[Stephen May]

When I first began using my EX-1 I noticed that it was very easy to get hot spots especially in skin tones while all other aspects of the exposure looked good. If I iris’d down to get rid of the bloomed skin tone or other hot spots, the image looked a little dead.

I started to use the picture profile settings to reduce the highlighted areas and that worked out pretty well. I thought this might be useful to you if the hot spots are just here and there like mine.
-s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

Andrei,

It’s not really uncommon to be in a place where a lot of the best shots that support a piece are still in SD. Most of my library is SD, but that’s changing quickly.

So the BIG question is what the delivery is of the piece you’re working on. If it’s really HD – Blue Ray, whatever, then I suppose you are going to have to drop your SD clips into the HD sequence. If it’s really not going to be HD in the end, you’re better off working in SD and dropping the HD clips into a SD timeline. But if you know this already, and you’re stuck with the first scenario, then here’s my opinion:

Find creative ways to frame the SD shots using backgrounds or frames. Maybe have a SD clip push across the frame into a resting position. I will often drop a Standard Def. clip into a V2 track at near 100% scale or a bit more (thus it’s way smaller than the HD frame), but have the same clip underneath it (V1) and scale it to fill top to bottom, and desaturate the clip and/or apply a blur to it. None of this is optimal, but the bottom line is that you’re being asked to use SD clips in HD resolution frame – so your client needs to be a little forgiving and very understanding.

If your SD clips were actually shot on a nice camera with at least 2/3 inch CCD chips and a decent lens, then you might be happy to know that they can stand up better than you think to a 1/2 CCD or CMOS HD camera. But it is what it is. You are looking at going the worst direction in workflow to upconvert SD to HD. There’s no way around that. -s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

I think that in the freelance world – many videographers are so hungry for work, that they are willing to transfer the SxS media to a hard drive for the client – and that’s considered the lightest amount of work, leaving the editing and post to some other party. The hope for most videographers is that they will also end up putting the acquired footage together to produce a complete video, and then bill accordingly.

For the slice of videographers who specialize in camera acquisition, it will likely be more about the scenario you’re describing, where they get the footage, or the interview, whatever – and then you could hand over the SxS card like you mentioned, except for those clients that do not work in the XDCAM workflow, they might be stuck.

I don’t know if this sounds too accommodating, but I’ve had a relatively easy time of turning footage around by simply bringing my Macbook Pro and a firewire hard drive, (which may not be necessary for shorter shoots), and quickly transferring the clips using XDCAM Transfer software over to a folder on my hard drive, and then I burn it onto a DVD disc or even a Dual Layer DVD. By doing this, your client can access the clips on multiple systems and various workflows.

That said, I may be part of the trouble as clients come to expect this service, but I doubt that I’m alone in the way I’m handling the scenario where a client wants to walk away with the acquired shots. It will be interesting to see what others say about this. -s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

Craig – is this why my notes don’t transfer into FCP when I use Sony XDCAM Transfer to get my SxS media from card to video library, and then IMPORT those files directly into my FCP6 Browser in a project?

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

Jed – have you tried going USB out of the EX1 and transferring the SxS media that way? Did you have a second SxS card in Slot B? It kinda sounds like you may have some “child clips” where the whole clip didn’t fit on the single SxS card. Anyway, try hooking up the EX1 via USB and opening XDCAM Transfer and mount the EX1 (the EX1 will ask if you want to connect USB) and then the cards will mount in SDCAM File Transfer.

You can see the “Child clips” on the single SxS card, but without the second card that they are split on, you can’t get them.

-s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

Don – sometimes you can fix a wrong aspect ration of a clip by just double clicking it into the viewer and in the Motion Tab, select Distort, and under Aspect Ratio you’ll likely need to go a negative value. -s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

Bob – good question. I think it depends on how you use your video.

I have a ‘library’ of SD and HD media that I sometimes need to use across multiple projects. I mention this because inside of FCP log & Transfer – FCP creates a folder according to your project in capture scratch – which is fine, but then if you want to find one or more clips from that project to use in a new project, you first have to remember what project it was that you captured the clip into and then you can begin searching through the capture scratch under that project to find it.

When you use your media across multiple projects, it’s easier (for me, anyway) using Sony XDCAM Transfer, to place my HD footage inside of a large folder that represents all of my video media and is named in a way that is very detailed for easy access much later down the road. If you go this route, then you have to open up your new project, and in your browser, right-click and import from your library any clips you need to complete your video.

