AF100 FCP Workflow for low-budget run and gun productions

S

srdan

Member
Hi,

I've done some extensive googling on this, but haven't found a clear cut answer.

I currently have a HPX170 which I edit on a Mac Pro with FCP 6.

If I were to sell my HPX170 and P2 cards to get an AF100, would I still be able to use my editing suite without major changes? And would the workflow be much more cumbersome than my current P2 DVCPro Hd one?

The reason for the potential camera switch is purely based on it's "filmic" look...but I do really appreciate the convenience of the HPX170/P2 system with my FCP suite.

I am still confused about the Codec that the AF100 uses, and what the difference in Hard-drive storage would be compared to the P2 workflow...I obviously don't want to compromise footage quality.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
I am in the same boat! I love my HPX170 I had two, just sold one last week and am seriously considering selling the other one, I LOVE the P2 workflow, but 85% of my work is commercials and docuementaries and I desire the film look, I had the Sgblade and it was ok but the time it takes to set the 35mm adapter up and how heavy and bulky it is was starting to become tiresome to me and it was great outside but indoors you needed a lot of light, I am sure I will get the AF100 but don't know if I will keep the HPX170 I don't know if it will make a good B-camera, I think another AF100 or a GH2 would be a better match, not sure what I will do.
 
The import process is exactly the same, through log and transfer. I transcode most everything to ProResLt

I would seriously upgrade to FCS3 though.
 
So .. the codec that the AF100 uses is AVCHD ... IMHO .. this is one of the big trade-offs on the
AF100. Compared to DVCPRO-HD .. the bitrate is considerably less and the color model is 4:2:0
as compared to 4:2:2. I think the general consensus is that the 4:3 sensor more than makes
up. The AVC codec has it's strong points, even at a lower bitrate as compared to DVCPRO-HD.

If you're coming from AVCINTRA-100 to AVCHD .. you're probably going to be a little disappointed
with the AF100's on-board.

As far as the SDHC's compared to P2's ... SDHC's are slow to import .. there are many features
of the P2 format (MXF etc.) that I miss. I never worried about P2 card reliability .. I am paranoid
about SDHC cards. They can and do f*ck up. Every SDHC card you buy (even from good places)
must be considered suspect until proven otherwise. Never buy cheap ones .. stick with the Panasonic
Golds, Lexar Pro's ... etc.

I do totally hear about you moving from a 170 with a Letus or whatever to the AF100. That said,
mind that you're moving into a new format where you will likely get new glass. The MFT format
will change how much of your existing glass you'll look down. MM's are doubled .. F.stops are halved,
etc etc.

Is it better? yea .. for sure .. is it a plug replacement for your 170 and your current lens family?

nope. But the DOF is great ... I just want to be clear it's not a "swap out."

jeff
 
Last edited:
mcgeedigital said:
I would seriously upgrade to FCS3 though.
Click to expand...

It seems like it is getting to be time for a FCS4 release. There were some reports of people who already saw the the new version. Getting FCS3 at this point might not be worth it with a new version supposedly coming up soon.
 
I don't know man . predicting when Apple releases FCP's is a dark art. I wouldn't make it a gating factor for upgrading your cameras. If FCP 7 works with an AF100 (and it
does) .. take that off the decision criteria. IMHO, it pays to stay current with your NLE. If you choose to sit out an upgrade cycle, then you also choose to be at the
grace of the vendor as to whether they'll leapfrog you. It's a given the current to the next is going to be reasonable .. behind that .. you're making a
leap-of-faith. Given the relative scale of hardware vs. software .. i say get real .. if you think your hardware upgrade is going to give your
clients a better overall product.. upgrading software now or (even again) later is noise dude.

jeff
 
blackcat said:
It seems like it is getting to be time for a FCS4 release. There were some reports of people who already saw the the new version. Getting FCS3 at this point might not be worth it with a new version supposedly coming up soon.
Click to expand...
Even if it came out today I wouldn't buy it for at least six months. Every new version has a ton of bugs so I wait until its working right and I bet it wont be compatable with Snow Leapord so you will have to go thru all the bugs with the next version of OSX. Bleeding edge fun.
 
