Eric Barker
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Sorry, this was meant for the AE forum.
Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com -
That’s way out of our price range. We’re in market 202 up in Fairbanks, Alaska. We can’t buy into a whole new system just because of a minor feature. You don’t know how much I’ve screamed and banged my head against the wall for a few simple organizational and encoding tools that really should be universal. No direction I look in is perfect, but rewrapping XDCAM structures to MXF files is far and away the most reasonable option for us.
Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com -
Why would I not want standalone files? With BAPV structures, you can’t rename files at the OS level, organize them by content, etc. I want my newsteam to be able to find footage fast, long after it’s been shot and archived. The whole idea of “editting on the camera” as Adobe likes to tout is absurd, because we reuse SD cards over and over again for different shoots. We don’t have Edius or any other professional video server organization package, we’re using Windows and CS5, and up until now, we’ve been very happy with it that way. We shot on Firestore drives for many years, churning out AVI files and organizing them by project content. Now, suddenly, it’s as if the way we do things is completely foreign to everybody, but I can’t really imagine doing it any other way. When I’ve talked to other people about the way we do it, they always end up saying, “yeah, that makes a lot of sense”, yet, everyone’s going out of their way with these over-complicated backup systems that make it very difficult to navigate and reuse old footage.
Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com -
I don’t mean to sound harsh, but this is just not an option for what I’m doing. I am specifically looking for a way to do this within the Adobe suite. I’m setting up a system for a news team who are already upset at the amount of time spent and steps required to manage their XDCAM files. I’m currently having them rewrap them to MXF files, which would be perfect except for the fact that the rewrapping process creates some annoyances with the audio channels (creates 4 mono tracks from one stereo track, ???). I just can’t justify spending any more money, or throwing in any more software into the mix. If I can do it within CS5, I can probably talk them into it, but I’m afraid if I make any more changes, they’re going to go back to using DV tapes, and leave our $3000 HD cameras on the shelf.
Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com -
What’s different about MXF files? I really don’t know much about them, myself. We’re having to use them out of neccessity. See, we shoot on XDCAM EX cameras, which leave behind this horribly complicated BPAV file system… impossible to get Windows to archive and playback correctly. So I’m rewrapping everything to MXF, which gives me individual files I can negotiate. Of course, I’d rather work with MOV or AVI (what we used to work with in SD), but that would require re-encoding, which takes forever. Premiere has no problem with MXF. I typically will build sequences in premiere, and then copy/paste them into AE to do touch-up work, keying, or whatever. Back when using AVIs, it was a really simple, fast process. Now I have to take each clip I use, re-encode it to MOV (usually using the animation codec). Yesterday, it took me 45 minutes. That’s 45 minutes I never had to waste before. I was hoping that with CS5, I could finally just import the MXF files the way I used to do with AVI, but I guess I’m out of luck?
Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com -
That doesn’t answer my question. Using the BPAV folder heirarchy is not an option for us because of issues I do not wish to get into at this time. Since XDCAM HD can be used in .mxf, can XDCAM EX? That is all I wish to know. We use XDCAM EX with .mxf files.
Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com -
Unfortunately (at least in CS3), you can’t. That’s one of my gripes too, but you can’t create modified transition presets the same way you can with effects. You can change the default length of the transitions for both video and audio, but that effects all of them. Fortunately (or unfortunately), Premiere’s transitions have almost no settings, so it’s not like you have to spend 5 minutes reprogramming each one… but then again, if you have a lot of them you have to work with, it adds up.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I was hoping they had added something like this in CS4, but I guess not.
Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com -
That wasn’t what I’m saying. What I’m suggesting is that you buy an internal drive with an external enclosure. An enclosure is a shell that you put over a drive to turn it into an external device.
Basically, all an external drive is is a stock harddrive (like a Western Digital or Seagate) with a shell and little board with an IDE -> Firewire converter. They run about $20 at an electronics store, and will take just about any IDE drive that has a 3.5″ footprint (standard). Manytimes, you’ll pay up to $50 more for an external drive, which is just the same thing. All I’m saying is that you could save some money by buying an internal drive with an external enclosure, than buying a pre-built one like the external drives that Lacie sells.
Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com -
External Drives are simply internal drives with a Firewire enclosure. I openned up a Lacie once, and it was the same Western Dig 160GB internal IDE drive that I had on my old computer.
Sometimes it’s cheaper/better to just get an internal drive and then buy a Firewire enclosure… that’s basically what Lacie and all those companies are doing anyway. Just be sure you don’t end up with a SATA2 drive with an IDE enclosure.
Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com -
I know this doesn’t help you much, but I’ve worked with both FCP and Premiere, and I gotta tell ya, Premiere’s workflow is so much nicer to work with. If I were you, I would go ahead and relearn a few things, because the two programs operate VERY differently, and I’d say Premiere wins, hands down, in terms of editting efficiency. For starters, editing to audio is just so much simpler in Premiere because the waveform is displayed right on the timeline (last version of FCP I used doesn’t have this). Also, LEARN TO USE THE ZOOM BAR! That’s the little bar with handles above the timeline, unlike FCP, it automatically zooms in on your playback head, which is wonderful. FCPs works like AfterEffects, where you have to move the handles individually around your editing point, which is a pain. Probably the best, feature, however, is that the edit windows all have their own zoom and scroll bars, so if you have 20minutes of video, and want to work with just 5 seconds, you can just look at that little area.
I’m a huge Apple fan, been one all my life. I have a Mac Pro at home, an iPod, an iPhone… I cut my teeth programming hypercard back in the day. But when it came time to buy my own video editing suite, though, I chose Premiere Pro. It’s not perfect, the titler’s a bit buggy at times, and some of the audio effects are pretty shoddy (worst reverb ever!), but for a basic editor, either for 30sec commercial spots or 30minute TV shows, Premiere is just much faster and more intuitive.
So do yourself a favor… try to learn PREMIERE first, instead of trying to turn it into FCP, because you’ll just fall falt on your face. Keyboard shortcuts, I can understand remapping (I personally, don’t understand why “n” is snap on FCP, “s” makes more sense), but for basic workflow, you’ll save yourself a LOT of time by not trying to fight it.
Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com