Editing demands -xdcam ex format?

R

Reflex Films

Active member
Obviously sony have done some great work compressing all the amazing detail we are hearing about , contrast etc into 35mbs! Thats great for straight play back - basic cut and edits.

I have had some bad experiences editing HDV (the interframe compression was causing all sorts of undesireable jumps and duplicated frames on cuts and dissolves - i suspect i was cutting on interframe points and throwing the compression algorithm out - i may be wrong here) in Final cut

My suspiscion is that Surely this compressed format will be clunky to edit as the computer obviously has to work very hard to extract all the info / modify and recompress as i force my footage to do crazy things- my editing is very intense - a 2 sec clip is a long take for me , lots of dissolves, time remaps, multi screen

Relative to editing SD, DV PRO 50, DVCPROHD 100 formats - should i expect things to slow to a crawl when i start getting into funky editing concepts on my 2 year old g5 Power pc mac ? Will my dissolves and cuts all be clean as they are with sd and DVC Pro formats. Editing is more han half of what i do so this is a critical question for me!
 
As most, no way will I stay in the native format during edit. I'll be going to Cineform. This is true with just about anything I capture.
 
Please forgive my ignorance at this level- I'm a bit of a novice here . . i come from HDV / SD world for the last 4 years- And have always edited natively.

So i take it that editing on an xdcam ex 35mbs timeline would be madness?

In FCP what is the best "temporary (offline?) editing format" after capture to work in ? I generally end up going to h.264 web export 1000 - 1500 kbs, DVD and eventually some sort of HD dvd format. Looking forward to being able to take advantage of the contrast and detail as well as long recording times on card .
 
Thanks steve,

appreciate you sharing what you probably think i should already know..

I can see the benefits of laying down the money for it. Will a relatively dated system like mine handle the intermediate codec relatively easily( like SD , DVC pro 50 / 100 timelines on my 18 month old power pc mac - both give real time previews for most edits without having to render, when renders are required they are relatively quick - i do alot of "trial and error rendering" on tricky edits!)

for the short term Is there an intermediate codec within FCP that can be used for acceptable results? Or is cineform the industry standard intermediate codec for HDV, xdcam ex that most of you are using ..
 
Doesn't FCP include the Apple Intermediate Codec? It's designed to do the same kind of thing. Or you could transcode to ProRes 422...
 
ProRes is basically the CineForm equivalent for FCP. It's an excellent intermediate to work with and is a "blessed" codec that also works great with older G5 systems.

I'm not sure if the new CineForm for Mac is quite as fast to render, and I'm pretty sure it only works on MacIntel systems.

Reflex, with you're kind of heavy duty editing I'd transcode everything to ProRes.
 
Hi,

I am also interested in purchsing a XDCAM EX.

Are there yet any experiences/Know How, how to directly import EX footage in PPro?

With a rather new Intel PC (2006 version 2,3 GHz Core 2 Due, 2 GB Ram) is it better to edit natively or us a intermediate Codec (sufficient one included in PPro CS 3)??

regards,

Michael
 
Elton,

Thanks for the info - looks like pro res is the go - great to hear that my G5 will handle it! - i'll be on that machine for qanother year till my lease runs out!

for thos experienced at transcoding on MAc -As a rough percentage how much would a captured xd cam ex (35 mbs) 20 gb project grow once i have transcoded it to pro res ? Any ideas on how long that process takes (hours? days?)
 
My own conversions from XDCAM 35mbs to basic ProRes take a 24p 1080 to about 85-90 mbs. I can't see any loss. 30 fps goes to about 110-120 mbs.

10bit ProRes HQ 1080 24p is about 190 mbs and 30 fps is almost 245 mbs.

Quite a jump for 10 bit but basic ProRes will only enlarge the file size 3-4x from XDCAM HQ.
 
Just noticed the stats for capturing xdcam ex footage via Sony's file browser software - minimum porcessor mentioned was intel core duo - does that mean i cant capture the footage and i'm out of the picture with a 20 month old Power pc chipped Power mac?
 
So if Final Cut's new ProRes 422 can convert the Sony native files into a 10bit codec, with 4:2:2 colorspace (I know the original sampling doesn't improve, though more freedom is available in color grading), and 1920 x 1080 resolution, then I wouldn't need to invest in NEO HD for editing with FCP on an Intel Mac?
 
I have an 8-core mac pro with with 8 gbs of ram. Will I be able to edit 35mbs ex1 footage natively, or will I have to convert it? If I have to convert it, what codec will cause the least degradation of the video? Is there a lossless codec I can use? I want the best possible images.
 
philip bloom said:
would i ever need to use prores HQ instead of prores with the xdcam ex. Unnecessary?
Click to expand...

I would say *mostly unnecessary*. 10 bit ProRes HQ does help to get that extra 5-10% of quality when you do heavy grading. It can make a difference in some areas but can be overkill if you're not doing anything more than going to DVD or the web.
 
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boredoftherings said:
I have an 8-core mac pro with with 8 gbs of ram. Will I be able to edit 35mbs ex1 footage natively, or will I have to convert it?
Click to expand...

I edit natively with no problems on a nearly 3 year old G5 dual 2.7. Now, if you're edits are extremely fx intensive within FCP, than I would move to ProRes and make sure you have at least a 2 drive SATA RAID if you want noticeably better performance.


If I have to convert it, what codec will cause the least degradation of the video? Is there a lossless codec I can use? I want the best possible images.
Click to expand...

It's so tough to detect actual degradation with ProRes, but if you're going to possibly go through multiple generations of renders on the same material it makes sense to go to a truly lossless codec. I use the SheerVideo codec from bitjazz. www.bitjazz.com--it's absolutely pristine and is especially good at handling YUV to RGB colorspace conversions, which can become an issue in post.
 
Can you edit using the native .mp4 files you filmed with the camera, which would eventually be exported as a TIFF sequence, without color correction?

Color correction would be done in a professional post house.

In that case, if all the original files were safely backed up, I would edit without any losses right?

Am I missing something? I don't know much about the technical side of importing/editing
 
I'm running FCP 6.02 and am about to take delivery of this XDCAM. Has anybody had any dramas with this combination; I'm aiming to injest 1080P.
 
Brett Clements said:
I'm running FCP 6.02 and am about to take delivery of this XDCAM. Has anybody had any dramas with this combination; I'm aiming to injest 1080P.
Click to expand...

I am interested in this also. Especially ingesting to an older laptop trough usb 2.0
(ppc 1.67 running Os 10.4.11 with 2 Gb off ram)

Thanx for anybody who can enlighten me.
 
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