So for all the people that have made the switch from P2, do you find that you've made a sacrifice in the ease of your post-production workflow?
 
The biggest post production change for me is that the clips are named clip1, clip2, etc. Unlike p2 where every clip had a unique name. So now when i log and transfer, i'm careful to use the custom naming options. Other than that, the workflow is very similar.
 
Ingest is slower than P2 if using LPCM audio.. We haven't found a replacement for P2 logger .. we used
to copy the P2 cards to a hard-drive .. use P2 logger to notate all the log info for the
clips .. log and transfer .. and we knew what we had.. now .. it's clip #1, clip #2 ...
so you pretty much have to log as part of Log & Transfer .. if anybody knows of a good
logger .. ?? The Cineform stuff has *zero* meta info ..

I miss 4 channels of audio .. audio is mixed to stereo which annoys me.

I trust P2 .. i don't trust SD.

If only Panasonic would crash the price of it's P2 recorder ... :-)

jeff
 
Well, sure -- P2 doesn't need to be transcoded. It just gets unwrapped and rewrapped. With P2 it's basically not much more than a file copy, but with AVCHD they're doing a complete uncompress-recompress cycle to transcode it to ProRes. That's a different process.
 
Barry_Green said:
Well, sure -- P2 doesn't need to be transcoded. It just gets unwrapped and rewrapped. With P2 it's basically not much more than a file copy, but with AVCHD they're doing a complete uncompress-recompress cycle to transcode it to ProRes. That's a different process.
Click to expand...

Yes. I can't wait until AVCHD can use the same process, theoretically it should be lightning fast.
 
Nothing's as fast as P2, because P2's codecs are natively inherently supported by FCP (AVC-Intra and DVCPRO-HD). So no transcode necessary.

Although, technically, ClipWrap should be just as fast as a P2 L&T, because no transcode is used in ClipWrap, it spits out unmodified h.264 and FCP can edit that. Might not edit as fast, but the L&T should be as fast.
 
jmarkham said:
So .. the codec that the AF100 uses is AVCHD ... IMHO .. this is one of the big trade-offs on the
AF100. Compared to DVCPRO-HD .. the bitrate is considerably less and the color model is 4:2:0
as compared to 4:2:2. I think the general consensus is that the 4:3 sensor more than makes
up. The AVC codec has it's strong points, even at a lower bitrate as compared to DVCPRO-HD.

If you're coming from AVCINTRA-100 to AVCHD .. you're probably going to be a little disappointed
with the AF100's on-board.

As far as the SDHC's compared to P2's ... SDHC's are slow to import .. there are many features
of the P2 format (MXF etc.) that I miss. I never worried about P2 card reliability .. I am paranoid
about SDHC cards. They can and do f*ck up. Every SDHC card you buy (even from good places)
must be considered suspect until proven otherwise. Never buy cheap ones .. stick with the Panasonic
Golds, Lexar Pro's ... etc.

I do totally hear about you moving from a 170 with a Letus or whatever to the AF100. That said,
mind that you're moving into a new format where you will likely get new glass. The MFT format
will change how much of your existing glass you'll look down. MM's are doubled .. F.stops are halved,
etc etc.

Is it better? yea .. for sure .. is it a plug replacement for your 170 and your current lens family?

nope. But the DOF is great ... I just want to be clear it's not a "swap out."

jeff
Click to expand...

Just to clarify Jeff, I believe the mm's are x 1.4 per the Able Cine Chart. I did ask around and that seems to be the one everyone is considering the word so with that said a 50mm is going to be a 70mm.
 
Barry_Green said:
Nothing's as fast as P2, because P2's codecs are natively inherently supported by FCP (AVC-Intra and DVCPRO-HD). So no transcode necessary.

Although, technically, ClipWrap should be just as fast as a P2 L&T, because no transcode is used in ClipWrap, it spits out unmodified h.264 and FCP can edit that. Might not edit as fast, but the L&T should be as fast.
Click to expand...

In FCP (at least) H.264 is a nightmare to edit. And I dig that P2 is faster in almost all aspects .. it's a much superior format ... where's that $1200 P2 recorder ..
please??
 
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