Mark Spano
Forum Replies Created
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Easier still – you can use Quicktime Pro. Open both the audio and video into QT. Show Movie Properties on the video, highlight the audio track and click Delete. Switch to the audio and select all, copy. Then go to the video, park the play head on the correct in point and under Edit, choose Add to Movie. Check sync and such, then Save As (flattened movie).
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[Shaun O'Brien] “i just need to figure out what to do after post”
My favorite quote of the week…
I will echo most of what the folks here have said and maybe fill in some gaps for you. HDCAM and HDCAM-SR are two different tape formats. HDCAM-SR supports up to 12 channels of audio, while HDCAM supports up to 4 channels. If you are laying off to HDCAM, and mixing in 5.1, you see the issue: not enough channels on tape for your full discrete mix. Therefore, you have several choices. One is to take your 5.1 mix and encode it into a digital bitstream of Dolby E. This will preserve your discrete surround mix and take the 6 channels down to two, so you can fit it on HDCAM. For this to work, you will need to use a Dolby E encoder, and probably want to have a Dolby E decoder on hand to make sure you can hear your mix once it’s on tape. If Dolby E isn’t an option for you, then you may be able to make a Pro Logic encoding. This encodes the 5.1 mix into two channels that are stereo-compatible and when decoded can come back to L, C, R, and mono Surround. Not discrete like what you put in, but it is not a bitstream either, so it can be played back with or without a decoder. You’ll need a Pro Logic encoder for this. If neither of these are options, then you can lay it off in two passes. One pass will have L, R, C, LFe; the other pass will have Ls, Rs, and maybe Lt/Rt. That way you won’t be able to play the full mix at once, but you can put them back together at some future point.
My advice would be to lay off to tape however you can, but also make a Blu-Ray with AC3 encoding for screenings.
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In Export settings, make sure you’re choosing AIFF or WAVE as the file type. PCM/MXF is for AAFs and “Project” will probably also be PCM/MXF. Hope it’s the easy fix…
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[Barry Sales] “I currently have 14 Audio tracks. How many tracks can an OMF handle at one time and what is the easiest work flow for getting her everything in as few steps as possible through.”
The OMF can have all of your audio tracks. If you run into the 2GB limit, the best option is to break up the OMF into two (or more) sections by timecode. The resulting OMF files can easily be reassembled in one Pro Tools session using Match Tracks.
[Barry Sales] “Also, what is the best picture resolution to export for her Video Source?”
If she’s using a Mojo or other Firewire device for video display, then use DV codec (720×480). If she’s using a Decklink Extreme, then use Apple ProRes (up to 1920×1080).
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Looks like you have a drive with XDCAM footage on it. First, I would download the XDCAM Clip Browser app from Sony. That can show you the individual clips on the drive and you will be able to tell what resolution and frame rate they were shot at. Then, if you are using MC 3.5 or higher, you can use AMA to access the clips directly from the drive. File>Link to AMA Volume, and point it to the main folder on the drive under which lies all the BPAV folders and subsequent structure. Have it create bins based on subfolders and it should populate a bin with all of the clips from the drive. A good idea from there is to consolidate all yellow labeled clips to your main media storage, and edit from there. If you need help, look in MC help under AMA, and also check out Sony’s detailed site for both XDCAM EX and XDCAM HD.
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How are you viewing the resulting exported file? If you’re looking at it in Quicktime player, you will only see blended frames – Quicktime player by default blends interlaced material to display as progressive. The true way to see if it really is interlaced is to look at the video output of your NLE on a CRT or step through it on a VTR after it has been output.
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[David Lewis] “Am I right to assume that having the material on an internal hard drive eliminates the need for Proxy files? Or will the Proxy files be more effective in doing an off-line cut to be redigitized in higher resolution (batch digitize, I believe) with used XDCAM material.”
I haven’t used a proxy workflow so I can’t say for sure, but I’ve edited with the consolidated XDCAM footage on an internal SATA 3Gbps drive as well as the shared storage (10Gbps connected EditShare RAID) and both are very responsive without the need to go lower res. XDCAM footage is long-GOP, 25-50Mbps full-raster. If you’ve ever edited with HDV or MPEG2-IMX, you can probably expect similar responsiveness and layer count. I am making an educated guess here – if you’re still considering proxy workflow, wait for others here to chime in.
[David Lewis] “Another question. If I do consolidate, I make straight copy of the footage, creating new media on the hard drive. Do I change it’s codec, from XDCAM to MXF or DNxHD? If I do is there any significant quality loss?”
Consolidating will not change the codec, it only changes the wrapper. It’s basically a two-step process under the hood – one: extract the “meat” of the footage files (XDCAM codec video/audio), two: copy it into an MXF wrapper that can be tracked and used native in MC4. No gain or loss of size/quality is incurred. Footage shows up as XDCAM footage in the bin, same as the linked media, only now it’s in your Avid MediaFiles folder as MXFs.