The downside – possibly due to me not knowing how to do it better, is that when you import XDCAM media through FCP you will also get your notes, whereas I don’t get notes by either importing the files from the browser (or by simply dragging and dropping the video clips I want into my browser).

IF ANYONE KNOWS HOW to do what I’m doing AND get the notes created from using the Sony XDCAM Transfer software, please let me know. -s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

Roger – I’m really not getting the part about XDCAM clips being too ‘robust’. I have been editing in FCP6 without issue using XDCAM media taken via Sony XDCAM Transfer software in two ways: (a) directly by inserting my SxS media into my Express Slot 34 on my Macbook Pro, and (b) by connecting the USB cable to my Mac Pro.

In the case of (a) I used a regular LaCie firewire external hard drive as the media location for each file I transfered, and in the case (b) I used an internal software RAID striped 0; (bay 2, 3, and 4).

No issues, no problems. Now, I’m actually using a DAT Optic RAID with 16 terabytes, and my process is a little different as I am up-converting all of my old and new footage to ProRes422 and working in ProRess422 sequences. But the bottom line is that you should not have had any issues, and from the experience I’ve had, described above – I’d have to think that your drives have not been the issue. In fact, your two studios sound very nicely appointed.

That said, all of my arrangements are direct access and I am not running any of my drives through a switch or network, except to pull from an older Dual G4 system which has a DAT Optic E-SATA external RAID – and even then, I am simply mounting those drives on my Dual Quad and dragging anything I need over to my new system or my internal RAID.

I really do not believe that your issue is in the drives not being able to handle the XDCAM files. The initial questions I asked in my original post, if answered, would really help to begin to understand what is going on. Finally, a real possibility is looking at your sequence properties (cmd – 0) and checking what your Quicktime Video Settings are under General. That can be the true issue. -s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

What was the resolution of the media that both systems handled without issue? What is the resolution that you recorded in with the XDCAM project? Do you have the latest Sony XDCAM Transfer software?

Would you be willing to send all of your XDCAM media to compressor and upconvert each clip to ProRess422 if necessary?

-s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

I will likely regret trying to reason here, sounds like you guys (Ravin, Michael) are pretty serious audio guys. David has given you some very good advice. Final Cut Pro is a very powerful VIDEO editing interface. As it goes with anything else, you must be careful at the acquisition stage to properly capture both video and audio. Good video is nothing in most cases without good audio.

If you have need to apply a filter such as compressor / limiter to various audio tracks, and each of your clips require the same filter but different adjustments within them, first – you may need to step up your game at the front end; acquisition – (not likely after reading your audiophile posts).

Secondly, a good practice in this case is to assign all sequence clips from the same take (thereby having the same filter needs) to its own video and audio tracks. In this way, all of the media on say V1, A1/A2 will be from “Joey” speaking into a lavaliere too close to his mouth (just an example) – and all of the V2, A3/A4 can be of “Becky” who was simply recorded too quiet and you find that raising the compression ratio and clicking on ‘Preserve Volume’ gets you back the level you need.

By selecting the Select Track Forward tool (t) you can apply a filter to every clip in that track only, and not effect all other tracks above or below. I have been able to correct large issues that were the result of poor ENG skills. I rarely need to go outside of the useful filters within FCP6. Often, a good sense of subtractive EQ processing and yes, compressor / limiter to re-gain can get most of the worst audio field work back. Beyond that, you can take your best mono track after all adjustments, (if it isn’t loud enough) and turn off Link Selections – double click your good audio into the viewer, place your playhead at the beginning of the clip in the sequence, and overwrite the audio to a second track – as FCP sums the two tracks (as panned) to the stereo master buss – thus giving you a noticeable bump in volume for the second incidence of the same track.

Like I said earlier – from the tone of your posts, Ravin and Michael, this reply will likely not be well received, but I am truly telling you what I know works, and for that matter, what I feel is the reason to need to use this much audio tweaking in the first place. Everyone can surely admit that getting great audio in the field is not easy, but it should be at least possible to get audio well enough that the tools within Final Cut Pro should suffice to bring it to life. If not, I’d have to say that the original audio recording may not be worth Logic, or Digidesign’s Pro Tools, or a decent post house’s time.

-s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer