![]() _There are 2 flavours of Xdcam, and they both shoot MPEG-2 Long-GOP files at various resolutions. The main physical difference between XDCam HD and XDCam Ex is that XDCam is delivered on optical media and EX is recorded onto a solid state SxS card. With XDCam HD can use the camera like a VTR deck to output the media and load it into FCP via Log and Capture, or you can still export it in a file based workflow. In the Ex format you should only use the file based workflow. Now to start with you need to have Final Cut Pro/XDCAM Transfer V2.12 installed on your computer. Connect your camera device/caddy to the computer. The disks should appear on the desktop like a regular drive. It's a great plan to make a backup of the card pre-import. Simply copy the volume’s BPAV folder to a directory on another disk. The transfer software can import as long as the BPAV and connected subdirectory files are maintained. Now you can import the files using the Transfer Tool from within FCP (File – Import - Sony XDCAM). This loads up the XDCAM Transfer interface as a separate programme from FCP. The software allows you to preview clips right there in the window or as full-screen (reveal the clip in Finder), and you view generic info on the footage (format, data rate, date/time, but no lens or shot settings). You can also set in/out points for each clip. This will automatically create a subclip of that clip which is listed under the Logging tab. You can list multiple subclips for each clip, and it’s straightforward to choose which to import, add, or remove; all under the Logging tab. Subclipped clips will show a IN/OUT overlay on their thumbnail, and you can globally clear subclips by selecting all clips, right-clicking, and choosing Clear Subclips from the contextual menu. Select the clips you wish to import, ensure the “Send to Final Cut Pro project” option is ticked, and hit Import. Put the kettle on while the files are being brought in. The process shouldn't take too long, this is more of a consolidation process than a transcode. Note that that isn't possible to convert files into Pro Res files on import. In order to do that you need to highlight the clips (or the sequence) inside FCP and right click then select Media manager and transcode to whatever flavour of Pro Res you desire. Now go and have your coffee, if someone else hasn't used up all the water.
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![]() _The Canons shoot HD video 1920x1080 in h.264 format Quicktimes. And thus you should convert to a Pro Res format for ease of editing. Not a problem since EOS MOVIE Plugin-E1 was released last year. First thing: download the Canon FCP acquisition driver Canon website: http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/products/cameras/slr_cameras/eos_5d_mark_ii#DriversAndSoftware (5D driver works for the other cameras too) This negates the need to always convert the files using Compressor. (n.b. Compressor can still be a good workflow in certain situations) Best practice is to copy the files – without damaging the original file architecture, onto your desktop, and then import from there. 2 reasons for this: 1.Safety - backup of original media and 2.The internal hard drive will prove a much quicker and more stable bed for the transfer process than a card. So, after making sure you have correctly set your scratch disks, open Final Cut. Go to File/Log and transfer and guide the menu to wherever it is you have put the files. From there you can view the files, do some logging, choose which clips to bring in, and set any in and out point on those clips. Handy for losing those endless foot/sky/inside of case shots. Once you have selected your shots you can then transcode them to the codec of your choice. And go and put the kettle on while the computer sweats. One last thing. When your clips are sat in FCP, have a look in the Browser window at the column marked Field Dominance and they are set to Upper (Odd) set them to none. _ Popular Acquisition Formats
Interframe Formats: AVCHD-AVCCAM-NXCAM-HDV-XDCAM-Canon DSLR Intraframe Formats: HD CAM-DVCProHD -AVCIntra Although there are many different formats, video compression comes in two basic flavours,intraframe and interframe. Intraframe compression is the type of frame-based editing codec used by Avid (DNxHD) and Apple Final Cut Pro (ProRes 422). It is also used in certain acquisition formats such as DVCProD and HDCam. Here each frame is separately Jpeg compressed and contains full image information. This produces a high quality, very useable format but takes requires a lot of data and storage. As the overall is calculated on individual frames of video. With interframe formats MPEG compression is used in order to retain the quality of the image but reduce the amount of data that needs to be stored. These formats are also known as Long Gop formats because a Group Of Frames is constructed that is started and ended by an I-frame. The I-frame is a regular Jpeg compressed frame and is created every 15 frames (12 for dvd mpeg2), and MPEG compression works by removing redundant visual information the frames that lie in between I-frames, so they carry a, much smaller, amount of difference data only. And thus, editing Long-GOP MPEG is like editing spaghetti. Firstly, unless you get lucky and pause the clip on an I-frame, the system will have to load an entire GOP and decode it before it’s able to display that frame of video to you. This takes both time and significant processing power, so jogging through the video and selecting your edit point is not a quick or slick experience you have come to expect from your editing system of choice. Chances are the edits you make are likely to be on one of the frames within the GOP, and the result of this is that if you stay in the native format, eventually the whole sequence will have to be decoded and re-encoded again to reconstruct the GOP structure uniformly throughout. The same happens when any effect is added. Lengthy render alert. Mind you, not so bad if you are heavy smoker, have a weak bladder, or both... And this is the reason why it's always recommended to convert your footage to Pro Res or DnxHD frame based (intraframe) format before editing. Much more drive space is required, but drives are still cheaper than editors (praise be...) and you really want your editor to be cutting and not swearing/smoking rendering. Addendum: the above refers to software in the 32 bit world. i.e. Avid Media Composer up to V.5.5 and Final Cut up to V7. The recent arrival of 64 bit software (MC6, FCPX, and Premiere Pro from CS5) have made the editing of footage in it native format much more palatable, and when these become more common place I shall report further on the new workflows. It's a really good idea before you book your edit, to gauge how much space you will ultimately require. A wrong estimate can lead to additional charges in a facility or you can simply run out of drive space in your home/office set up.
Luckily there are a couple of Calculators which will ease your pain. For Final Cut there is a great free disc space calculator widget from Digital Heaven, for use on a mac, iphone or ipad: http://www.videospaceonline.com/ For Avid I would go online and use the Avid Storage Calculator: http://www.avid.com/US/resources/avid-storage-calculator This allow you to compare the amount of storage you would need at different resolutions in graphical form. In the example below I have 10 hours of footage at 2.1, 2.1S, and 15.1 resolutions. Slightly less simple but with many more options, for Avid and FCP, is the Digital Rebellion Video Space Calculator. This is another online calculator. But unlike the others it also has conversion charts for other codecs such as h.264 (Canon 5D), Red, Maya, and many others. This is useful if you want to backup your acquisition disks to the media drive. Particularly useful for FCPX and Adobe Premiere Pro which are both designed to work with native codecs. http://www.digitalrebellion.com/webapps/video_calc.html Now remember you never want your media drive more than 90% full - ever. And during the edit, on whatever system you choose, there is going to be a lot of rendering and extra media fed into the project, music/sfx/graphics etc. after the rushes have been loaded. So, erring on the side of caution on a long job, it might be a good rule of thumb to estimate that your rushes will be 50/60% of the required disc space. Have a nice day. |
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