton of high end post houses (and have friends that work at them) who don’t do any “offline” editing. So I work with them for great rates on deck rentals or getting material captured there and know a few solid colorists who I send my clients to at beautiful post houses where you have to check in with security guards and they escort you to rooms, it’s crazy. That way, I’m not trying to spread myself too thin. Here I do “offline” editing, some audio commentary and some sound design. I leave all the expensive stuff (equipment wise) to the big shops so I don’t have to invest nearly as much $$$ and then have equipment become obsolete or worry about maintaining etc. This way I can also offer slightly more competitive rates because I have much less overhead.

Also, my main goal is to be a feature film editor, it’s why I moved out here. Every seminar, book and talk I’ve ever attended with established film editors have said that they are always independent contractors who never work for post houses or production companies and usually don’t even have their own edit bays but just tell the production what to set up and rent for them (and what I experienced when I lost a big film to the editor from Three Kings and Rush Hour 2 at the last minute before signing a contract several months back – he had the production rent him a fully furnished edit bay for he and his assistant in Hollywood, the total weekly cost was HUGE). So, I’m trying to fall in between this, offer a good edit bay, comfortable and in a safe and nice neighborhood so a film production can save on rental fees but a place where the director and producers would rather come to work than a cold rented out edit bay somewhere deep in Hollywood (I’ve worked at those, they’re ok but very cold and not fun to sit in for extended periods of time). So far, the past 3-4 years it’s been working out well. It really doesn’t take much equipment to edit a feature (a few years back in 05′ when most indie films up to 5 mil or so were almost always doing 35mm offlines on DVCAM, I worked on my old souped up mac mini without a hiccup, it’s only big downside was the appearance) but most rental houses when they hear “feature” jack up the rates and convince productions they need more than they do just for the offline. Also, times have changed as more and more features use Final Cut Pro and FCP’s workflow for film gets better and better so productions aren’t forced to edit with astronomically expensive Avid edit bays.

Anyways, interesting about the Kona card and RT performance. Do you know if the Blackmagic HD Extreme helps with RT performance as well? Otherwise, I might want to look into selling the HD Extreme if I go that route and get a Kona.

Thanks again for your insight Doug…

Bryan

FCP / AVID EDITOR
Features : Television
http://www.DefiningFilms.com

[Bryan Roberts]

Hmmm, thanks Doug. So it sounds like you’ve been enjoying your Clovertown, good to hear. My plan was to actually sell the Decklink HD Extreme and buy a Blackmagic Intensity just for monitoring since I really don’t need the extra features the Decklink Extreme offers. As for the director, yeah I’ve known him for a couple years now, we get along well and he’s very easy to work with so it’s not really an issue of that, it’s more of if I’d rather get paid $$$ for those extra few days I’d be in debt to him (plus the forgone trailer I cut for him – turning that into $$$ or days for the Clovertown, again it would total $3k for everything in work days terms).

So the Clovertowns aren’t necessarily terribly slow by Nehalem standards, just somewhat slower do you think? How’s your RT performance with the Clovertown in FCP cutting 1080 HD (either DVCPRO or XDCAM etc.?).

Thanks…

FCP / AVID EDITOR
Features : Television
http://www.DefiningFilms.com

[Bryan Roberts]

Sorry, clicked to respond to the other posting I’m active in and a pop up ad shifted the screen just as I clicked, didn’t realize I was posting here and then couldn’t delete 😀

FCP / AVID EDITOR
Features : Television
http://www.DefiningFilms.com

[Bryan Roberts]

Looks like Decklink Intensity won’t work on my G5 with PCIe slots, I guess I HAVE to upgrade to a new intel mac unless I want to spend a bunch more on a Decklink Extreme.

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=175#incompatible

FCP / AVID EDITOR
Features : Television
http://www.DefiningFilms.com

[Bryan Roberts]

[Bryan Roberts]

Ah… that’s weird. You would think by now they’d have that implemented especially considering how hard Apple seems to push multiple video cards all the time.

With this card, could you use it as an extended desktop as well or only for playback in FCP? For example, if a client wanted me to play a DVD or a quicktime file they had, could I play it on the big screen through the intensity card WITHOUT being in FCP? Finally, will it play out any format from the FCP timeline or only cetain ones?

Thanks Shane, looking forward to your presentation on colorista Wednesday night…

FCP / AVID EDITOR
Features : Television
http://www.DefiningFilms.com

[Bryan Roberts]

Bah, thanks Dino – I’m always of the mindset import first then export since nothing was loaded but it lets you do it stand alone, very cool. I would go prores but I’m on a G5 and need an intel mac to do Prores capturing on the fly.

When I import this into FCP, do I choose the codec that I plan to online the film at and then reconnect by capturing the tapes from this point? Thanks again…

[Bryan Roberts]

Thanks guys!

For the record, I have PCIe slots, thank god, so my cards can translate to my new machine (waiting for the new Mac Pros to come out, I’ve been fighting an upgrade for a while since my G5 has cut everything I’ve thrown at it thus far but more and more people want prores and xdcam (can’t convert xdcam to QT on a non-intel mac)).

To answer the question – they have no hope of a film out. In theory, if the new version of the film was a smash hit with distributors, they’d have them fit the bill for a film out. What they want is an HDCAM master but I don’t think they’re terribly worried about uncompressed HD etc. In theory, how much worse would DVCPRO HD 1080 look VS. uncompressed 1080 HD if it were ever projected in a medium sized theater? It’s the same resolution, the same amount of pixels so I guess it’s all about color reproduction? As for color correction, they’re really sort of throwing their hands up at this point and just want me to use FCP’s built in 3 way color corrector to do a quick spot job (it was well exposed, no major issues but trust me I know, not a smart path – I’m good with the built in CC tools but again I know, they’re not powerful enough or appropriate for doing an online – I always refer people to a couple different post houses around my place). Finally, the sound editing and mix were done at a really high end shop, actually where Iron Man was mixed (the producer called in huge favors) so I’ll need to pull all those tracks into FCP as well (I believe they have wav or AIFF stems for those).

So it sounds like I have two options here:

1. Online the film to DVCPRO HD 1080 and then run it back to an HDCAM for a master – that would require a capture card such as a black magic card, I could capture straight to a single SATA drive and need to obviously rent an HDCAM deck for capturing and then printing it back to tape…

Or…

2. Online the film to Uncompressed HD and then run it back to an HDCAM for the master. This would require a capture card such as a black magic and then also a hardware raid solution such as the G-speed ES (how many drives would I need to raid together for appropriate speeds? My media estimation tool says a 90 minute film at uncompressed HD 1080 10 bit would require 834 gigs – so 1 TB SATA drive is fine for the Raid drive size but would I need to raid 3 TB’s together, 4?).

The film was cut at 30fps – so regardless of which path I take, I’ll need to convert my EDL in CT to 24? Reverse telecine my EDL?

Thanks guys, I have a good feeling this is going to be a nightmare, and I tried to avoid being a part of this but I’ve been pulled in with promises for big future films, ouch. Oh, I’m located near Burbank by the way…

[Bryan Roberts]

Perfect, thanks for the logic explanation. My logic that I feared was if the logs are based on the DVCAM tapes at 29.97, that if I tried to connect clips for the first time after reverse telecine that those logs would be looking for the same 29.97 frame rate and then not connect properly with the new 23.98 version.

Again, thanks for your answer!