F3 Workflow Question: Media Management

U

Unicorn Power

Member
I recently acted as media manager for a low budget student film that was shot on the F3. I was called the night before and asked to make a 6:00am call time. I was told that all the equipment would be provided. It was to be shot on the F3, which did not have the S-LOG update installed. There was no Ki Pro Mini or Gemini on the camera either. I was to use a MBP 17" with one G-Tech 2TB External Hard Drive.

It was a barebones setup...

Anyway, the computer didn't have any software and I couldn't install the XDCam Browser on the MBP 17" because we were way out in the middle of nowhere without an internet connection. I had to dump all the SxS cards on the MBP 17" via the Express Card Slot via the Finder. The files all came out as MP4s, but I thought that the F3 was supposed to be natively formatted for M-Peg2 files... is that right?

The director said that she would just use XDCam to transcode the MP4 footage into ProRes HQ. However, is she correct? Won't she lose significant amount of information and image quality? It was almost 80GBs of footage, won't it take a super long time transcode?

I had to even use VLC to watch the footage because Quicktime and M-Peg Streamline wouldn't play it without purchasing an update for MacOSX Lion.

Is there anything that I could have done better?
 
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I have done a lot of Media Managing, as a stand alone Manager or doing it along with AC work, and one thing I will not do is show up without my computer. Even if they say they are providing one I still bring it and usually use it. Most of the time I find that their gear has not been updated in awhile or doesn't have the correct programs for backup and checking. The main programs that I like are Shotput Pro, or R3D manager depending on the project and camera, but I usually use Shotput, for transferring. They both give file logs that you can post on the transfer disk to show everything was backed up correctly. Second I have P2 viewer, RedcineX, ClipFinder, Final_Cut or Premier Pro, with the XDCam software. An of course as you mentioned VLC is a great mufti-purpose player. I am sure there are more that I have but those are what comes to mind that I use most. An Third I always keep a backup for myself, no matter what, that way if the client claims something happened I have an exact copy to verify.

I hope you copied the entire contents folder. there should have been a BPAV folder that contains all the files. The clip files do show up as MP4s, but those are just wrappers from the way I understand, much like MXF is a wrapper for P2 files. If you didn't backup the BPAV as an entire folder the XD_utility will have a hard time seeing the files I think, but I have not tired it that way. Doesn't mean you couldn't convert them individually, but what a pain.
 
There is no need for any conversion- most NLE will edit XDCAM natively.

All what you need is GV Edius NLE, which can deal with XDCAM footage on simple laptop better than FCP on decent machine.
Get a good laptop (with i7 CPU) and you can also create DVD preview disc from your timeline in probably 2-3x faster than RT :)
 
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