Shane Ross
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Try to find someone independent who will do this. Someone with a home setup, and not a full blown post house. Because professional color correction still requires access to professional tools, like an IO card and color correction monitor. Brining someone to your facility that lacks these won’t get you anywhere, unfortunately. As they wouldn’t have the tools needed to do the job. Like asking a. Plumber to fix the pipes without a wrench.
If I wasn’t so busy I’d help you, but I have too much on my plate. But look for an independent colorist with their own setup…you can even post a job listing on Facebooks I NEED A FINISHER group. I’m sure you’ll get nibbles.
Shane
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[andy patterson] “Apple has nothing to compete with this system.”
The current MacPros will blow this config out of the water. Dual Xenons are superior to a single Intel i7 8700. This would be more competition to the current iMac.
Shane
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[Steve Connor] “I don’t know a single person that uses FCPX as their primary NLE on a Hackintosh and I’d be interested to see if anyone here has one they use as their main Edit system?
“I use it as my main edit system. I built it to run Resolve primarily, but I do also use Avid and Adobe on it….all of them professionally. I have run FCX on it, mainly to grab missing elements from the offline that I need in online…as a vast majority of the onlines I have done came from FCX. But yes, I use a Hackintosh as my main editing computer. The only issues I’ve had with it apparently plague the nMacPro (tubes) too…rendering in Resolve (in the MacOS) overheats the computer and causes it to restart. My solution to that is to render at a lower speed.
Shane
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Really, the only GOOD way to do this is to learn from experience. The people who are currently heading production companies or being producers are ones who started out as assistants, or associate producers. Learning the ropes as you go…and developing those OH SO NEEDED contacts. It’s not all about what you know, but WHO you know. Many networks will not deal with you AT ALL unless they know you, or you are a well established production company. New production companies are often formed by established producers with lots of contacts, or assistants or associate producers finally making the move but that have, you guessed it, contacts because they dealt with or talked to ALL these network people when they were assistants.
AND…those network execs also have assistants who move up, and the assistants all talk to each other a lot, and know each other, so when an assistant gets bumped to a network exec roll (note, networks can have between 1 and 30+ networks execs….people in charge of a handful of shows…and then DEVELOPMENT execs…there are a lot of levels) so when an assitant makes a company, they then call the assistant they knew that’s now a network exec…and the game begins.
Networks NEVER take calls from people they don’t know, or companies that are new. Never. Production companies don’t listen to pitches from people that don’t have representation (entertainment lawyers) to protect all involved, and by that I mean so no one can steal an idea, or be accused of stealing an idea. So even then, pitches are heard from established people, people with representation, or people that know each other. Relationships are A HUGE part of this.
But yes, the experience of knowing all this is not in a book, is not in an online tutorial, and most often not taught in classes, even at entertainment colleges like USC. They might teach the basics of these things, and then when you get into the legal things, that’s a law school class. But then the nitty gritty of the details is all on the job training. Because terms are always in flux, and deals hinge on many things, and the network of distribution ( now ONLINE) is so new.
So sorry, this isn’t something you can just grab a book on, fire up a blog or video tutorial and learn about. This is only learned when you dive into the production machine.
Shane
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[Bill Davis] “The way X works right now – those splits and M&E versions are just pointers to the original files that your desktop computer renders out on demand.”
This is another difference in our worlds. I don’t do the final mix, a sound mixer does, and then they provide the various audio stems required by the network. And then I cut them into my final sequences. It appears you do the final mix, and there’s nothing wrong with that. just saying it’s different. When I cut promos from show masters, I did deliver the final mix, as the audio provided to me was already mixed, and in the separate stems I needed.
[Bill Davis] “Seems to me that with a depository if the original frames in the cloud to link to – it would be massively faster to have the big iron behind the cloud apply the version metadata against the stored frames – rather than to replete upload the same underlying data again and again and again.. “
I’m sorry, do you mean that you load ALL of the audio into the cloud? That seems..odd. If that’s one of those new-fangled things…OK then. Still seems odd to have all the source files on a delivery platform.
[Bill Davis] “Why would you ever need to re upload multiple versions of the same exact frames? “
Because the shows I online, that are cut in FCX originally, BTW, need 8 deliverables. An HD Cut-To-Clock version with commercial blacks, texted. And then the same textless. Then an international SEAMLESS version that has 5 min of additional material, and no act breaks. Texted and textless. And then 4K versions of these, so four more. And the audio config on them is the same….10 channels of audio. And then we deliver separately the 32 different stems they require.
