Richard Herd
Forum Replies Created
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[Craig Johnson] “I always edit in ProRes 422 in FCP”
[Craig Johnson] “t reads video files as .mov files”
Video files have two basic components: the video codec and the file format. So ProRes 422 is the codec and it is .mov (the format).
In order to see the wavform in Premiere, you have to twirl down the little triangle.
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Lots to discuss here first.
The proper way to deal with .mts is to copy the entire Camera Archive (all of the folders) to a media drive, and then open Premiere and using the media browser inside premiere, navigage to the camera archive and open the private folder. Then, drag them into your project pane. Then, right click and create a new sequence from media.
If the shooter simply gave you the .mts files (which is the wrong way to deliver footage), then convert them to APR 422 LT (making sure the Frame Rate is the same as the .mts) using Adobe Media Encoder.
If you do not have the APR 422 codec then you can google around for it, and learn how to install it. It’s easy enough to do, but not that straight forward.
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[Tim Wilson] “very interesting reading”
Thanks for the link. I read that article (or parts of it) about once a month.
I think the issue John Heagy was brining up is
[Tim Wilson’s Article] “A number of years ago some IMAX engineers – and I don’t think IMAX ever let these guys out of their lab again — did this wonderfully elegant experiment at the Large Film Format Seminar at Universal Studios Imax theatre. They showed this film they made that began with 2 rows of 2 squares: black white, white black, as if you had 4 pixels on the screen.
Then they started to double and double and double the squares. Before they got to 4K the screen was gray. Do you know what the means? There was no longer any difference between black and white, which is what allows you to see sharpness. It’s the contrast that we see, not the actual information. Technically, the MTF (Modulation Transfer Function) was zero at 4K! …
This is why I honestly think that in the future, one direction we’re going to have to go is to higher frame rates, not more pixels.
Somebody said that the perfect thing would be 60 frames a second at IMAX. Kodak would love that. [laughs].
EDIT: Regarding HDR, I asked once in the cinematography forum in anyone had ever tried modifying a 3-chip camera into an HDR motion capture. 3-ccds, one exposing for highs, one exposing for mids, one exposing for shadows. I keep thinking I’d like to try that with my AG-HVX200, but I’m not even sure where to begin.
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Nobody really likes to talk about this anymore, but it was a big deal when Red started claiming their camera was 4K (and it isn’t).
But here you go: https://library.creativecow.net/galt_john/John_Galt_2K_4K_Truth_About_Pixels/1
EDIT: adding the link to the video of Demystifying Digital Cinema Camera Specs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqq8QKMmtYg
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Most are still still shot on Kodak.
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On a similar but nuanced issue…
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[Lars Sommer] “create a 2 hour long movie”
Feature films are broken into three or four reels of similar running time.
I think it’s wise to create 1 project file per film reel. (I know they aren’t reels anymore, but the name has stuck.)
The first step then is to manage all of the media using the operating system. Organize roughly by Act 1, Act 2a, Act 2b, Act 3. Because you’re telling a story, you want to make sure your dramatic beats are correct, so i start there. Often at the denouement, because everything being cut aims at that big emotional thing. You’re telling a story, so those dramatic beats have to be right.
In your project you will want to create several folders/bins: Sequences, Audio, Footage, Graphics, and so on. I also keep one called zDelete and when I delete stuff, I don’t really delete it, I dumped it in there, out of view.
When you finally start to edit, you’ll want to use the Media Browser to import your camera archives. And you’ll want that to be in pretty good detail by footage, scene, camera angle, etc. And then when you make your sequences, start with Scenes. And then cut the scenes.
Later, you can stitch them together in a sequence called Act 1, or REEL 1.
It goes like this:
1. Media Manage and Get Organized.
2. Review Footage for Scene 1 and mark it up with markers and basically get to know the shots and coverage. Trying to really feel the tone and pacing and contemplate a visual style.
3. Assemble Edit (pretty loose, things are just in basic order) pretty much what the script reads. Copy/paste the assemble edit and rename to…
4. Rough Cut (this is tighter and audio elements start to get placed, dramatic effect is important along with good editing style — you’d show other members of the production this. Adhere to the 1 page of script = 1 minute of screen time axiom. Here, you gotta get brutal and make decisions. That’s why you edit. You might even see separate narrative threads, and you’ll want to cut each one and get critique.
5. Fine Cut (this is it, elements are where they need to be and you’re almost ready for color correction and to export for audio)…so export your Fine Cut as a single media file, and lay it back on top of your previous sequence. As you need to change things, you slice that exported fine cut, like a skin on top, and get into the guts.
File naming convention and sequence naming convention is important. SCENE01_20140204_ROUGH_V1
and so on.
Go slow. Have fun 🙂
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[Jeff Pulera] “Copy entirety of SD card to hard drive”
Where they are copied matters. To do things entirely correctly, you need to copy exactly as Jeff said, and also to another drive, and if you can, one more drive (that’s three places) because you don’t want to lose your camera archives.
From time to time, email yourself the project file, so it has a back up too.
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[Bob Zelin] “their “great talent” will separate them from “the pack” is only going to apply to hi end clients,”
There are millions of mom and pop shops in this country who have invested everything everything everything into their sandwich shop, or boutique, or book store, or flower shop, and they’ve been doing their business the same way with the same returns for years, but now their children are going to college, or their retirement needs bolstering, or they want a vacation, and that means they need to generate business and advertise. They need my help to make something compelling that will get the other local folks off their you-know-whats and into the local shops — away from the multinational companies.
Shop local!
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Have you seen this page? It might help: https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/tech-specs.html
With regard to scratch disks, here is the PP interface:
So you can see what I’m working on 🙂 More importantly, these scratch disks are used to store media files, so they are fast. As a mograph artist and commercial editor, I often run multiple layers of video in the same timeline, so each layer of video doubles the amount of necessary throughput. On the full rez stuff you were contemplating, you will need one of the fastest GPUs out there and also the scratch disk could be a RAID (obviously, RAID 0) being the fastest. In the old days, the scratch disk was literally a place where the media sat only during the editing session — because they were very expensive SCSI gadgets. Now that’s an old-school term, because the drive space is cheap enough where you can keep many projects on the scratch disk — so in practice we call it the media drive, or the video drive, etc., but the legacy term of “scratch disk” remains — as you can see. You could even have 4 separate separate scratch disks depending on various stuff (like where your audio engineer puts their sequence, and how its conformed). For my workflow, I try to keep the files “same as project” but these are not the drive running the OS.
I’ll be curious what system you set up.
