[Don Hertz]

We typically work at lower data rates and have a nice Nexis set up that we use with Premiere. 4K at higher data rates on a shared solution would be great, but unfortunately exceeds our budget. We keep higher data rate “finishing” work on systems with fast direct attached arrays. Everything else is done off the Nexis.

Don

[Don Hertz]

Thanks Oliver.

Don

[Don Hertz]

Thanks everyone for your responses. The play is coming up in 4 weeks and it looks like we’ll be taking an approach similar to Mark’s suggestions, while trying our best to set the directors expectations properly per the input from Richard and Bruce. We at least are able to shoot a few rehearsals before the actual live show so the director will have an opportunity to hear the quality before everything is finalized and make a different decision if she wishes.

Don

[Don Hertz]

That was exactly what I needed! Never thought to try After Effects. The fact that I can keep queuing them over to Media Encoder and setting up the next one without tying up AE is great too. I already have over a dozen in the que and processing!

Thanks Andy.

Don

[Don Hertz]

Hi Max,

Frame.io thoughts:

I’ve used Frame.io on several projects. It’s great as a review and approval tool, not for true collaborative editing. Our projects were large, so transferring all of the footage through Frame.io was prohibitive from a timing standpoint. Editor #1 preps the footage, folder structure, and creates a Premiere project at his location. Then the entire thing is shipped on a drive to editor #2. Each works on their own part of the video, again, it’s not collaborative. We can then send review versions of our edits directly from within Premiere to FrameIO using their free extension panel. Those reviews can include markers – so we can place notes throughout the timeline before uploading. The producer logs into their Frame.io account (works on web browser, ipad, smartphone, etc.), watches the edit and leaves their own comments. Comments can be general or frame accurate. They can even use drawing tools to circle something on a particular frame that needs fixing. Those comments come back to the editor as markers in the their timeline. We all like the workflow, it’s a step up from using Vimeo but it’s not really collaborative editing. If your project was small enough you could transfer the full resolution video and audio files through Frame.io, but then the workflow is pretty much the same.

Adobe Team Projects:

I have not yet used Team Projects, however, I have used the Adobe Anywhere which is the collaborative editing solution that Adobe is turning into Team Projects. With Anywhere, the production company bought their own servers and ran the entire solution themselves. With Team Projects, it looks like Adobe is installing similar servers themselves and letting users connect to those for the collaboration. At least that’s my guess, since the functionality looks identical to what we used with Anywhere. With that in mind, my notes are specifically based on my Anywhere experience, NOT the newer Team Projects version of the solution. Anywhere is true collaborative editing. Multiple editors can have the same timeline open at the same time, each making their own changes. When changes are made, an icon changes colors for the other editors, letting them know changes are available for syncing to their own system. They can then choose to review what was changed and accept the changes to their own sequence if they want. It’s slick, and worked better than I expected. However, a few things to keep in mind:

1. With Anywhere, the servers were local to the production company (although the editors were remote), so someone there could quickly load up media through a much faster connection than uploading through the internet. With Team Projects, the servers are at Adobe, so all full resolution media will need to be uploaded through Creative Cloud. This could be time consuming based on the amount of footage you have.

2. You’ll want all remote editors to have a pretty fast and reliable internet connection as the servers are streaming the footage into the editing system in real time as you work (and yes, that works!). If the connection goes down, no editing can be done until it’s back. Adobe recommended at least 25mbits to the client at the time, although I know they were working on reducing that through better stream optimization. Our editors each had 50 so it wasn’t an issue. This feature sounded impossible to me until I used it, it actually works, and I had no issues with lag while editing. It felt just like I was working on media at my local machine – although the resolution was proxy level. It sends a full frame when you pause, so we could color grade and tweak effects on full res frames. (The solution did locally cache any frames it had already streamed down too, so that helped that it wasn’t repeatly pulling the same frames down over and over again.)

3. You will probably want to stay away from third party plug ins. In the case of Anywhere, every machine had to have them installed in addition to every Anywhere server in the server room. So you couldn’t buy 1 copy of a plug in, you have to have several. We stuck with built in effects only. I suppose you might be able to work around it by applying the plug in to a clip, exporting the clips, and bringing it back into the project as a new clip with the effect already applied. When a local editor adds a new piece of media to the project, Adobe recognizes it as such and automatically begins uploading it to the server in the background.