Shane
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[Oliver Peters] “If you have to deliver a master, a split-track/textless master, and in both NTSC and PAL variations, you’re looking at around 120GB+”
Well, lately it’s HD and then UHD masters. I haven’t had to deliver SD in 5 years. So the file sizes are LARGER.
[Oliver Peters] ” And without Aspera or similar, generally unreliable and failure-prone.”
Which is why typically Aspera is used. Except for the 220GB UHD files…those I ship on a hard drive.
Shane
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[Rory Newman] “1. Can I play FCP project files in PP?”
Project files…no. No NLE can open another’s project file. But getting from FCP 7 to PPro is pretty easy. Just export an XML of the entire project, and import that XML into Premiere. Bins and sequences should come over fine. And of course, the media will import fine…no problem there.
[Rory Newman] “2. Will my Prores 422 files work?”
Absolutely.
[Rory Newman] “3. Is it true that you can edit AVCHD in PP?”
Yes, but to do it natively, without converting, you’ll need a lot of RAM and a really good graphics card that enables the Mercury engine to help with the heavy lifting. It’s a highly complex format to decode on the fly.
[Rory Newman] “4. And that you will just uncompress it at the end when you export it?”
Uncompress what? AVCHD? It’s compressed when it’s recorded, you can’t uncompress that. Compression baked in. You can export it and CONVERT it to ProRes or whatever you are delivering, but you can’t uncompress it.
[Rory Newman] “5. Would I be able to mix this mid project? i.e. use my Prores 422 stuff now and just add AVCHD clips into the same timeline. And then just get it all sorted out on export.”
Yes…but as Dave said, not sure about jumping NLE’s mid project. That’s not really wise. And, as I said, you need a good computer with fast processor, lots of RAM and a good GPU for that AVCHD stuff. Even then, you might need to lower the playback quality to get smooth playback.
[Rory Newman] “6. Though as I’ll be starting a new edit from scratch, I could just bring in all my AVCHD stuff into the library, and go from there.”
You could. And the more you add the more the system will slow down. More on the timeline, more for the machine to deal with. Not converting to an edit codec is fine on short form projects, but long form, best to convert before you edit. Marketing folks like to brag, but they don’t really know the real world when it comes to this stuff.
[Rory Newman] “7. If you do have to convert from AVCHD to a usable format for editing, what format would you recommend?”
ProRes.
[Rory Newman] “8. And how large are these files, if AVCHD is 8GB/hr and PR422 is about 50GB/hr?”
1 hour of ProRes 422 at 23.98 is 60GB per hour. So if you are low on space, you can utilize the offline proxy workflow that premiere does, it’s pretty slick. Make proxies, edit…click one button and you are relinked to the masters, output.
[Rory Newman] “9. How much ram would you suggest? “
32 to 64GB.
[Rory Newman] “I’ll have a graphics card with 8gb Vram, and my footage is all just simple 1080p AVCHD. “
Good, you’ll need it.
[Rory Newman] “I mean, if I get 32gb (or even 64gb) will this all be used? “
A good chunk, but not all with 64. The good thing about havin 64 is that you can then open other apps at the same time.
[Rory Newman] “Would it just keep the whole film in the ram”
No…that’s not how it works. Footage isn’t stored in RAM. RAM is allocated for APPLICATION needs. If the app needs more RAM, it uses it. Quit the app, it releases it. The larger the project, the more RAM it might start using….but it doens’t work like you are thinking.
[Rory Newman] “1TB ssd as an external with any luck. That would be able to hold all my AVCHD files, but perhaps not all my stuff that’s been converted into PR422.)”
1TB is really not a lot. That’s pretty small. If you convert to ProRes, get a RAID. You can get 12-16TB raids for under $1000. Heck, you can get a 4TB single drive for $300.
Shane
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Yeah, what Michael said…copy the sequence…or all the clips in that sequence, open the one you want to put them into, paste. Just like with Premiere or FCX…heck, even Avid does this.
Shane
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What did you use to Clone? Carbon Copy Cloner, newer ones at least, make sure the recovery partition is cloned as well. But I do think Warren has the best advice here…
Shane
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[Bouke Vahl] “If you use Adobe stuff, it’s a simple plugin that catches the uncompressed video down the pipeline, and uses FFmpeg to output ProRes.”
Yup, and that ProRes file will get kicked back by QC as an “incorrect encode.” It’s not licensed by Apple, so several components that make is a “correct encode” are missing. What? I don’t know, I’m not an engineer. But the engineers say “sorry, this is wrong, please provide a correct encode” so…
The only apps ProRes on Windows is licensed for are ultra high end systems.
Shane
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