Preparing for a project for offline & online edits
by Johnny Polo
on
Mar 17, 2006 at 9:10:34 pm
Hi,
I've been reading a lot of posts that have helped me successfuly import my footage from the P2 cards, but since I'm going to be editing an indie-feature in the next week, I'm trying to figure out whats best for
1) Creating low-res files for an offline edit to save space. Should I just use the media manager tool to downconvert?
2) trying to figure out how I can reconnect those offline files to the full-res HD footage so that I can set it up for the online suite. My problem is that I'm not sure if I should just back-up the DVCPro HD footage that FCP creates, or if I should keep the .mxf files instead (which I'm not sure how to reconnect the files to either).
Sorry, I'm new to Final Cut because Avid won't let me work with the P2 footage. Your help and advice would greatly be appreciated. Thanks.
Re: Preparing for a project for offline & online edits by Noah Kadner on Mar 18, 2006 at 12:00:19 am
Considering the relatively small size of DVCPROHD files and the added hassle of reconforming an online version, I'd highly recommend simply investing in more hard drive space. A really nice 320GB FW800 G-RAID drive holds around 7 hours of DVCPROHD and costs only $350. Cheaper drives out there too if you don't need as much space.
Re: Preparing for a project for offline & online edits by JeremyG on Mar 18, 2006 at 8:34:35 pm
Noah is right on about DVCPro HD, it's not a whole hell of a lot bigger than DV, and certainly smaller than uncompressed SD, I'd keep it in it's native form and don't worry about and offline. If yo can't monitor HD because you don't have an HD monitor, I'd recommend getting yourself one of the AJA Kona models and watch a downconvert in real time to your NTSC monitor. If ya got a bit of cash to spend, I'd recommend getting a SONY PVM 20L5/1 or if you can't find one of those a PVM 14L5/1 for HD/SD CRT monitoring.
As far as whether or not to archive the mxf or the converted quicktime files, I'm torn on this one too. I am of the thinking that you should archive the media that you are using (the quicktime files). That way in case of drive failure you are reconnecting the quicktime files and not importing the P2 files, rewrapping them in quicktime and then reconnecting. Does that make sense to you? Hopefully, someday, we can use the mxf files natively in FCP and not worry about this. Then we'd all be really cool and get to brag to our friends, or something like that.
Re: Preparing for a project for offline & online edits by joslyn20 on Mar 18, 2006 at 11:49:03 pm
jeremy, i have a pvm 14l5 as mentioned above. great monitor for viewing hvx footage. i'm just wondering if there is a way to preview dvcprohd footage on my powerbook while working in fcp 5.0.4. or am i out of luck? thanks.
Re: Preparing for a project for offline & online edits by JeremyG on Mar 19, 2006 at 12:28:43 am
Not as good as you want it to be. You can use the 1200A deck, but there's a jump in the picture about every 5 seconds or so. Maybe there'll be something at NAB for monitoring dvcprohd from a laptop, but I wouldn't count on it.
