DVCPROHD to film out workflow in Final Cut Studio?

Zak Forsman

Zak Forsman

Major Contributor
first, i searched and didn't get any threads that covered my question to the extent I was looking for. so if i missed something, i apologize... anyway....

I'm producing a low budget HD feature that will shoot in september. we've settled on using two HVX200s, but the tapeless workflow is new to us. I'm sure many questions on acquisition will be answered at the HVX bootcamp i'm attending on saturday but I wanted to throw out a question specific to a post-production workflow culminating in a film out.

first, the feature will be cut on one of my company's bays which includes:

Apple PowerMac Quad
Xserve RAID 7TB connected via fibre channel
Aja Kona 3 card with breakout box
Final Cut Studio 5.1

we will be acquiring footage as 720/24p and i intended to transcode all the source media to uncompressed 1080/24p so that we can master out without taking hits in quality due to rendering in the DVCPRO HD codec. now, I'd like to remain tapeless, but i can't figure out one thing:

when taking the offline cut to online, can Final Cut Pro batch import clips for a sequence the same way it would by capturing off of tape? This is how I would do it on an Avid. If not, do i need to lay off all my dailies to tape (HDCAM SR or D5) and use those as masters in preparation for offline editorial? obviously, I'd prefer to remain tapeless.

what is the tapeless equivilant workflow to digitizing at an offline resolution, cutting the program, then upressing at an online resolution (in this case 1080/24p)? any insight would be much appreciated.

Zak Forsman
 
If you're on a Quad Core with that much storage, why bother with off-line? Just a thought. "Rendering" itself actually doesn't degrade your footage. I've heard this but can't see it on my own system.

Never even thought about off-line tapeless... Hmmm.... Let me think...
 
Offline tapeless, hmm...

Offline tapeless, hmm...

If you want a proper workflow, then yes, with FCS you will need some form of tape system to go from offline to online resolutions. Though with 7TB of space, even with a large shooting ratio, you should be good to just cut at the online resolution. Unless you're doing some kind of Apocalypse Now type of shoot.

In theory, I can see one sort of 'work around,' if you can call it that. After you have locked cut, take that sequence over to a new project in FCP (but none of the master bins). Now you will have a project that only references the locked cut media. You will now either need to take this project over to an isolated online system, remove the hard disks with the offline media, or delete the offline media. Now you'll have a sequence needing 're-digitizing' or 're-connecting.' With tapeless it would be the latter. Print out an EDL of the locked sequence. Have your assistant editor load in the online resolution clips for every clip that shows up in the EDL (so leave the names of the clips in the 'Name' column in FCP as is, so not to screw up the EDL. Use your 'Log Notes' column for custom names and/or descriptions for the edit). After your assistant has gathered all the necessary clips at the online resolution, re-open the 'online' project and sequence, simply use re-connect media and there you go.

Not really a great work around, but in theory it would work. Though it would make life hell on someone who would have to gather all the clip names from an EDL and then try to sort out getting the online quality versions of all those clips. Certainly leaves plenty of room for errors to occur.

As for making all the clips into offline quality, I think it would be a two step process. You'd need to say use the Import P2 function to get MOVs. Then use like a QT batch process to do a QT Conversion of those MOVs into an offline option. Then load those into your FCP bins and cut with those.

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Oh the other thing I thought of.... It would be a time drainer though for sure, even moreso than above. If you backup the P2 cards in their raw state (whether through the disk image process talked about in another thread or simply burning to DVD-Rs, whatever) you could later copy those back onto P2 cards. Though I haven't tried it, I have read somewhere in some white page that, when on the P2 card, you can log and capture the media as if it was a regular tape. So as the footage comes in, log and capture it like a regular tape at an offline resolution. Then do your normal offline to online media manager process. Then card by card, copy the raw data back onto P2 cards and slowly online re-digitize the whole thing. Though now looking at this, it sound kind of like nightmare to do, and being that this is all theory, no clue if it would work.

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So I guess your best bet is just go with a tape system of some sorts. If you can get ready access to an AJ-1200, and you can sacrifice a little shooting time on the cards, shoot at 720p not 720pN and then you can go to DVC Pro HD tapes at 720p at DVC Pro 100 Mbps quality.

cheers.
 
I know how you could do it. Import your P2 stuff as usual into FCP. Export it all in a lo-res format for off-line. Give those clips the exact same name, use them to edit. Then replace them with the full-rez DVCPRO-HD clips and re-open the project. I've done this with other formats, not with DVCPRO-HD, and it worked. You just have to move some files around, if you understand what I'm getting at. And at worse, you just manually reconnect the media from the low-res versions to the full-res versions at some point in the project. Just pulling this off the top of my head...
 
great guys, thanks for all the information and ideas. I know 7TB sounds like a lot but I have a number of other current projects on there sharing that space. these are DVD/EPK programs that each have 150 to 200 hours of b-roll footage and interviews.

but yeah, thank you for your ideas on how to make a tapeless workflow work. time to do some tests.
 
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