[Robert L. kopf]

[Floh Peters] “ProRes 422 for “normal” footage, ProRes 422HQ for e.g. difficult chromakey footage or for stuff that needs heavy color correction. Coming from BetaSP or other analog sources the “regular” 422 variant is more than enough in 99,9% of all cases.”

Are these probably the only two codecs that I should bother with? I will practically always be acquiring footage through cameras like the Sony DXC-D30 to -D50 (in both 4×3 and 16×9). And if I go with this tapeless paradigm, I will almost always bypass Betacam SP tape, going instead directly (component analog from a studio-style back) into the Ki or into the Media 100 machines.

I realize that there are many reasons why all the other codecs exist. But being completely self-contained and not for hire, I’m not going to have to think about being compatible with various other standards. The only desire that I have along these lines is that I choose a codec (or two or whatever) that will best suit my own internal needs here.

If the only drawback to using any “better” codecs is a trade off for disk space for instance, I’d choose the better codec, since the cost of disk space is negligible. Of course I realize that in such cases there may likely also be an increase in render time, etc. I understand that the best plan is to try various things, to see how they work for me. And I intend to do that. But opinions that help point me in the right direction are appreciated. There are just too many choices out there for me to try out empirically. What way might you recommend for me to acquaint myself with such things as which resolution standards are compatible with these codecs?

On another subject (I promise to leave you alone for awhile after this post), I haven’t done so in the past. But I may want to jump in and learn many of the very cool things that exist in the software arena like After Effects, compositing, color “correction,” etc. Do you think I should pop for the six-core Mac rather than the 4-core for running such things? I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the six-core outperforms the 4-core when doing such things. That goes without saying. But since I suspect that the next iteration of Mac Pros will be even faster and likely have the new Thunderbolt I/O, it seems prudent to wait for that. If people are generally satisfied with the 4-core performance, I can no doubt live with it for a year.

The idea of being able to acquire footage using the Media 100 laptop scenario, and designating a media destination drive that’s in the edit room computer (over Gb Ethernet) has some appeal. Have you ever done that? I wonder how fast that drive needs to be, and whether or not it would be possible to share a couple of drives there, to capture from two cameras simultaneously that way. It would be interesting to test the limits of such a system. It would be pretty slick to be able to use three cameras simultaneously, sending all three video streams to the edit room computer, even if that would require a fast array. Having Thunderbolt I/O on the Macbook Pros would likely make that perfectly doable, given a Thunderbolt-connected array. Hmmmm…

[Robert L. kopf]

So how do I decide on which ProRes variant to use?

In the case of the Kona Ki Pro, what’s involved in moving the “captured” media to the Media 100 or into something like Final Cut or DVD Studio Pro? Does one simply copy the files into some directory and then they just magically appear?

It would seem that copying bins of shots made while using the laptop Media 100 systems would be fairly trivial over the Gb Ethernet LAN, and would mostly eliminate the problems of waiting for copying over Firewire or whatever.

[Robert L. kopf]

Thanks for the reply. I very much appreciate your time and perspective. It feels funny to find myself a noob again.

Naturally, if money is no object (and it isn’t the deciding factor in this case), bigger usually isn’t worse than smaller. But what I am thinking is that a six-core Mac Pro isn’t necessarily appreciably faster than a quad-core, unless one is effectively utilizing the cores.

Going by my present usage (which has been running 8.2.3 on G4 systems with P6000-type boards), isn’t going to provide me much perspective on this. I’ve been creating long form videos from tape sources, utilizing practically no effects, nor doing much else that requires rendering at all. In some cases, I have moved the Media 100 files to Bitvice and Purifier, and to DVD Studio Pro to make DVDs. But in those cases, I’ve been doing that work on newer, multicore Macs, which is probably what I’ll continue to do unless they work faster in the background on this new Mac Pro. Having said that, I am aware that I just don’t know what new processes and workflow issues will arise. That’s a big aspect of what I need guidance on.

Thanks for the tip on the Aja stuff. I’ll look at that. As for using laptops with I/O and external drives for shoots, that wouldn’t be a lot of stuff at all, to carry around (from my point of view). I will be mostly shooting in studio, using camera carts (that roll around next to the cameras, holding large monitors, mic preamps, etc., and which can be adapted to incorporate the Ki Pros).

Depending on the cost of a Ki Pro (I haven’t looked yet), it may make sense to instead use the laptop/Media 100 setup. One of the latest bottom-end Mac Pros can be had for $1200. That combined with some kind of component I/O, an external drive, and a copy of Media 100 wouldn’t be a bad camera recorder package for not very much cash. And of course when not shooting, those Media 100/Mac systems could be used for other things. Rough edits, shot selection, etc. could be done on them, even before the media gets moved to the “real” systems. And it would seem that over a Gb Ethernet LAN, the file copying would be fast.

I need to educate myself on things like which format to capture to, how to move the media files into Media 100, etc. Got any leads on good sources for perspectives on this sort of thing? It seems that practically everything I see is focused on Final Cut.

[Robert L. kopf]

When you say “render back out to Media 100 LL codec, what exactly would you choose within the Media 100i application to do that? From what I understand, the only way to get the thing out of the Media 100i is to “export from edit suite” using the “self-contained movie” choice. According to the manual, that’s the only export that uses the Media 100 codec.

When I drag the resulting quicktime movie file onto the Video Purifier icon, VP says it can’t determine the source gamma, and asks me whether I want 1.8 or 2.2. Do you know which way to go on that?

[Robert L. kopf]

Thanks very much Floh! I’ll look into trying this today.

[Robert L. kopf]

Ok, I guess that’s not a question that’s worth anyone’s time. How about this? Is there anyone out there who has a lot of experience using Video Purifier with a Media 100i v8 system who I can PAY to help me get up to speed?

[Robert L. kopf]

Yes, thank you. At least I did finish putting together that Quicksilver Mac with the v8.2.3a download, and was able to successfully digitize component analog at uncompressed settings to an external eSATA drive for over an hour straight with no problems.

I am now about to put that system into place, and then figure out how to move that footage over to a DVD Studio Pro station where I will then run it through Innobits’ Video Purifier and BitVice, and then include it in DVD projects. I’m sure that there will e some learning curve involved in that.

[Robert L. kopf]

Well okay, in the absence of any recommendations to the contrary, I will simply update the machines using Software Update, bringing everything up to the latest versions that Apple offers (including Quicktime), then use Pacifist to revert back to Quicktime version 7.5.

Does anyone here happen to know whether or not anything else needs to be reverted? Is Quicktime going to be my only concern?

[Robert L. kopf]

I should have mentioned that the OS is v10.4 after installing from CD.

[Robert L. kopf]

I know that it’s been awhile since this was posted. But I find myself having to redo this without benefit of notes (can’t find them). So, how do I upgrade the machine to OS X v10.4.11 WITHOUT upgrading Quicktime past v7.5? And for that matter, do you have a link for Quicktime v7.5?