Jimmy Pierce
Well-known member
Whenever I shoot stuff, I end up keeping it on file on a hard drive, and set it aside. But there's a lot of footage I'd like to keep on file but I don't want to keep it on the drives I have, or buy another one. I shot the behind the scenes of a short film, and within it's 5 day schedule, I shot at least 48 hours of footage, if not more. I have it backed up on two drives, but I want to make hard copies of this footage on tape. Transferring the footage to DVCPRO HD tapes is expensive, both in tape stock, and in the rental of the deck. I have an HDV deck on hand, and MiniDV tapes are less expensive. I'm perfectly fine with the "loss of quality". I've converted many of the footage I've shot to HDV to bud up with HDV footage that was shot simultaneously and it looks fine. Yes there might be post issues later on, but most of this footage is straight cut material, not FX oriented.
Once I've completed post on a project, I back up the elements like the music, sound fx, motion graphics, and the FCP project file on disc, so that one day I can possibly return to the project, recapture the footage, and open the project file to see the project as if it was never deleted from my system. This is entirely easy to do with a project containing footage shot on tape. All I have to do is Batch Capture all of the offline footage and FCP finds it all on the tapes. But this process is based around the raw footage's timecode. My HVX records timecode onto the clips it creates, and this timecode is built into each clip displayed in the cut of the project in the timeline. So what I would like to be able to do is transfer the P2 footage onto HDV tape, with it's original timecode, created from a tapeless camera, delete the clips from the drive, and later, be able to recapture the footage from the transfer tape, and because of the timecode, it reconnects the clips in the timeline as if they never left, even though the footage is now coming from a MiniDV tape, rather than off of the hard drive.
Has this been done successfully? It seems like it could work, and I plan to experiment soon. The biggest concern is recapturing the footage, and FCP successfully recognizing the timecode, originally created from the P2 footage.
Once I've completed post on a project, I back up the elements like the music, sound fx, motion graphics, and the FCP project file on disc, so that one day I can possibly return to the project, recapture the footage, and open the project file to see the project as if it was never deleted from my system. This is entirely easy to do with a project containing footage shot on tape. All I have to do is Batch Capture all of the offline footage and FCP finds it all on the tapes. But this process is based around the raw footage's timecode. My HVX records timecode onto the clips it creates, and this timecode is built into each clip displayed in the cut of the project in the timeline. So what I would like to be able to do is transfer the P2 footage onto HDV tape, with it's original timecode, created from a tapeless camera, delete the clips from the drive, and later, be able to recapture the footage from the transfer tape, and because of the timecode, it reconnects the clips in the timeline as if they never left, even though the footage is now coming from a MiniDV tape, rather than off of the hard drive.
Has this been done successfully? It seems like it could work, and I plan to experiment soon. The biggest concern is recapturing the footage, and FCP successfully recognizing the timecode, originally created from the P2 footage.