Michael Phillips
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Exactly… there was a whole broadcast/enterprise team doing just that. And don’t forget the ad where it was illegal to export a Mac as it was too fast according to national security standards or something to that effect.
But along the way they discovered and delivered ipod, which got them into distribution, which made every man, woman and child in the world over the age of 5 a target customer for one or all of the products from iPod, to iPhone, tablet, notebook and 30% of content running through those devices. And once they got into distribution it didn’t really mater what system was used to create it, the more the merrier! 🙂
Apple realized early on, a lesson Avid finally did, that selling an editing system into recognizable studio feature film did nothing for those buying consumer editing systems.
Michael
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I don’t think the DNxHD444 has been given to camera manufactures yet, or it has not yet been implemented. Maybe NAB will bring news on that front. Also keep in mind that not all of Arri Alexa’s come natively with ProRes – DNxHD is an additional cost (may have changed but was $5K option when introduced).
As far as quality differences, it is always a more difficult and subjective discussion as it is base on what is being shot, etc. I don’t know of any codec shoot-outs between ProRes and DNxHD yet that have been done. But assuming both are being shot at 1920×1080, it’s going to be very close as far as percentage of zoom into the image.
The differences will be 444 RGB versus 422 YCbCR from a colorist standpoint and to some extent green screens and such. ProRes is 12bit, whereas DNxHD is 10 bit. That is a discussion to have with your colorist.
Which brings the conversation to what is the post workflow for color correction and mastering? This is where some advantages might happen depending several factors. The main advantage is to avoid an offline/online step and conform is a consolidate at best. But if the DNxHD was shot with LogC, you may need to do a dailies pass anyway if editorial wants image back to Rec.709.
Both processes will require AMA link – for DNxHD you want to do so to get all the metadata, and for ProRes you have to. The ProRes has an extra step as the QuickTime AMA does not extract any metadata out of the QuickTime other than timecode. On each card, there will be an ALE created by the camera that you can merge –
ProRes is now a native codec within Media Composer – on OSX you can also render to that. You would need to work in a RGB project at the 444 data rates in both cases to preserve the high resolution throughout. Now it is a matter of do you have the storage and speed requirements to satisfy the type of editing this will entail? For example, is it multicam, lots of layers, etc. Performance will be affected in some manner unless you plan for that.
From an “archive” point of view, I would tend to go 444RGB over a Rec.709 codec if given the choice – regardless of whether it is ProRes or DNxHD. Also, DNxHD 444 takes up more storage space on the recording card or editing storage compared to ProRes, so keep that in mind as well as it affects productions, number of cards, transfer time, etc.
Michael
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Michael H already answered how to merge. I use TextWrangler on OSX for search and replace. Excel can mess up the formatting at times preventing a re-import/merge.
Also note that a merge can be destructive as it is not a true merge function. It will replace any fields with metadata from the ALE, but will replace black if field is blank and there is something in that column already. Make sure the first time you export that it is every column you want to keep. Some columns are based on essence so cannot change or be deleted such as kHz, etc.
Michael
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Or instead of writing timecodes in Excel, why not just log IN and OUT points in Avid MediaLog and drop the master clips into a timeline and create an EDL from there? or for that matter try a merge of the QT itself into those clips?
Michael
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What happened to the EDL from FCP? Can that be used? As far as EDL formatting, and depending on which flavor of EDL, they are all character offset and line-based and not TAB or comma. So Excel may have a hard time exporting that. Open up any standard CMX EDL and count the offsets for each of the entries – that is what will work.
Michael
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Delete the two MSM files in each of the numbered folders before launching Media Composer. Launch MC which forces it to rebuild its database and see if it just links.
Michael
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Is it only the AMA linked media that has this message, or all of it?
Michael
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Are you looking to teach offline/online as an exercise? Looking at the data rates of the AVCH codec, there is no real need to do that as it can be directly linked via AMA and a single transcode to a DNxHD 145 family of codecs will be good enough to master with. The camera records in Rec.709 so that is the project type you will use.
If you want to do an offline/online scenario, you can always transcode to a lower DNxHD data rate such as DNxHD 36, then relink back to the original camera files for finish.
Is this what you are looking to do?
Michael
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Delete the MSM database files in each of those folders on the hard drive as it will force Media Composer to rebuild them on startup. There will be two of them in each of the numbered folders. Delete then when MC is not running, then launch MC.
Michael
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James is pointing to one of the fundamental issues is AMA. While Avid marketing will list all the advantages of AMA, it is light on the more day to day realities of using AMA in all situations. You are also somewhat constrained by codec data rate and drive and how full it is combined with number of layers of video being combined for playback in real time.
AMA to ProRes using a plug-in architecture that provides a decoder as a host – in this case, QuickTimes. That is great as it provides access to many codec types out there not natively supported, but adds additional process steps to the decode and playback of the content. All of this adds up to a less performant experience to an Avid natve codec being managed by Avid MediaFiles structure wrapped in MXF.
V6 added ProRes as a native codec when managed by MXF in MediaFiles folder but that was a result of a fast import. v6.5 does bring you the ability to consolidate ProRes to MXF wrapped ProRes which is faster than an import and keeps the native Prores codec.
But, the next thing you are running into is high data rate codec attempting to play layers and such on a drive that is getting full and only has so much sustain data rate power. All of this adds up to performance hits.
Typically, when dealing with long form productions using ProRes 444, it is best to transcode to a lower data rate for editorial such as DNxHD 36, which is great quality, lots of storage, and great performance. When done, a relink to the hi-rez 444 files while in a 444 project type will be the way to go. If the 444 were recorded with LogC, then I usually make dailies in a product like Resolve, Cortex, or others system that can apply LUT to Rec.709 beforehand for editorial.
In your scenario, a consolidate may being a bit better performance as it removes QuickTime decode from the pipeline. But then you still have to deal with drive performance, full drive, and limited connection for hi bandwidth multi-layer playback.
If you are getting near the end of your edit, you can always transcode just the sequence to DNxHD with handles, and deal with new material accordingly as a way to minimize the amount of transcode you need to do at this phase of the process.
And while on the topic, you can read this whitepaper which touches on a lot of the offline/online workflow when working with ProRes and other digital cinema camera type files:
Avid doesn’t make it easy to find unless you know that you’re looking for it. Would be nice to link it from the AMA and RED landing pages…
Michael