The Move to HD....
by Tim Scarpino
on
Jan 19, 2006 at 8:26:45 pm
Greetings all,
We've been charged to examine what it will take to get our hybrid analog/SD systems into the HD environment, particulary our Avid Adrenalines and Express Pros.
I'm wondering if any one has a link to a favorite article or two that might help us better understand the task ahead of us?
Re: The Move to HD.... by Dan Brockett on Jan 21, 2006 at 8:00:58 pm
Hi Tim:
Sounds like we are in a similar situation. The place I produce for has 9 Xpress DV Pro systems with Mojos and they just bought a new Symphony Nitris last week as their on-line bay. As best we can tell, we will be shooting with the HVX-200 mostly, in 1080P mostly. The thought is that we will have to use the camera to downconvert the 1080P to NTSC DV, much like we have been doing with the Sony Z1and it's 1080i output for the past six months.
The challenge is how we are going to archive all of this P2 footage we will be shooting (if the damned cameras ever deliver). The plan at this point is to either lay all P2 footage off to tape (HDCAM probably) until the BluRay recorders deliver, hopefully just a few months down the road. Pioneer has said that the BRD-101A will ship at the end of this month but I think out of the chute, it will only ship with PC capability, not Mac. We are all Mac except for the Symphony.
Other than that, the workflow, in theory, should not be too difficult. We shoot HD, off-line with DV "proxy" footage, then bring the Xpress Pro sequence into the Symphony. I assume that we can then just bring in all of the P2 files to the Symphony, re-link media (no more digitizing in tape, yeah!), re-render transitions and effects in HD as much as we need to, color correct and output. We are probably going to have to use D5 decks as well as HDCAM because our clients use both formats, HDCAM for shooting and D5 for archiving. Yikes this is getting expensive!
The tricky part will come when we have to also integrate 4x3 PAL footage with NTSC 16x9 and put it all onto a 1080 60i timeline and make it all work and flow together. Not sure exactly how we will accomplish that.
Anyway, report back as you discover your workflow and challenges and I will do the same.
