[Mark Raudonis]

eric,

The answer is to media manage your sequence and use an XD-CAM deck capable of more than FAM (File access mode). We’ve used this workflow on dozens of shows. It works. You will be “playing back” the shots realtime and capturing via SDI. This will take some time, but it will be faster than loading ALL of the full clips and reconnecting.

Read the manual on media management. There are plenty of pitfalls depending on your project.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Anders,

We’re in the same boat… been using DVCPRO, just switched to XDCAM HD. We’re on our third show now, and we’ve got thousand of hours of XDCAM media on the shelf.

We use Pilotware (www.pilotware.com) for our logging program since it can ingest and use the low rez proxies for logging. It’s a bit complicated to set up, but once you have it going, it’s a very smooth workflow.

Basically, it works like this. All of our digitizing is in “File Access Mode”, nothing comes in as a video signal, it all comes in as a file. We have BOTH the Sony XDCAM software and Pilotware open simultaneously, and once the proxies are available off of the disc, we send them to a specific folder on the X-SAN. The Full res media is then copied to a different folder on the media and is ready for editing. I really like the XDcam HD workflow. It makes a lot of sense for our type of productions (reality TV).

Good luck.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Rene,

Yep. I’m coming to the conclusion that cheapo t-byte drives in a basic JBOD offer the best price per gigabyte for near term back up. Not archiving, but near term back up.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

[Noah Kadner] “Why go offline then- just cut to the chase and get your project done on time. “

Well, because some projects just have SOOOO much media that it’s too expensive to maintain that much on-line storage. One of our shows shot over 4,000 hours of media last season for a 13 hour episode run. According to my math that’s around 60 terrabytes of storage. High, but certainly doable. Unfortunately, we may have 2-5 of these size shows going simultaneously, so the size of the storage pool quickly reaches the stratosphere.

Too often the response from folks on these lists to problems inherent in the “off-line” workflow is “why do you want to do that?” or “Storage is cheap. Just stay at full rez”.

While I’m happy abandon the “off-line” paradigm when possible, on some projects it just isn’t practical to do so. I too question why Sony and Apple can’t figure out how to get the proxies to play nice with FCP. It’s a shame.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Here’s the secret. (available to anyone who takes the time to read the manual)

This deck has it’s own internal signal generator, no other source needed.

“To turn on the internal test signal generator, hold the F1 (Video In) button in the function menu HOME page for three seconds or more with this menu item set to other than OFF. When the test signal generator is turned on, the display of the VID. IN settings changes to SG. To turn off the test signal generator, press F1(VID. IN) button in function menu HOME page again.”

The manual also shows how to set the timecode to any starting number you want (58:30:00 for example)

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

[david bogie] “Success stories are rare as hen’s teeth.
“

Count me as a success story. We use Compressor everyday to create H.264 files for our web based review and approval site. Our render times for a one hour show have gone from hours to minutes, making this process actually practical. Yes, the software will occasionally require a reset, but the gains in productivity are worth the occasional hassle.

If you’re using compressor with more than one computer, you should absolutely have “Apple remote desktop” installed to help with the setup, monitoring, and organization of your rendering clusters.

We’re tapping into around 30+ G5’s. It works. It can be problematic to set up and maintain, but the timesavings are worth the hassles.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Drew,

We’re in the same boat: multiple HD formats all contributing to a final master. I think you probably already know this, but I’ll just go ahead and say it: There is no simple answer.

If you were 99% in one codec or another, the answer would be clear. But depending on your percentages of random formats, the best solution can be many things. On one show that we’re doing, we’re acquiring in XD-CAM HD (35 mbps) and that’s our choice for the timeline. This particular show has no FX (green screen interviews, for example) and the GRFX are quite simple. So, it makes sense to stay native. We are however transcoding some of the random HDV material coming in for that show into XDCAM HD, so that we can generate the proxies that we use for logging.

On another show, we’re originating in HDCAM, and using prores for the timeline.

As I said, no simple or universal answer.

By the way, if you can afford it, I wouldn’t master to XD-CAM, I’d master to HD-CAM.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

“The render times are killing my workflow!! ”

I feel your pain. We just recently started doing HD shows and many of our interviews are done green screen. Ouch! Our renders went from minutes to hours.

This is why you’ve got to get the latest, greatest, Octo core Mac Pros… it makes the renders manageable. My only suggestion is to either buy the latest, fastest, or deal with it. If you can’t deal with it, direct your frustration and emotion towards Apple’s “Request a feature” forum.
Ask them for distributed rendering in FCP. If you can send FCP rendering to a render farm, that would go a long way towards making this workflow more palatable.

Good luck.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Well, that’s not an issue. That’s an invoice!

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Russell,

Don’t know what you’re referring to. We’re all Leopard, all X-SAN 2.0. No major issues.

The best kept secret about Leopard is using “Coverflow” to browse media. Way cool.

Mark