First time editing a feature

[hayashi635]

Hi all,

This is my first time editing a feature film with FCP (MBP). Since I have only been editing shorts, I have quite a few questions about a proper editing workflow.

1. Now I have about 700GB of HVX footage in a raid 0 drive (FW800). Should I use log and transfer to capture the necessary footage to a separate drive? Now that MXF editing is available on FCP and I think maybe editing the raw material should be somehow better than the quicktime for later postproduction work (we'll be doing a filmout and color grading outside). I have also purchased Raylight for Mac, but I don't know what I can do with it...

2. What is the standard output format if I'm going to do a filmout or color grading? We're still struggling with post-production budget so we don't really have a lab to ask. But in general, do they just need the XML or the uncompressed output? Do I also need to bring my harddrives to the lab?

Sorry, sounds like an idiot to ask so many question. We have no money to hire an editor so I have to do the editing myself as a director...lol

Thanks for your time

 

[VaricamLife]

First off, Raid 0, that's scary man. There's no redundancy there. If that is your only copy of the raw MXF data, that's a huge risk you're running there. I would want a redundant raid setup, or a secondary hard drive (doesn't have to be raid) that you can copy all the material to. Then put that into a fire proof vault until production is over.

Editing with MXF is only necessary if you need all the metadata information. Otherwise editing in Quicktime vs MXF isn't really different. They are just wrappers for the same footage (the same codec is still used in both cases). But if you have MXFs and convert them to QT's then you're doubling your storage needs so...

As for the film output, you have to call a lab and ask them what they want. I've had one lab ask for the entire film as TIFF files. We exported as such and gave them the hard drive and they were off and running. Whereas the most recent projects here that went out to film went to tape. One went to DVCPro HD and was timed off of that and the other went to HDCam and was timed and printed off of that. The lab you're going to deal with should have a spec sheet to help you along. Do remember that you'll need to break your final film into reels (20 mins max per reel I believe). So you might want to have a meeting with the audio editor so they know that. They can then help down the line with creating or finding good cut points within the audio.

Cheers.