[Rich Rubasch]

We do have FCP 6.0.2. I do not have Fields Kit though I have seen it come up a lot on the COW.

Again, I don’t mind a third party solution…I was just hoping there was a simple method. I believe now that the best method is to have the cameraman shoot 29.97 to begin with!

Thanks for the lively discussion.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

~And you couldn’t work @ dv50 23.98~

We also had a bunch of DVCAM footage…Delivery was DVD and a DVCAM final tape output. We cut it on an Aurora Pipe FCP system, not the Kona system.

As for converting the Beta material, I got the actual broll Betas on Saturday and had to have three videos ready to Fed Ex on Monday. I ended up still fixing two shots on Monday and they FTP’d the final cut from our server late Tuesday….the show was Wednesday morning!

I actually let AE do alot of the frames management. Did a pretty good job too. I exported everything in its native format and built it in the wide comp, then did a final squeeze into the 1920 x 1080 comp.

Again, things would have been very simple if I could have had an easy way to take the hard drive 23.98 clips and make them 29.97 (59.94) to use and mix with the other footage.

Which is what this post is about, but I keep getting the suggestion to work at 23.98, which Bob Zelin has argued against, and in most of our workflows, I agree wholeheartedly.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

This sounds like one of those things that in the future we’ll look back and say, “Remember when our P2 cards were so small we had to shoot 10 second clips! Now we just keep the camera rolling with all the space we have.”

1 Terabyte P2 cards anyone?

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

Ok, for one project I got a drive with about 50 clips on it. All 23.98 720p. We were cutting SD, so I strung them out and output to the 1200 deck. I batch digitized the clips back in at DVCPro50 SD. All was well, except I had to do the output and redig.

On a second project I got a mix of 1080i DVCProHD, 720p 23.98 clips and betacam. The scren size was 2840 x 860. All the interviews were green screen. I exported those separate right to AE. I also exported all the broll. I wanted to do a precut in FCP mixing all the footage (I only have the Kona LH, so upconverting was out on the Beta stuff). If I could have precut my sequence I would have just output the cut and laid it over a background for the green screens, added graphics and then did a final rescale to deliver files that were 1080 x 1920 (squeezed in AE, and unsqueezed with the Spyder on location)…the files were delivered as PhotoJPEG 1920 x 1080 anamorphic upper field for import into a Grass Valley Turbo.

What would have been great, however, is if there had been a simple way to take all the 23.98 clips and converted them without sending everything out to the deck first. then I could have mixed them into a 29.97 timeline and probably been ok to precut and export that to AE.

Whew. Crazy project. After it was done, I had to go back to the AE stuff and reposition everything to fit into a standard 16:9 frame, scale down to 4:3 letterbox and output to Windows Media at 640 x 480 letterbox and DVD. Every super and interview that was way off to the left or right had to be repositioned. It got nutty. Between the fields and frame sizes, getting everything right, and the render times was pushing it.

Learned some things, though.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

So Bob sort of confirms that other than having the card do the conversion on output, or to digitize it that way off a tape and let the deck or card do it, there is no easy way to take P2 clips on a hard drive that are 23.98 and make them work in a 29.97 workflow…other than to string them onto a sequence and output them to tape, and then redigitize them in the format that works for us.

WHICH IS 29.97, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Sorry, had to get that off my chest, for all you 23.98 ers out there.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

Hi guys. I posted because I almost always cut in 29.97 for DVD delivery. We are almost always standard def editing as well. I don’t get to choose what format is shot. I get a drive with P2 clips on it and they are usually 23.98. I need to make them 29.97 with pulldown so I can cut them into a standard def timeline. I can output them to tape and then re-batch digitize. What I would love to do, however is be able to take 23.98 clips and convert them to 29.97 so they play nicely with the rest of the project. We also mix in standard def footage quite a bit so working at 29.97 is preferred.

I was looking for workflow suggestions to get the 23.98 to 29.97. Many times I get a 720P tape shot at 23.98 and I almost always digitize it 29.97. The deck does the work (or the card). That works perfectly.

Working at 23.98 has not been ideal, and I’m getting 23.98 clips on a hard drive.

Thoughts?

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

I actually built a lot of the comps and string outs in FCP on a system that has the Aurora Pipe card. Coolest thing about this card that the Kona doesn’t have is a feature called Interceptor. Basically any clip that plays on the computer, regardless of application, will output thru the card and be displayed on my NTSC monitor. Very cool feature I wish Kona would develop.

I can be on the Cow Demo reel site, click on a reel and the clip that is playing in the browser is playing on my NTSC in its native size. It scales down HD material. Not perfect, but not bad either.

The stretch out worked great. Just like anamorphic video, stretching back out horizontally can take quite a bit of abuse…stretching vertically is another thing.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

WE just finished a 2880 x 1080 project and we took our AE comps and squeezed them into a 1920 x 1080 comp for final output…it became like a big anamorphic file. We viewed them that way, but they were anamorphic.

Bob, live shows are getting pretty ambitious with the super wide screens, especially with HD projectors. A lot of the footage is shot green screen and we create the worlds behind them in AE in the superwide comp. Then our workflow was to squeeze that into a standard 1920 x 1080 final movie which the show guys would stretch back out for the projection.

Looks good but adds a lot of time rendering and working with the odd format…especially fields and frame rate issues. We also mixed HD and SD footage in the wide comps…it was a field interpretation and frame rate conversion mess.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

More content, and with just about everything being recorded, I agree it will become more of how to find it. The point was that the original poster is getting most of his content from the internet. I rarely watch anything on the internet. Maybe a demo reel here and there. I have DSL at home and YouTube stutters on playback. I have HD cable service, and I am a snob about watching high quality video in surround. I have always appreciated broadcast quality signals.

So, if you believe a lot of content is going to be served up on the web and you want a piece of the action, I would pay close attention to the codec software companies and companies that make compression software. This is where the future trends will be made. Become a service provider and know more about the various codecs and how to serve them up and you could make a lot of money just encoding clips, much like dub houses make copies of dvds today.

I believe we will have more choices where content comes from, but I believe there will be satellite and cable, web and hard media. Some people want more organized content that can be expanded like the cable services. Some like the wide open, currently lower quality (with a download wait) broad choices of web video.

I still appreciate a well produced, nicely delivered, national news broadcast in HD just before dinner. I can still DVR the show and watch it at 5:38 if I want, and still be done by 6.

Look for devices that can scour the web for content that you specify with keywords and download at night to your hard drive for viewing when you like. I have also predicted that ALL televisions will have built in MPEG encoders and a hard drive built in so at the very least you can pause, record or rewind a show…even slo mo. There will still be a need for menu driven devices like Tivo and the Motorola Moxi, but TVs should and will all have a small hard drive or alt least some memory to buffer a show. Invest in companies that start talking about these kinds of technologies.

I don’t think I’ll be watching too much content on the web anytime soon, but since I’m getting a video iPod for Christmas (I heard) there might be a clip or two stored on there for future viewing.

Don’t count on it.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

There is a preference in Compressor that automatically launches Batch Monitor after submitting…

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media