4. When we used Anywhere, it only worked with Premiere. If we wanted to take any elements to another software package for additional work, you have to work around it by exporting everything you needed to your local system. Go do the work in a separate software package, then re-upload the new clips to the Anywhere server. It wasn’t ideal, and we mostly kept to Premiere as a result. It looks like Team Projects now supports After Effects and Prelude, which is great. But if you want to take your audio to use Audition, Resolve, Maxon, or anything other than those 3 applications, you’ll need to the exporting/importing routine mentioned above.

5. One benefit of the above server approach is that the servers were fast, and they were handling all of the rendering, not the local Mac, which just became more of a client system. So renders and exports went very quickly as they had the full power of the multiple servers installed in the production companies server room to draw on.

So bottom line, decide how important collaborative editing is to your project, versus just review and approval, and whether the above drawbacks of the Adobe solution outweigh it’s benefits. And as others have said, test both workflows thoroughly before committing! Frame.io has a free version with limited storage space that will let you test all you want before committing to a monthly plan.

Good Luck.

Sincerely,

Don Hertz
DH Media, Ltd.

[Don Hertz]

I finally got it to work. Not sure you actually need Compressor (although I have it).

1. I downloaded the latest Pro Video Codecs 2.0.4 installer as noted.
2. Then I used a free application called “Unpkg” to unpack the installer files.
3. I manually copied the codecs from the package into the “Macintosh HD > Library > Quicktime” folder.
4. After a reboot and re-launching Adobe Media Encoder, I now have the XDCAM codecs back under Quicktime.

After you unpack the files, “unpkg” will create a new folder on the Desktop called “ProVideoFormats”. Inside that folder you need to go to the “ProVideoFormats > Library > Quicktime” folder. That’s where you’ll find the codecs you need to copy over to the Quicktime folder on your Macintosh HD. I’d suggest making a back up copy of your original Quicktime folder on the desktop before giving it a shot.

I’d actually gone through this process once before without luck, but perhaps I missed something in the process. Seems to be working fine now!

Don

[Don Hertz]

I’m running CC2015 on a freshly configured iMac system (thanks to a hard drive failure). I also have the latest version of Compressor installed. XDCAM is no longer available as an option under the Quicktime format. I have to choose MXF to have access to the XDCAM codecs.

At one point, you used to be able to install Compressor or the ProApps Codec package to get them to show up. That no longer works. I’m not sure if there is another work around. I didn’t look into it too hard as my client was fine with me using the MXF wrapper instead of Quicktime.

I’d be curious to see if anyone else has a solution in case it pops up again.

Don Hertz

[Don Hertz]

I agree with most here – you won’t find a sub-$1000 LTO drive but it’s definitely still the way to go.

If you back up to a hard drive and then leave it on the shelf for a year or two without spinning up it can be like trying to start a car that hasn’t been started in 2 years.

At the last production company I worked at we have 30+ external drives on the shelf housing all of our old shows. When the producers decided they wanted to do a “10 year” retrospective on the show we had to go back through a lot of that footage. Approximately one out of every 3 or 4 drives would not work.

In another instance, we had an intern restoring footage from a shoot that happened about six months prior, he made the mistake of grabbing the wrong power supply and fried the drive. No problem he thought, as we make duplicates of every drive in the facility, however, he then plugged the backup drive into the exact same power supply and blew that one out too. He didn’t realize the power supply was the problem, he assumed the original drive was just dead. All the work was gone. None of these are issue with LTO.

LTO is worth the investment. Look into an external drive that supports LTFS as that’s a cross platform file system standard. You don’t want to be stuck unable to restore your data in ten years because the proprietary software you used to backup the files to tape is no longer manufactured.

As far as the comments about not being able to read a specific file format in ten years – that will always be a problem. Just try to stick with common, widely adopted formats. Then in an emergency ten years from now there’s at least a good chance you are going to be able to find a converter that can re-compress the files if you need to. I have no expectations that I’ll be able to open a full Premiere, Avid, or After Effects project 10 years from now – but I at least make sure the video files are in a common format before they go to tape.

Good luck!

Don.

[Don Hertz]

We have 3 newer Mac Pro based editing systems at our facility and they all run great. We’ve budgeted to swap out five more rooms for the new Mac Pros in 2015. We have AJA ioXT’s on them going out to FSI monitors along with Promise Pegasus thunderbolt arrays.

Don

[Don Hertz]

Thanks for your suggestions. I think the Mac Pro is OK at this point. The fans are running normally and everything other than Premiere seems happy.

Don