Workflow - Phantom Cam & 35mm
by David Jahns
on
Jun 30, 2009 at 10:14:59 pm
We're putting specs together for a TV spot which will be shot 35mm & some Phantom Cam super high speed stuff, finishing 1080p23.98.
We'll offline in FCP at NTSC 23.98 (Cinema Tools rev telecine), and re-transfer film to HD at online stage. The Phantom Cam will be shot at 1920 x 1080, and we have a choice of delivery specs - TIFFs, DPX, or Quicktime. For offline, we'll need NTSC 24 quicktimes, of course, but we'll want to reconform to the original HD frames for online.
I thought we could get DPX files, use the AJA DPX to QT Translator, then export NTSC quality QTs, which could match back to the DPX files via the timecode. Good plan, eh?
To test this out, I had some DPX files rendered out of Color from a previous test, but the DPX Translator says, "Error: couldn't open file." Any idea why that would be? I read one post that said the DPX Translator only works with 4:4:4 footage. is this true? Is there some other reason 2K DPX's rendered out of Color wouldn't open in the AJA software?
I suppose we could get TIFFs, but those will not have timecode info, just frame numbers, and we'd have to create quicktimes with burn-in, and then manually prep the frames for online.
Or should we just get Uncompressed 1080 quicktimes instead of frames? Any downside to that? I suppose the 4:2:2 conversion isn't as ideal as the camera's raw format, but it's just going to finish in HD 4:2:2 anyway, so the loss would be negligible.
(We don't know what system the online will be done with, and our local Flame guy always hates it when we bring him quicktimes - gamma shift issues, etc...)
Re: Workflow - Phantom Cam & 35mm by gary adcock on Jul 3, 2009 at 1:33:00 pm
OK
first off why are you doing an NTSC offline, with todays HD codecs that can cause more trouble than necessary especially when working with commercial content.
Since you say the Phantom is being shot as 1080, and you are doing a 1080 4:2:2 finish, why not have both the phantom and the 35mm transferred to HDCamSR (which is 10bit as 4:2:2 or 4:4:4) and use the tapes as your masters?
The issues that I see with all of the content from both cameras as DPX files- jumbo storage and desktop needs to handle the files, software down conversions do not always carry correct timecode for relinking.
Let the flame guy do his own conversion from the master tapes-
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Check out
http://www.aja.com/kiprotour/
Inside look at the IoHD
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/adcock_gary/AJAIOHD.php
Re: Workflow - Phantom Cam & 35mm by David Jahns on Jul 6, 2009 at 4:45:22 pm
Hi Gary. Thanks for your suggestions.
We're doing NTSC-24 offline because the creative team is more comfortable with an offline/online workflow when dealing with 35mm film - they'll inevitably want to see the entire 4x3 full gate frame, reposition & blow up, etc.
A few projects back, we did the dailies film transfer to SR 16-9, but when we wanted to reframe some shots, we didn't know what was in the top or bottom of the 35mm frame, and we had to retransfer anyway - and then rent the SR deck again, too.
We still shoot 35mm film and do this off/online workflow quite often, it's just the Phantom Cam footage that we're trying to figure out the best plan for.
Since it's just short format TV, we'll just get TIFFs, create QTs with frame burn-ins, and manually re-conform later, but if anyone knows why the AJA DPX translator didn't work with Color's DPX files, I'd love to hear about it.
Re: Workflow - Phantom Cam & 35mm by gary adcock on Jul 7, 2009 at 2:05:43 pm
[David Jahns]"Since it's just short format TV, we'll just get TIFFs, create QTs with frame burn-ins, and manually re-conform later, but if anyone knows why the AJA DPX translator didn't work with Color's DPX files, I'd love to hear about it. "
2 reasons.
not a standard frame size for video playback or
the files are not standardized DPX frame sizes - is Color creating them or some other app?
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Check out
http://www.aja.com/kiprotour/
Inside look at the IoHD
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/adcock_gary/AJAIOHD.php
Re: Workflow - Phantom Cam & 35mm by David Jahns on Jul 7, 2009 at 4:33:02 pm
Ah, yes. Thanks, Gary.
These were DPX files created from Red 4K files. I created some 2k DPX's from Color, and they work just fine with the KONA Translator. Thanks for your help!
Re: Workflow - Phantom Cam & 35mm by Robert Monaghan on Jul 9, 2009 at 12:31:08 am
Hi David,
We provide a Phantom Cine Toolkit for FCP. It does a number of things which will make your editorial life better. One of these is adding a Time Code track to the Phantom Clip, which will make it possible to conform with Phantom footage. (We also sell a separate DPX package, which allows FCP to work directly with DPX footage too. But it may not be helpful to you.) Download a demo from our site..
bob.
ww.gluetools.com
Robert Monaghan, CEO
Glue Tools LLC
629 State St. Suite 220
Santa Barbara, CA, 93101
United States
Re: Workflow - Phantom Cam & 35mm by David Jahns on Jul 9, 2009 at 1:07:21 am
Thanks, Bob.
I did look into Glue Tools, and have downloaded the demos of both packages.
For this project, the Camera Tech will handle everything and deliver us both QTs and DPX's with matching timecode. I think he's using Glue Tools, actually... ;-)
