[David Wulzen]

sooo….I gave it a shot downconverting through Compressor. I don’t have Raylight, and unfortunately I didn’t have the time today to test whether or not Compressor can access MXF files directly, but I did have some already quicktime “wrappered” P2 media that I ingested through FCP.

With the minimal tests I did do, it did seem to give me an ok result. I couldn’t test it against DVCProHD footage downconverted through the Kona, but next week I will and let you know the comparison. It is kind of a pain to ingest through Final Cut, then through Compressor, but it’s less time than dumping the whole thing off to tape. Would having Raylight dramatically change things?

And Shane, you are right, it would make more sense to downconvert the HD first rather than doing it up and back down. This option would be in preparation to working in full HD somewhere down the line, and to give me the most flexibility possible since we are more than likely not going to be sticking to strictly DigiBeta and P2.

Thanks for both of your input. It’s greatly appreciated.

[David Wulzen]

[Shane Ross] Again, you don’t capture with this format, you “injest” or “transfer.” The camera has component outs, and I suppose you could capture via the Kona that way, but you won’t get timecode reference…a must to have.

I was meaning whether or not it would be wiser to shoot on a different HD format, like HDCam, XDCam, etc. and then upon capture, do a downconversion. Since we don’t have to rent any hardware with the P2, this is obviously not the first choice though.

[Shane Ross] given this situation, it would be better to downconver the HD to work wiht the SD footage.

Even though the downconversion process of dumping the footage to DigiBeta is not the preferable option, would you still suggest this over doing an DigiBeta upconversion (if say, we actually had a Kona 3)?

[David Wulzen]

You nailed it right on the head: we do in fact want to shoot it in HD so whenever it is down the road we can display it in its true format, we have it available.

I’ve thought about the option of laying it out on a single timeline and downconverting it to DigiBeta. All of this footage is interviews, ranging from half an hour to 3 hours, so its a little time consuming to be recording out to tape when I have several interviews at a time.

Is there anyway to convert the P2 codec upon ingesting? Or for this particular scenario (with the Kona LHe and not 3) would it be wiser to shoot on a different HD format and do the downconversion when capturing? Is this even possible?

Thanks for your input!