Affordable DVCPro HD Down-conversion

evinsky

evinsky

Well-known member
Hey all,
I now have the ability to do realtime down-conversion from DVC-Pro HD material to Mini DV and DVD (Or both) with or without timecode and/or clip name burns.

Although I am not a dub or post house the efficiency of this system has convinced me to take on a little side job and offer you, my fellow HVX shooters a chance to save some money. If you've priced this at Lighting or any other Dub house you know how much this costs. ($150 per hour of labor not footage, and plus stock)
This service is in addition to my normal Directing & DP work so I can meet deadlines but you need to verify I have the time if it's a rush order or a very large amount of footage.

Prices are per hour of footage, including stock.
DVD only $55.00
Mini DV only $60.00
DVD and Mini DV $65.00
Add $10 for a timecode burn window
Add $25 for a timecode & clip name Burn (P2 or user assigned)

Delivery should be on a Firewire 400, 800 or SATA/ESATA Drive. All clips must be in Quicktime DVCPro HD.
I can convert MXFs but I'll have to charge a conversion fee of ¢50 per GB of footage.
Please note the tape timecode of the Mini-DV will not reflect the actual footage timecode, although the TC burns will be frame accurate.

I'm in Hollywood so if your local drop off or pick up is possible. Otherwise you can ship to me and include a paid return label
or I can include the postage in the price. I recommend Fed-Ex, or UPS and plenty of insurance.
I take no responsibility for lost drives or corrupted media so back it up before you send it off!

Also please tell me if any of you are interested in having your footage backed up to LTO2 and how much you would pay (tapes are about $40 for 200GB).

Hope to hear from you.
E.

I'll be excepting Paypal, and Cash and Checks locally.

Contact me at:
evingrant@sbcglobal.net
 
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Call me a total neewbie, but what about the down conversion process can you do others cannot? I thought the HVX can downconvert right off the p2 card to the mini-dv tape. I dont know. I think I just don't understand! haha sorry :)
 
Evinsky,
How are u printing to mini-dv. I have only been able to make dvd's for people. I would love to be able to print mini-dv's as dailies. It seems like a pain in the arse to have to compress the dvcprohd timeline down to dv/ntsc in order to print to tape. I think it's a great service u are providing. I'm just curious of your process.
 
=Prodigy= said:
Call me a total neewbie, but what about the down conversion process can you do others cannot? I thought the HVX can downconvert right off the p2 card to the mini-dv tape. I dont know. I think I just don't understand! haha sorry :)
Click to expand...

Sure, you can dump off the P2, but are you going to do this every time you shoot a card full. And you can't have the camera do the downconversion from FCP because it dosen't play out from HD.

So the service is for shooters who want to shoot thier project completely in HD and then have SD copies for proxy editing or footage sharing. Or if shooting HD is for protection only and doing your own downconversion either takes too much rendering time or you don't have the hardware.

This is a service quite a few of my clients have been asking for and I just thought some of you may as well.

Hope this helps.
 
sponester said:
Evinsky,
How are u printing to mini-dv. I have only been able to make dvd's for people. I would love to be able to print mini-dv's as dailies. It seems like a pain in the arse to have to compress the dvcprohd timeline down to dv/ntsc in order to print to tape. I think it's a great service u are providing. I'm just curious of your process.
Click to expand...

I have a Blackmagic Decklink pro card in a 2.7Gh Dual G5. This plus an AES Digital to analog converter for audio allows me to send out downconverted SD video in realtime from an HD timeline in FCP, as well as have realtime TC burns. I have this signal going out to a Pany DV2500 deck and a standalone DVD recorder.

It was tricky to set up but it's working flawlessly now.
 
Can't you just export an NTSC DV file from your DVCPRO HD timeline? Then just bring that file into FCP and print to tape...
 
Haakon said:
Can't you just export an NTSC DV file from your DVCPRO HD timeline? Then just bring that file into FCP and print to tape...
Click to expand...

Sure, but what if you have 5 hours of footage. It'll take you at least triple real time to export and realtime to lay out to tape, that's 20 hours of work. Maybe when the 8core Macs come out that could be a viable downconversion workflow but untill then...
I'm at your service.
 
evinsky said:
I have a Blackmagic Decklink pro card in a 2.7Gh Dual G5. This plus an AES Digital to analog converter for audio allows me to send out downconverted SD video in realtime from an HD timeline in FCP, as well as have realtime TC burns. I have this signal going out to a Pany DV2500 deck and a standalone DVD recorder.

It was tricky to set up but it's working flawlessly now.
Click to expand...

Will the blackmagic card provide better picture quality, or will it be the same as the method Haakon is using?


I am making the assumption that incamera conversion is probably the worst in picture quality.
 
I shoot HD 24 pn. Then edit it in HD timeline. When i'm finished editing, I copy it all to DV50 23.98 timeline and do the color correction Then I can see it on my monitor. Print to tape, ready
Isn't this a good method?
 
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Image quality is comparable to downresing. Athough dolph2000's approach will have a better color space. In camera down conversion looks great actually. It's just impractical in most situations.
 
I believe the new Matrox MXO for about $1.000 will do the same thing, help in color correction and assure broadcast compliance.
 
Tom Lowe said:
Why downconvert? Why not edit native HD 720p and just export to DVD or whatever?
Click to expand...

This is what myself and alot of others do but for some projects it's just not a fisable solution because you either need to give multiple people footage or have an existing SD based workflow that precludes you from using DVCPro HD.
I think it's mostly time, it takes quite a few hours to encode a 2hour DVD from DVCPro HD.

All I know is I've been doing it for quite a few of my clients and they appreciate the savings.
 
Evin- I guess what I'm wondering, and I hope I don't regret asking because I mean no offense, but why a sticky in the Latest HVX News for your service instead of just posting in the Marketplace?
 
Since this is more a service than a product or piece of equipment I thought it better to have consistent exposure. You never know when someone will stumble across it.
 
The TC burns do but the Timeline no. I think if I were transferring long single take clips I could play out from the clips and the TC would match. That's alot of extra work though.
 
Anyone can very easily just drag and drop DVCPRO HD footage into Apple's Compressor app, set up a batch render for whatever down-conversion or trans-coding is needed and let it do its thing for......free.
 
Of course you do need FCP, Compressor a Mac and the time to render. If you have all of this then no worries. Some perfer to not go through the hastle.
 
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