Lots of footage doc question

V

videoteque73

Active member
Hi, a friend of mine is in India shooting a doc. He has 200 hours already shooted of DV PAL anamorphic with a DVX100. I am preparing his post-production workflow, the budget is tight. So with these in mind, I hope you can help me and he to do this!:dankk2:

I have thought about an new iMac + Final Cut Express + a coupe of external disks. My priorities are easy of use, backup and cost. He doesn't want to finish it, sound, titling and CC will be done outside. He doesn't need to have ALL the footage available ALL the time.

I think the biggest problem will be to organize the many clips and be able to access them quickly.

Does the DVX footage separate with Start/Stop detection in Final Cut Express??

Do you think a Final Cut Express project can handle thousands of clips?? I have worked no problem with hundreds, but thousands are at least 10x more!!!:huh:

How have you aproached big projects like this with success??:beer:

Thanks again!!!
 
I'm not familiar with FCPE's limitations in terms of project file size- I can't imagine that there would be a cap to how big of a project you could have. I think really what you are missing in Express are the many other internal features that the fullblown applications offer...but simply capturing a bunch of footage and organizing for roughcuts should be no problem.

Unfortunately unless there are 'dropped frames' in between shots, FCP nor the DVX will detect your shots for you. You'll have to go through the all too common painstaking process of LOGGING and CAPTURING each desired shot.

The HVX200 organizes all of your clips on P2 cards, and you do what is called a LOG and TRANSFER. You still have to Log all of your shots, (if you want to be organized) but the start and stop points are already determined from whenn you hit the record button on the camera. (It's a thing of beauty!)

I'm still going old school with you my friend- DVX100....so it's log and capture until the wallet grows

cheers
 
It's not good news you are giving me, alignement!!!:crybaby:

I work with HDV for a couple of years and FCP separates every clip in a different movie file, which would have been a bless in this case... One clip you won't use, you throw it to the Trash!!!:thumbup:

Do you think iDive can separate the clips??

Of course, thanks!!!
 
I'm not familiar with all facets of the HDV workflow, out of curiousity, how did you capture the HDV footage in the past? Is it tape based? or SD cards or something?
 
HDV is really the DV of High-Definition, being in PAL 25p/50i I don't have any strange 29.97i to 24p conversions. I always used tape based HDV.

You can capture it as HDV (in FC Express, you can capture only whole tapes), every clip creates a movie file. When you finish a sequence you have to render it to adjust for the Long GOP.

Or you can capture it as Apple Intermediate Codec or Apple ProRes in FCP. Just the AIC in FC Express. In this way you can use the Color Corrector more freely, since the footage doesn't "break" so easily. It also creates a movie file for every clip!

Hope this helps!
 
Sweet, so you just do a 'Capture Now' and capture the entire tape in one shot, and FCP organizes each clip from start and stop points without the user having to determine that?? Nice!
 
I would strongly consider iDive for an FCE workflow. I have an iMac with FCE that I use for small projects that don't require 24P (FCE does not support 23.98 editing), and as a teaching tool.

Some of what FCE cannot do that you'll miss if you work with FCP:
- Log and captured; only has a "capture now" approach, so iDive might be a better way to organize
- Remove pull-down and edit 23.98
- Export OMF
- Export EDL
- Start a time line at any time code other than 00:00:00;00
- Work in NDF

That said, there's a lot that you can do with FCE. It's definitely hands and feet above iMovie, but is very limited if you are used to FCP and expect it to be that. I think that it's a very capable program and can handle the project as long as you know what you won't be able to do. Be creative... it's more the user than the tool!
 
I have experience with FCP and FCE. My friend will be new to the iMac, to Mac OS X, to computer editing and to FCE...:huh:

But I can walk him through for several days!

I am worried about a FCE project with thousands of clips inside, but maybe, he doesn't need thousands of clips...??
 
videoteque73 said:
I have experience with FCP and FCE. My friend will be new to the iMac, to Mac OS X, to computer editing and to FCE...:huh:

But I can walk him through for several days!

I am worried about a FCE project with thousands of clips inside, but maybe, he doesn't need thousands of clips...??
Click to expand...

I wouldn't worry about FCE handling all the clips. That's more of a question of the computer's processor speed and RAM, which aren't really that big of a concern with a new Mac anyway (just be sure to put 2GB RAM in there, minimum).
 
videoteque73 said:
Hi, a friend of mine is in India shooting a doc. He has 200 hours already shooted of DV PAL anamorphic with a DVX100. I am preparing his post-production workflow, the budget is tight. So with these in mind, I hope you can help me and he to do this!:dankk2:

I have thought about an new iMac + Final Cut Express + a coupe of external disks. My priorities are easy of use, backup and cost. He doesn't want to finish it, sound, titling and CC will be done outside. He doesn't need to have ALL the footage available ALL the time.
Click to expand...

