[Job Ter burg]

It’s not about tape formats, it’s about codec variants.

There is actually no such thing as DVCPRO-HD 1080p. There is 23.98p-within-60i and there is 25p-within-50i. Rather than claiming a truely progressive format, they are honest about how they capture and store.
DVCPRO-HD 1080 is an i-codec. Like PAL is an i-codec, as well as NTSC.

The difference with the Sony formats is that their hardware (VTRs) actually can play out a 23/24/25PsF signal from P-tapes. But I don’t think that Sony HDCAM 50i is the same signal as HDCAM 25PsF. You cannot set one deck to playback 50i and record that signal onto another deck at 25PsF, can you?

Do I feel that Sony does a better job at creating P-formats, rather than pulling P down to I? Yes, I do.

So in a way, we agree somewhere, I guess.

However, if you look at BBC delivery specs for HD, they require 1080/50i masters. Even if your content is captured in 25p, they require rolls and crawls to be 50i, and 50i is what they broadcast. So it does make sense to have a camcorder that scans progressively but stores in an interlaced codec from there.

[Job Ter burg]

Terry, I respectfully disagree. The Panasonic camcorder will record into the DVCPRO-HD codec, which is 1080/50i. To accomodate for a “film look”, very popular among European filmmakers, they allow the chip to capture either 50i or 25p. However, the codec itself does not have a p-variant.

As said, not just Panasonic use this method, so do Sony on XDCAM and DigiBeta. So does Avid, by the way. one can shoot 35mm, transfer to DigiBeta at 625/50i (but actually having 25p in there), then capture into Avid in either an interlaced (25i) or progressive (25p) resolution. There are no fields in 3:1p, but there are always fields in 3:1(i).

Actually, in Avid, if you shot 50i and you capture in 25p, you still get a usable end result (unless you use motion effects), simply because the two fields of the source footage will be combined into a signle frame and stored as such, then upon playback in PAL, that frame will be divided into fields again, in the exact reverse way that they were combined before. So the the codec itself can be interlaced or progressive, no matter the actual content.

I think Panasonic has the right logic. Both capture and codec can be interlaced or progressive, independently. They name it for what it actually is.

[Job Ter burg]

It’s not as weird as it may appear, it is actually being very clear.

If you were to call it 1080/25p, well, it simply isn’t. The signal itself is 1080/50i. Just like any old PAL tape will be 625/50i. When I take 35mm film and put it on a telecine and transfer to PAL, the signal on tape will be 625/50i, even though the picture itself is 25p. There’s progressive content stored in an interlaced format.

The Panasonic camcorder allows the chip to capture 25p, but DVCPRO-HD does not come in a 1080/25p flavor, so it stores this 25p within a 1080/50i stream.

It’s not much weirder than XDCAM or DigiBeta, both of which – in their PAL variants – have a 25p progressive mode, both of which store this progressively captured footage in a PAL 625/50i stream.

[Job Ter burg]

Michael is right. Panasonic has a format labeled 1080i/25p which means that the camera chip captures 25p which is stored in 1080/50i DVCPRO-HD on disk.

Just like transferring 25p film to 50i video.

I recently did a P2 project that was shot in this Panasonic mode, and I transcoded it into DNxHD120 non-TR in a 1080/50i project and finished that way.

I haven’t tried this myself, but I think that if you need to deliver a 1080/25p master tape from that, you could transcode the DVCPRO-HD video into DNxHD in a 1080/25p project. Or you might be able to simply switch the Project Format into 1080/25p after editing and playout at 25p.

However, if you need to deliver a 1080/50i master tape, I’d say there’d be hardly any reason to transcode to 1080/25p.

[Job Ter burg]

I disagree a little here.

I’d always recommend to stay on one or the other, I agree on that, but I would not necessarily recommend going FCP all the way over Avid all th way. Obviously, some here would (this forum is crowded with FCP evangelists), but IMHO, why not use a different post house, or why not use your own Avid all the way? If you prefer to offline in Avid, find a workflow that lets you do that.

As an offline/film editor I would feel silly forcing myself to use a certain piece of software (for a considerable amount of my creative time, I might add) just because I need to be compatible with whichever facility out there uses to conform/online. It needs to be the other way around. And any decent post house that onlines on FCP needs to have Automatic Duck anyway, or they don’t mean serious business. IMHO.

[Job Ter burg]

It had nothing to do with financing. I just got a trade-in deal.

[Job Ter burg]

Very much depending on the amount of footage they will shoot. As a ballpark, take in account 50-60 mins of footage per shooting day. Then check the Estimated Storage Requirements section of the Help pages, find the video resolution you plan to use, and calculate the amount of storage you need. In 14:1p, you won’t need as much space as you’ll need at DV25 or 3:1p.

[Job Ter burg]

On your Mac HD, do you see a folder named Avid MediaFiles or a folder named OMFI MediaFiles? Move the contents from either to the external drive. Make sure to place them in the right folders.
Other than that, if this is stuff you imported from DVD, you might simply use Batch Import to reimport the files, and thereby revive the media for those clips (and all sequences linking to them).

[Job Ter burg]

Now keep monitoring where your Avid writes your renders. In my experience, it does not always behave they way you set in the Media Creation settings.

[Job Ter burg]

Use SynchroArts Titan3 to convert a 2-track based cut in EDL form into a PT session linking to the original 8-track BWF files.

Also, there is supposed to be a way to make this happen in PT7, but I don’t know the specifics.