If you transcode instead of consolidate, then you pick a new codec to re-encode the media to (such as DNxHD, 1:1, etc.). This is basically three step process – one: extract the “meat” of the footage files (XDCAM codec video/audio), two: convert XDCAM codec to new codec, and three: wrap into MXF. The advantages of transcoding to DNxHD that might be realized are: editing with I-frame media instead of long-GOP media is less taxing on the CPU (better responsiveness), and you may have more latitude with pushing color effects. You will not lose quality, but you also will not gain quality. For example, going from a 50Mbps XDCAM codec to a 145Mbps DNxHD codec won’t get any better looking than the original 50MBps, but is enough bandwidth that this “recompression” isn’t noticeable (especially with the awesome DNxHD codec).
For me, I usually go with consolidate over transcode for a few reasons. It keeps the same file size – if you go to DNxHD 145, you will more than double the file sizes from the original XDCAM media. It takes less time to consolidate than it does to transcode – my editors look at AMA and salivate, and it’s all I can do to enforce a consolidate-first imperative. Transcode would just take a bunch more time, and I am willing to sacrifice a little performance hit for a chunk of time in the edit.
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I’ll try to answer a bunch of your questions by telling you exactly what my workflow for this sort of material is. I work at a post house, so I usually just get material from the shoot and have to ingest, edit, and layoff. When this material is XDCAM, I usually get a drive with the contents of the XDCAM discs copied to it (keeping the folder structure intact). I have been lucky so far that most people in our industry understand the importance of keeping the structure. I take this drive and attach it to my edit system and open XDCAM Clip Browser. This will show me generally what’s there and what resolution/frame rate it was shot at. Close the Clip Browser, and open MC4, create project with the same specs as the XDCAM clips. Link to AMA Volume, point to the top folder which encompasses the separate disc folders, and have AMA create a bin per subfolder, keeping the name of whatever the shooter had. Yellow populated bins appear. Now here, you can edit from this, but I find that with a lot of clips and a firewire drive it’s just sluggish compared to my shared storage. Plus, if I have to have multiple editors using this footage, it will slow down tremendously. So before any editing takes place, I consolidate the footage bin by bin, relinking to the new media. This is why I do not worry about later relinking or losing metadata – the clips that are consolidated become the media I’m editing with, and Avid knows its relationship to the new MXF files it made from the XDCAM media. It also keeps a 1:1 relationship to the file size – however large the XDCAM media is is how large the MXF files will be, assuring that no unnecessary up-or-down-conversion happens. MC4 can work with XDCAM media as itself or as rewrapped MXF. Once consolidation is complete, I delete the references to the AMA media (highlight all in yellow (now marked *.old), then delete). Doing this also gives me added security that I now have two copies of the source material – one native XDCAM structure (on the client’s drive) and one rewrapped MXF (in my shared storage). The bins keep the names of the individual “discs” and all metadata from the XDCAM material is preserved. Eject the drive and edit away from the consolidated material.
In your scenario, if you really desire editing from proxy level material, I would create this from the consolidated XDCAM media. That way, there’s already a relationship to the media in Avid’s database and you can probably easily relink later.
I should say this is one man’s way of working with XDCAM on MC4 – but in my experience, it’s been fairly painless and solid.
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I’d say if you’re using MC4, your best bet is to use AMA to see the XDCAM folder. Don’t bother with the XDCAM transfer software to convert footage – the AMA way is easier. Making sure you have the entire disc contents copied, launch MC4 and create a project in the format you shot (e.g. 1920×1080, 59.94i, etc.). Open the project and go to File>Link to AMA Volume. Point it to the folder where you copied the XDCAM disc. Choose Bin(s) Based on Subfolders and click OK. It will populate a bin with all of your XDCAM clips in yellow. You can edit straight from there if you like, or consolidate/transcode the footage if desired. My preference is to consolidate to my main media drive – MC4 rewraps the XDCAM media to MXF and stores it in the Avid MediaFiles folder.
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It’s either a non-optimally set up gate or limiter acting like a gate. Basically, the noise is present in the room constantly, but whoever recorded it wanted to reduce this. With a gate, any recorded level over a set threshold value opens the gate – set the gate threshold for just above the noise floor and you eliminate the noise unless someone speaks or makes a sound above the noise floor. The problem with this is that if there’s a lot of noise, the threshold has to be set high and you get the effect you’re talking about. I much prefer decisions like this not be made on set and instead let the audio post deal with it. You can do a lot on set to minimize noise, but applying gates to your mics as they are recorded isn’t optimal, since you put the next person (in this situation, you) in a spot. The only way to recover (assuming it sounds unusable) is ADR.