For a project with 100's of hours of capture... well, big disk drives are in order. It may be that not all disks be 'on line' at once. But I take the approach of reading the tape once and never again... unless a disk drive goes bad...

As for 'choping' into sub clips. I have used an iBook and FCE for most of my work, again not 100's of hours for a single project, but in general, if you were to capture each tape in its entirety, FCE can be commanded to find all the stop/pause points, and mark them. Then one can make subclips from there.

I personally think 'log and transfer' is tedious... but at some point all the subclips need to be identified, and by acquiring all the tape data in one pass, then finding the sub clips on the disk image, the tape will be less used than if one tries to log and transfer on the clip level.

As for frame drops. Well, since I have not had to think about 'broadcast quality', I disable the stopping of a transfer on dropped frames. If the voice is 'out of sync' at some point, it is easier for me to adjust that in FCE than retry reading the tape over and over.

You may take it I hate tape... I'm saving my money for a camera that has a solid state recording option... then log and transfer works ok...

As for having a project with 100's of hours of material... I think that this would lead to massive frustration. I think partitioning the material, and having projects based on sub sets would be far more condusive to organizing than trying to have large number of clips in one's single project.

Such a project will require some amount of external paper work (even if it is in the form of an Excel spread sheet...), so, I think hiring someone to do that is also called for... despite the 'low/minimal' budget... or get an intern from some uni or college...
 
alignment1 said:
Unfortunately unless there are 'dropped frames' in between shots, FCP nor the DVX will detect your shots for you. You'll have to go through the all too common painstaking process of LOGGING and CAPTURING each desired shot.
Click to expand...

FCE can detect stop/pauses in the DVX100 DV stream. So if one's shooting discipline includes pausing between each 'change of view/venue/whatever', FCE can be commanded to mark these points. I'm not able to start FCE up at the moment or I could give the actual menu items required...

Other cameras, that may use the DV format may not put the pause/stop control packets for this to work.
 
You want to know how to organize all your footage? Well, I WOULD LIKE to pimp myself and my DVD that talks about that...how to organize yourself with FCP. BUT it seems like you are going with iDive and FCE. Personally I would have gotten FCP and just been done with it....do it right the first time. Dunno how you can organize yourself in FCE...that is very limited.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
FCE can detect stop/pauses in the DVX100 DV stream. So if one's shooting discipline includes pausing between each 'change of view/venue/whatever', FCE can be commanded to mark these points.
Click to expand...

Cool, I've never used that function, it's been a while since I've had to capture large amounts of DV. Still though, it's not going to create actual 'clips' per say, just pointers to the original LONG clip that you are capturing, Plus, you have to do a 'Capture Now' which is not really recommended--

reason being, if you create a bunch of subclips from that one long piece of source footage, those subclips are always slave to that source--they are never 'individual'. So if for some reason, part of that source footage becomes corrupt, (and it happens!) then all of those subclips are in direct relation to that source which means if they're not already, they potentially will be in some way corrupt- which will comprimise your endless hours of editing.:(

I hear what your saying though--I hate Logging/Capturing. Fortunately where I'm working we use the HVX200 w/P2 cards, which makes life a whole bunch easier--still have to log though:beer:

However ther is a program from Squarebox that might help you out:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8825649#8825649

Cheers
 
Shane Ross said:
You want to know how to organize all your footage? Well, I WOULD LIKE to pimp myself and my DVD that talks about that...how to organize yourself with FCP. BUT it seems like you are going with iDive and FCE. Personally I would have gotten FCP and just been done with it....do it right the first time. Dunno how you can organize yourself in FCE...that is very limited.
Click to expand...

Hi Shane! I have read you in the past!!! Thanks for joining! :):)

Your DVD seems a good starting point for my friend. But what I can't understand is how the differences between FCP and FCE change the way you "organize" your clips...?? :undecided

FCP has multicam, pro formats, layer modes (add, screen, etc.) and of course, Motion, DVD SP, etc. But my friend just needs to capture, throw away what he doesn't need and keep the good contents organized. Then edit a first cut. Cuts + dissolves + some light color correction. That's it, which of this functions he can't do with FCE??

Nothing has been bought yet, so everything is possible!!!:thumbup:
 
videoteque73 said:
Can someone confirm (:)) or deny (:() this?? I really hope the detect function does work!!!

I also prefer to not mess too much with tape, you capture once and then decide what to keep or throw!
Click to expand...

The detect function WILL mark your start/stop points--it WILL NOT create individual clips. That being said-- you WILL NOT be able to throw away anything from the source footage--if the you delete a 'marker/turned subclip' it will still be on your hard drive- it doesn't go anywhere. You will have just deleted a 'pointer' to your source footage which still remains. The ONLY way to do it w/ out 3rd party software, is Log/Capture your clips individually or Media Manage, (which by the way has also proven to be a major headache - and can sometimes SUCK for no particular reason!).

All of that being said--using the iDive or the Squarebox deal is probably what you will need to use.

Z
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top