[Samuel Frazier]

Thank you for that. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if devices like that will work b/c, in my experience with FCP, the lag varies. But, if someone has experience with this in PP, please speak up!

Also, I’m hesitant to drag around another box as I’ll be doing it everyday and between 2 cities.

[Samuel Frazier]

Very sorry for the delay in thanking you (had another migraine), but thank you very much for your response! Unfortunately, I’m still trying to finish a project in Final Cut before I transition to CS6, so I’m not very familiar with Premiere’s Title tool. Love the idea of the integration with PS, AE, etc though. Really would need to learn much more about PS to do this quickly, so was hoping there might be a quick solution like Callouts. Really, I see myself using that kind of stuff a lot. Looks like I’m going to have to look at iMovie as well. Had no idea it included animation.

Thanks again!

[Samuel Frazier]

Thank you very much for the help! Always great to have an expert. Was wondering, when you say:

[Jerry Hofmann] “but you don’t ever get pixel for pixel display of the video with it”

Do you mean that I’m getting a pixel for pixel preview on the 17″? I thought FCP would only give you a 1/4 quality preview unless you used a device like a Blackmagic Design, Kona, etc. Also, I thought the way I was using the screen on the 17″ wouldn’t be using the full 1920 x 1080 anyway. Are you saying the 15″ non-Retina would be significantly worse for this use?

I hear you about the getting the Retina instead. I’m definitely considering it as well. The reasons I’m leaning against it are:

– I have to travel with the MBP everyday and b/t two cities. With the non-Retina I could take out the DVD burner and insert a data doubler for portable 6G Sata storage. Then I’ll only have to carry the external Blu-ray burner. With the Retina, I’d also need to take external storage. Am concerned that Thunderbolt will be expensive and especially so to get 750GB or more, which is what I would need. USB3 might be risky b/c it isn’t a steady steam like firewire, Sata, and Thunderbolt.

– ports. Like the two Thunderbolt ports of the Retina and the HDMI. But, concerned may need a Thunderbolt hub of some sort with Retina and don’t want to pay another $250 and carry that too. May run out of Thunderbolt ports otherwise as may need to run Ethernet (via an adapter), the Blackmagic Design Shuttle (or similar device), and video storage from Thunderbolt.

– On the other hand, when using something like a Blackmagic Intensity on a non-Retina MBP I would be dependent upon a USB2/3 solution for outputting the Browser, Timeline, etc onto an external monitor. There are solutions for this that people seem to find reliable, but it’s also a risk.

So, no matter what I do, there won’t be a perfect solution for me and I’m trying to figure out the best compromise. Any suggestions are very greatly appreciated!!

[Samuel Frazier]

Thanks very much! Good news indeed and would certainly seem to suggest that USB 3 would be viable for a video drive as well.

[Samuel Frazier]

Sorry, do you mean you use the SSD USB 3 setup that I mentioned or the BMD Intensity Shuttle via USB 3.0?

Also, it sounds like you’ve got a great system. I’m guessing that (if you are using the USB 3 for connecting video drives) you would notice problems if the video drive wasn’t fast enough even with a system as fast as yours b/c a bottleneck if present will always be noticed. But, if your system is so fast that it can cover for a slow video drive, any thoughts on whether a Retina MBP would do the same?

Thanks!!

[Samuel Frazier]

Thanks very much! Glad to hear it works on ingest. Is it doing well on output as well?

[Samuel Frazier]

Thank you very much for the advice. Let me take this bit by bit:

[Jack Guthrey] “Why not go to 30fps? That’s a much easier conversion”

Good thought, and one I probably should have done from the beginning. However, at that time I did not think I’d be using other sources and formats much if at all. I’m using them more than I thought, but they’re still just a fraction of the movie relatively. Also, I’ve logged, made subclips, etc in incredible detail and to redo that would be perhaps a week of work. But, the other formats have not been so marked, and there’s not much to do there anyway.

[Jack Guthrey] “Also, 720 is HD. It might be worthwhile to use that as destination format. You’ll gain “apparent” resolution in the 60D stuff and won’t be pushing the other footage as far.”

I thought about this actually. The problem goes back again to the lower res being a much smaller component of the material in the film. Also, when festivals screen movies, they seem to always ask for 1080p, so I’d have to do the upres again anyway.

[Jack Guthrey] “You probably can’t make those software products frame accurate – that’s why “broadcast grade” cost what it does.”

That makes sense, but it would be a bummer. I’ll shoot the Twixtor folks an email. Would be odd to advertise a solution which wouldn’t be frame accurate, but from their tutorial compared to the similar one for Compressor, I don’t think Twixtor has the right settings.

[Jack Guthrey] “If they can take input from a sync generator you can try that.”

I’m sorry, but you lost me here. I’ve never worked in broadcast and really am familiar only with no budget filmmaking.

[Jack Guthrey] “Do all of your cameras have audio with them?”

They do, but I don’t think the audio is critical in many of them–at least for keeping lip sync. I know I’m going to have to do more of this in the future though, so am looking for a solution that will work when this sync is important.

[Jack Guthrey] “You could always try loading up an appropriate sequence, playing out of one machine and capturing on another through SDI.”

This is what I was trying to say about possibly bribing my friend to use the two edit suites at his office. Send through one Kona 3 and capture onto another. I’m not sure if the Kona cards will do the frame rate changes though. Personally, I was hoping to set up a home system doing much the same thing with an Io XT and either another Io XT (or other similar card) or something like a Blackmagic HyperDeck Shuttle.

[Samuel Frazier]

Makes sense to me. Thanks, Shane!!

[Samuel Frazier]

Wow! Thank you very much for that extremely thorough and educational post! I really appreciate it. Yes, I should have explained myself and the project more. In the short term, I was planning on submitting the movie to film festivals and try to create some buzz. Ultimately, I’d like to make it a cable series. So, I’m shooting as many similar events as possible. As festivals now ask for HD more often than not and TV seems to struggle with anything not HD, HD is my target.
For this last shoot, we had a:

A- Camera: Canon D60 shooting 1080p24
B- Camera: Panasonic HVX200 720p24
C- iPhone 4 720p30; Kodak Playsport 1080p30, another Playsport at 720p60, and the DVX100b shot full screen at 480p30.

I’d like to use the D60 primarily, so I’m editing on a ProRes 422 timeline at 1080p24. I’ve already used Media Manager to convert the HVX200 stuff to 1080p24. Initially I tried Compressor to upres the HVX200, but it seemed a bit noisier than the Media Manager clips and also had some aliasing that that MM didn’t. To my eyes in FCP and Quicktime Player, MM seems to do a pretty good job. There might be just a smidge more color blur on edges than the original HVX200 DVC Pro HD files. Also, I think I’ll be able to cut b/t the D60 and the HVX. The D60 definitely looks better, has less noise in the dark area, and more depth of field. But I’ll probably have to do some power windows color correction to lighten/ highlight faces more, so while doing that on the HVX200 I thought I’d try adding a slow and gradual blur to mimic the depth of field. The C- camera are doing to stand out in comparison no matter what I do, so my thought was just to get them as good as possible and see what holds up and what doesn’t.

I haven’t tried Mediainfo, but will give t a go. The Kodak footage was pretty poor though. Lots of shutter roll and other issues. Looks like old VHS and the iPhone 4 stuff looks much better.

Regarding #1:
So I take it there aren’t any hard and fast rules to this, just trial and error, right? If I went the software route, for frame rate conversion I was going to use the long process suggested by Twixtor and others of Cinema Tool conforming 30p to slowed down 24p, then speeding the footage back up in either Compressor or Twixtor to the compensate for the slowdown. Tried this with Compressor and workflow Compressor and found it created a ghost frame every so often, so not crazy about it. Optical flow in Boris Red worked better, but I can’t figure out how to make it frame accurate. May download the demo of Twixtor and give it a chance.
For the upres, I was going to try Instant HD (Red Giant), Boris BCC Uprez, or Topaz Enhance. Compressor didn’t do it for me with the HVX to 1080p, so I’m probably going to dump it.

Regarding #2
I have a friend whom I might be able to bribe to borrow two of his work edit suites (both with Kona 3 cards) to upres the footage. So, he’d be sending out with one edit bay and capturing with another. My thought was to see if I could find some less expensive option to get similar results to his hardware by getting either 2 cards of my own, 1 card and something like a BlackMagic HyperDeck Shuttle, or just one card and see if my more accessible friend with a single Kona 3 card will share our equipment for transfers of this type.

So, I was wondering if there’s a good hardware option in the Io XT to do frame rate conversions as part of this workflow. But, if software would do a better job (short of something like a Teranex), then would it make sense to just do the hardware upres if at all possible and the frame rate after?

Thanks again for all your help!

[Samuel Frazier]

Thank you for that post. I’ve heard hardware is always better, but don’t really know how it works in some ways. The problem for me is I have not only different resolutions to deal with, but also different frame rates. This current project is a total mess. The A camera is a Canon D60, but I’d also like to use footage from:

DVX100b shot at 480p30
iPhone 4 720p30
Kodak PlaySport 720p60
Kodak Playsport 1080p30

So, I was wondering:

1- if I should change the fame rate before the upres, or the other way around
2- if the Kona 3 or Io XT can do both the upres and the frame rate change at the same time (and if they’re better at frame rate than something like Twixtor). I’ve read the manual, but couldn’t find an answer. Sure would be a faster workflow if this is the way to go!

Thanks for any help!