[Mike Smith]

Good luck Boritz – sounds like a fun project.

I didn’t take in that you’re doing the main edit – slow of me.

I gues issues for you may include how to complete: if you don’t have a scanned hi-res version, and want film output, you may be wanting to go back to the negative and have a neg cut at the end for your master version – in which case you’ll need some system / software to track the negative edge numbers and tie them up with your video edit ..? I think you may be disappointed by a standard-def video-to-film transfer. If you are going to a neg cut, of course, you don’t have to worry nearly so much about quality / choice of codec – you can choose somemthing more compressed and ease the load on your system.

Don’t know how you’ll get the video onto your system without a capture card .. unless you maybe run it through something to convert to DV and take it in firewire. In which case you might as well capture in DV codec.

Five hours of rushes will take pretty well all of your disc space, in uncompressed … but it’s very little to play with to put a full length feature together ..

So definitely good luck!

Mike

[Mike Smith]

Good luck Boritz – sounds like a fun project.

I didn’t take in that you’re doing the main edit – slow of me.

I gues issues for you may include how to complete: if you don’t have a scanned hi-res version, and want film output, you may be wanting to go back to the negative and have a neg cut at the end – in which case you’ll need some system / software to track the negative edge numbers and tie them up with your video edit ..? I think you may be disappointed by a standard-def video-to-film transfer. If you are going to a neg cut, of course, you don’t have to worry nearly so much about quality / choice of codec – you can choose somemthing more compressed and ease the load on your system.

Don’t know how you’ll get the video onto your system without a capture card .. unless you maybe run it through something to convert to DV and take it in firewire. In which case you might as well capture in DV codec.

And five hours of rushes

[Mike Smith]

Hi Boritz

Your friend’s feature could have been filmed in a number of different ways on 35mm film stock, for viewing in different film (or video ) aspect rations. The choices include (but are not limited to!) anamorphic widescreen, cropped widescreen and “academy ratio” – 4:3. Your friend should know what was used, and why.

The telecine operator will have tried, probably, to stay close to the desired original aspect ratio, and will have output either either “squeezed” (anamorphic) widescreen in 16:9, or just possibly, academy ratio – again, whoever commissioned the telecine should know. So you should be able to trace the desired picture aspect ratio that way, and compare that with your intended output ( why would you want to re-edit the feature, on video ..?)

Betacam SP with a good telecine supplying the images should have produced an excellent recording, in full broadcast quality. Editing it in DV will substantially cut the picture quality – not really desirable if you intend to broadcast your edited version, but maybe no trouble if you do not plan to add effects or try colour correction, and plan final output as DVD (just about), VHS or some compressed format.

Otherwise your choice of codec will depend on what your capture card will support – uncompressed 10 bit would be good, but put a heavy load on system storage and other resources. Unless you edit uncompressed 10 bit, it’s not likely that using DigiBeta would have improved the end result – and even then it’s quite likely that the quality of the telecine transfer will be the limiting factor …

Hope this helps.

[Mike Smith]

I’ve seen a neat 2D animation of this in a CD ROM attached to a genetics / biochem textbook .. can’t remember title though.

It should be possible to get good results in AE and Photoshop, if you design your visual look in PS, and use AE image distort / warp effects to animate. A 2D, cell-cutaway look might give a more insightful view of what’s happening than the “blobbiness” of a metaballs-style look ..? Of course if that’s what you want you could still generate the look in PS and use AE to animate, so long as you’re not trying to move around the object in the depth plane …

Good luck with it. I remember understanding the stages much better after seeing the animation than after several readings of the list of stages.

[Mike Smith]

Hi Ruby

Sorry for any confusion.

If you’re capturing your video (and maybe monitoring it for editing) via firewire, then you’re using firewire for capture and there’s no other capture card to worry about.

Capture cards for video are made by a number of manufacturers, and give you connections and software to get video into your computer from various different formats (HD, DigiBeta, BetaSP, VHS, Hi 8, whatever).

If you have Firewire built in to your computer, that will handle the DV family of formats for you (including HDV, if the computer is powerful enough and your software will handle it, or other video formats if you have a player with a Firewire interface.)

You just have *normal* concerns that your system and software should be WinXP SP2 compatible. There were some significant changes in how XP works with SP2, and some hardware drivers and software applications need updating to run with it, though this usually involves no more than downloading some software and installing it.

There are good computing / security reasons to consider SP2. For many people it’s straightforward: if you have concerns abotu updating Windows, maybe your computer supplier can help you?

Some links
https://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/security/expert/russel_installsp2.mspx
https://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_can_i_safely_upgrade_to_windows_xp_service_pack_2.html

All best

[Mike Smith]

I’m lucky enough to have AE 6.5 and PPro 1.5 running and stable on XP with SP2, using firewire and a Decklink card … there may be issues with other capture cards? As I recall, the Matrox RTX100 needs an update (“hotfix”) for SP2 compatibility.

[Mike Smith]

Hi Matt

Good to know things are moving along.

For my part, though, I’d hope we are going to keep an option to capture DV PAL in standard lower-field first, for compatibility / firewire system editing …? I don’t know what route you’ll take – optional field dominance on capture,to allow for standard material or Decklink-output compatible choices? Or something in the output drivers to reverse field dominance on playout? No doubt you’ve come up with good choices….

Thanks

Mike

[Mike Smith]

Hi Matt

Thanks for the thought.

I guess you must have a machine control plugin (maybe supplied with a capture card?) to be running a digibeta recorder from PPro? With the DVCAM machine here there is only one screen following the export to tape option. For Decklink (Extreme) projects, exporting to tape with Decklink deck control allows a choice of assemble or insert edit / track selection, but firewire control of the DVCAM does not.

For my current little issue, it looks like the DVCAM DSR 25 will not support insert editing in miniDV mode, so for this job I’ve output the whole programme to a new tape.

When I get a moment I’ll run a test or two to see how the “assemble at timecode” option functions on DVCAM …

[Mike Smith]

BlackMagic Design have some cheap Decklink cards with broadcast video out on various conectors (component, SDI) which should plug into your broadcast monitor.

[Mike Smith]

It’s a thought.

Truespace, though, for all its interface quirks, allows extensive customisation of shortcuts, and has a little menu/panel where you can browse or search through all commands and their current shortcuts, and even save an html list for printing. Not too difficult to implement, and very useful. Adobe listening ..?

Meanwhile it sounds like the Bella keyboard may be worth a look!