[Jeremiah Black]

“We actually color correct all our DVCPro HD material either in a DVCPro HD timeline in FCP or in the DVCPro HD codec in Final Touch HD. It’s absolutely gorgeous.

As Shane notes, 10bit just gives you larger file sizes, no increase in quality. We work DVCPro HD codec all day, just about every day here and have no reason or need to go to 8bit or 10bit ‘uncompressed’ codecs.”

Walter,

thanks for the response. I know that you never go back and recpture uncompressed; I have read many disagreements you have had with this with other people on the board. And that’s cool. But I don’t like recompressing my compositing and color work. This is why I like to work in an uncompressed space and keep it there. As far as rendering out 8 bit or 10 bit. True, there is NO benefit to capturing 8 bit material @ 10 bit, but there is a great benefit to rendering 10 bit if you’re coloring and compositing in a 32 bit or 16 bit environment. It keeps it so that what you saw is what you get after the render EXACTLY, whereas rendering back out to 8 bit after coloring ina 16 bit or 32 bit space, there are some rounding errors and the image is a bit off. If all the work you do looks great to you, then go for it- that’s awesome. But, matematically there is a real difference, and, more importantly, to my eye, as well. Do some test footge, run it thorugh scopes, you’ll see. It’s not a HUGE difference, but that extra 5% is worth it to me as the colorst. As an alternate solution, you can color the DVCPROHD footage wihout recapturing but then render it out as uncompressed. That’s pretty good, if you don’t want to rent a deck again, but i found that hardware decompession is a bit softer than software decompression.

Thanks again, Walter. I know we disagree on this, but thanks for the post.

[Jeremiah Black]

“Blackmagic cards automatically convert off speed footage as you import. No need to use the frame rate converter. I would check the black magic web site for additional details.”

Chris,

haven’t heard this before and couldn’t find anything on Blackmagic’s website to verify it. IF so do you know the settings that would be necessary? Have you done it? OR can you direct to someplace documenting this?

thanks,

– JB

[Jeremiah Black]

“Well, if you wanted to do that, you could capture 8 bit uncompressed 23.98. It should remove the duplicate frames.”

Okay, that’s a relief. I was worried about it not detecting and removing the captured frames over SDI.

“What are the specs for your final delivery? What tape format? What resolution…1080p, 720p?”

delivery will ultimately be 1080i – D5. So, I’m just doing an 720p online, and I’ll Teranex to 1080i. If I had a Kona3 I could cross/up convert to tape after I’m done, but I don’t. So, I’ll take my uncompressed 23.98 720p timeline to a post house and have them make it 1080i on D5 tape.

“If you had the Kona 3 you wouldn’t need to do all this. You could color correct at your current resolution (which is full resolution), then output to the format you needed.”

I’m a colorist and I don’t like color correcting in an compressed space. There’s heavy CC work being done, and a lot of layers of graphics being overlaid in FCP for the final. I will want to work in an uncompressed space.

“DVCPRO HD is an 8-bit codec, so going 10-bit gains you nothing but file size.”

Yeah totally right, but I’ll render out my color correction from after effects at 10 bit, since I color in a 32 bit space.

thanks, Shane, I was really worried about that flagged frame issue.

ONE last question: If FCP removes the flagged frames duting capture, then, in theory, my hard drive RAID doesn’t have to be 132 MB/sec, since it only has to capture 23.98 frames, not 59.94. So I should only need a sustained write speed of, say, 66 MB/sec, right? I’m just hoping I don’t have to clear my drives and restripe another one into the mix to boost my speed. Right now my Raid is going a 100 MB/sec, and I REALLY hope I don’t have to wipe it, add another drive, and restripe.

[Jeremiah Black]

Well, I don’t need to recapture the slo-mo over firewire- I still have the original captures. So that’s one step out of the way.

But what do you mean by “be properly resolved”. Can I use cinema tools to slow to 59.94 to 23.98?

[Jeremiah Black]

peter,

Thanks for the link to the great countdowns! And thank to everyone here for chiming in to give a little help. I really appreciate it, and can’t thank everyone enough.

[Jeremiah Black]

my idisk is jeremiahblack@mac.com. Thanks- I really appreciate it!

[Jeremiah Black]

richard.

I love a copy of it! Would you like to put it on my idisk server?

[Jeremiah Black]

arnie,

yeah, sorry, I meant a countdown from 10- not just the sync pop at 2. I wasn’t too happy with the FCP5 countdown, so I was looking for another one.

[Jeremiah Black]

matte,

thanks, but I’m really looking for an old, film style 2 pop for artistic reasons, not merely for sync. Any ideas on where I could find one?

[Jeremiah Black]

bob,

great advice, but I had to lay something off right then and there that night for a screening that was going up in 4 hours on a sunday night- no time to run out and buy a quicke blackburst gen! Thanks for the tip, though, and in the future, I’ll pick up a generator. As I said, because of time constraints, I did do the loop trick, and (for what it’s worth) it did work fine (on both assemble edits and insert edits). So, could you explain the added value of buying a true blackburst gen?

thanks for the help,

-JB