[Colin Powers]

Hi Christian,

Can you give a few details on what kind of switch is working for you? Any other technical details to setting up this kind of sharing arrangement?

We have a project that looks like it needs the same sort of low-budget approach. Did you “serve” the media from your fastest machine?

Thanks for any advice you can give.

Colin

[Colin Powers]

Another related question has arisen: How are people ingesting the XDCAM SP material? Firewire through the auxiliary iLink/HDV card on the PDW-F30 deck? Throught the SDI out on the F70 deck or the F350 camera? Or via component HD? Is there significant degradation going component into the Kona card?

Thanks for your thoughts on this.

Colin

[Colin Powers]

We’re making mostly half-hour shows. For the next six months we’ll be mastering to BetaSP and JVC D9 formats via component video. My understanding is that, with a Kona card, we can output component video from an HDV timeline without significant render time. We will be doing color correction, mostly straight cuts and dissolves, and very little other effects. I expected that if we want an HDV master we’d have to render overnight, but that can happen after time-critical show delivery on the other formats.

After six months or so we’ll delivering our shows via some digital (I presume SDI) pipe, directly to a broadcast server, but the delivery codec is yet to be defined. I fear it will be HDV which will then be further compressed (via hardware compressor) for HD broadcast. This will mean we’re back to the long render times. I’m hoping we can deliver in a higher bit-rate format to sidestep this.

Thanks for all the thoughtful comments and suggestions.

[Colin Powers]

Thanks everyone for helping clarify this. I had sort of figured we’d shoot most of our stuff in XDCAM SP for compatibility and save HQ for our one hour special docs. Then go with the Kona capture card and DVCPROHD codec.

Just to confirm, Wayne you are capturing in real time through your capture card to the DVCProHD codec from either an XDCAM or HDV deck, then saving time in rendering afterward? Therefore losing the tapeless advantage, but saving in render and output time. (And getting a little boost in quality.)

Also disappointed to hear about the M2T files on the Sony drive unit. Didn’t factor that in…