[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Good to know. I’m just curious… which decks are you using? Also, what would be the order of your workflow?

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Thank you Ian! That’s all excellent advice. If you don’t mind, I just have a few follow up questions so that everything is in order…

As this would be happening on location shoots, is there a deck in particular that you would recommend? How cumbersome, if at all, do you think this sort of work flow would be? Do you think that a real time dub on location would be advantageous over outputting to tape after ingesting to the Avid?

Obviously, we are trying to find a way to maintain the benefits of a tapeless workflow while remaining cost efficient and satisfying the network’s demands. But hey, isn’t that always the problem?

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

That’s an interesting thought but I know that they won’t accept Blu-Ray data discs for camera masters either. I also just found out that LTO is not acceptable either. It doesn’t have to be DVCPro HD though. It can be anything that’s HD tape.

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Okay, we know for a fact that LTO data tape will not be acceptable. It needs to be some version of standard tape.

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Our final masters are always HDCAM but our camera masters are DVCPRO HD and the network does require them as well. Given that, what do you think?

I do like the idea of a nano flash too though. Thanks for the tip!

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Quick addition to that… It appears that it will run a test on a disk connected via USB only. I was able to run a test on my USB Flash drive, but Firewire drives, e-SATA and even my internal drive are having no response besides what is mentioned above. Again, thank you very much for all of your help and advice!

– Matt

Panasonic HPX170 P
2008 Unibody Macbook Pro 15 inch, 2.8 Ghz, 4GB RAM
CalDigit VR
Final Cut Pro Studio 3
Avid Media Composer
The College of WIlliam and Mary

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Thank you everyone for your advice!

Since I will be needing to do some editing with this drive as well as field dumping, I decided to go ahead with the G-RAID mini and I will keep it in RAID 1. I will also be getting ShotPut Pro and a couple USB drives as soon as I can for straight offloads and back up.

Thanks again!
Matt

Panasonic HPX170 P
2008 Unibody Macbook Pro 15 inch, 2.8 Ghz, 4GB RAM
CalDigit VR
Final Cut Pro Studio 3
Avid Media Composer
The College of WIlliam and Mary

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Thank you Arthur for your suggestions. I had never thought about using SPP. I think though that since I would be having to spend the money on SPP to start and then still have to get a drive or two, I won’t gain anything over cost efficiency. The G-RAID mini is still less than $200. I do like how SPP is extremely good at verification though. Makes it nice. I haven’t had many issues with P2CMS though. Have you ever used the G-RAID or have you heard anything about them?

Panasonic HPX170 P
2008 Unibody Macbook Pro 15 inch, 2.8 Ghz, 4GB RAM
CalDigit VR
Final Cut Pro Studio 3
Avid Media Composer
The College of WIlliam and Mary

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Seems like a simple answer to me. Just look at what your needs are. If you see yourself having a need for being mobile then I would recommend the MacBook Pro. I edit DVCpro HD from my HPX170 on a 15″ MacBook Pro unibody from October 2008 with a 2.8 ghz dual core processor. Long before the i7. While it doesn’t touch a Mac Pro in performance, it gets the job done.

Most important thing is to make sure that your scratch drives are fast enough. I use a CalDigit VR which suits my uses perfectly and I plug it in through either FW800 or eSATA via the CalDigit expresscard. Just depends on what my set up is at the time. I also do plenty of color work and my laptop really does hold up well.

This is the only truly “mobile” option. However, if having a presentation platform is more important than a mobile editing system, than I would say get the MacPro and an iPad.

Panasonic HPX170 P
2008 Unibody Macbook Pro 15 inch, 2.8 Ghz, 4GB RAM
CalDigit VR
Final Cut Pro Studio 3
Avid Media Composer
The College of WIlliam and Mary

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Thank you everyone for all of your help and ideas!

As far as lighting goes, I will have access to the lights that I will need. My biggest concerns would be the locations letting me use them and how to get the powere that I need. Colonial Williamsburg is a very strange place in that way.

I really want to be able to have the most versatile rig that I can get a hold of. I love not having to worry about sound synching, having multiple frame rates, and all of the other advantages of the HPX. However, if I have a cinema adapter on it, then ergonomics goes out the window anyway so that levels out the playing field a bit more. Mostly I will be shooting on a tripod anyway though. I’ll probably be getting the Miller Compass 20.

Truthfully, my biggest concerns are these… flexibility of the HPX in low light, and flexibility of the codec in a post workflow. The nature of the film (ghost / sci-fi) lends itself to generally darker scenes. For that, the 5D seems like the way to go. However, I expect to do some fairly significant color grading in post and more likely than not, some keying and greenscreen effects. For that, DVCPRO HD far beats out the 5D.

I will be doing my color grading in Apple’s Color and rendering out to ProRes422 for the 10 bit environment. (Thank you Noah and Shane from a previous thread).

Of course, no camera is perfect except the Alexa, but given these two concerns, where do you think I need to cut my losses? I’m pretty willing to try some new things too and I have time to experiment so all ideas are welcome!

Thanks again!

Panasonic HPX170 P
2008 Unibody Macbook Pro 15 inch, 2.8 Ghz, 4GB RAM
CalDigit VR
Final Cut Pro Studio 3
Avid Media Composer
The College of WIlliam and Mary