Gord Stephen
Forum Replies Created
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Shane Hurlbut’s doing some neat stuff too – https://hurlbutvisuals.com/blog – how many people can say that they’ve mounted a Panavision Primo to their 5DMkii?
https://hurlbutvisuals.com/blog/2009/09/09/panavision-primo-primes-cinema-quality-imagery/
Gord
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The HV20/30/40’s a $600 consumer camera that outputs uncompressed 4:2:2 over HDMI, like most other consumer cameras do. Which is the frustrating part…
I agree that the NanoFlash offers a whole new level of portability, which is a good thing, but at the same time it costs 10 times the price of the Blackmagic or Matrox. It would cost more than your camera body too… So yeah, I guess it comes down to the workflow you can afford/are willing to pay for. Speaking only for myself, if I really needed the quality, I’d be willing to cart around a laptop and breakout box. And if I really needed the mobility, then I’d happily accept 45Mb/s H.264. It’s definitely nothing to scoff at.
Real video cameras with DSLR-sized sensors can’t be too far away – Canon hasn’t put out a pro video camera in a while, I’d be willing to bet that their next one makes the jump. But yeah… it’ll definitely be priced like a pro video camera too.
Gord
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If you always had an ‘unblemished’ external monitor for looking at your shot, and if the on-camera screen stayed on while you used that monitor, and if you just used the on-camera screen as a touch-screen interface, that might be cool. But that’s a lot of ‘if’s.
I had a touch-screen Sony Handycam a while back – it was ok. Touch to focus was kind of neat, I’d imagine it would be even cooler with shallow DOF. The screen definitely got dirty though.
It sounds like something they might use to market an entry-level camera. I’m all for them giving it a shot – just as long as they don’t force anyone to use it who doesn’t want to.
Gord
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Well, I’m not the guy to talk to about FCP, but from what I understand in FCP7 Apple introduced ProRes 422 (LT) – a lower bitrate variant of ProRes 422. That would cut your file sizes right down. Of course, I guess it’s a matter of whether or not it’s worth the upgrade…
I’ll defer from here to someone who actually knows what they’re talking about… 😉
Gord
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What format are you transcoding to right now? And what NLE are you using?
Gord
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Amen – Not just for the NanoFlash, but for lower-cost capture solutions like the Blackmagic Intensity card and the Matrox MXO2 Mini too. Record straight to ProRes, CineForm, uncompressed… whatever.
Maybe one day… V-DSLRs have come so far in a year, who knows what’s possibly in another?
Gord
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What if you do your edit and then give him the original AVCHD files (with timecode references) for the clips you need effects work done on? Then he can do whatever works best for him as far as acquiring the footage and working with it. If he does that and the final titles, etc, all at once, it should at least cut out a few re-encodes. Does Shake import EDLs?
In a perfect world, you’d be going between Premiere and AE, or FCP and Motion, etc, and could fire sequences back and forth without ever needing to render anything out (Automatic Duck can help with going renderless between software packages… but I don’t think that there’s a Premiere to Shake version). Any time you need to render something to send it to another software package (on the same computer or not), you’re going to take a recompression hit. Your choice of codec can help to minimize that though – the good ones won’t degrade image quality too much after a few re-encodes…
All that to say that the bigger problem here isn’t going between machines or platforms, but different software… So no need for your friend to buy another computer.
How long-term does this workflow need to be? Is this just for one project, or is it a more permanent partnership? If you’re going to be working like this for a while, than you can look at streamlining the fundamental process – but if it’s just for one project, I would just pick a cost-effective, cross-platform, high-quality codec, give the back-and forth procedure a test run like Noah suggests, and if the whole process checks out as ‘good enough’… just muscle through it.
Then the question becomes what codec to use… hmm… why does that seem so familiar?
Gord
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[Shawn Whiting] “Neo HD is the least expensive option for re-wrapping between Mac and PC as neoscene’s HD link does not have that feature activated”
Oh, wow, my bad… yeah, that’s going to be expensive for a temporary workflow. (Actually… if you think about it, only one of those licenses needs to be able to re-wrap, not both… but you’re still looking at a lot of money.)
What exactly is your back-and-forth process going to be? You capture off the SD card, potentially transcode, edit, send your effects editor clips to work with, he or she works on them and renders them back out, sends them back, and then you drop those clips back into your timeline? Or something totally different? Knowing the exact process (particularly who needs to be able to encode and who, if anyone, just needs to play footage back) should help in developing a good solution to your problem.
[Noah Kadner] “ProRes is support on both Macs and PCs and it’s free with the QuickTime Player.”
For the record… CineForm playback is free and cross-platform too – it’s just encoding that you need a license for – and you can encode to it on both Macs and PCs. (I’m not a fanboy, honest! :p)
Gord
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Hey Shawn,
I don’t have any actual experience with a cross platform workflow, but I know that it’s a fairly simple process to rewrap CineForm files back and forth between .avi and .mov for going between Mac and PC. Transcoding to CineForm would be my suggestion for dealing with AVCHD anyways. The format’s 10-bit 4:2:2, and essentially visually lossless, so no worries about quality loss.
The trickier part is that you would need to buy licenses for both yourself and your effects editor if you both need to be able to transcode/render out the CineForm files. NeoScene is the cheapest option at $129 a license… Depending on your budget that could be an issue.
Hope that helps a bit,
Gord
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Worst case, the software will output a preview at 480p no problem – and that’s already much better than your flip-out LCD regardless. I think DV Rack only outputs a max of 720p for monitoring anyways, so you don’t need a 1080p+ monitor to take full advantage of the software’s capabilities.
Gord