Varicam postproduction workflow

Seth Melnick · April 25, 2007

Can some one outline a varicam postproduction workflow or point to a resource showing one?

I am working with an editor who wants the footage on digibeta for an offline avid edit. this requires a downconvert of each tape at a cost of 280 per 30 minute run. So if we shoot 30 hours - we need to spend 18K on just these dubs. Then at the end we need to online based on the final EDL.

What would be a better workflow - is there a way to go from dvcprohd tapes directly to proxy offline files?

thanks in advance for any help or guidance

Scott Fritzshall · April 25, 2007

My understanding was that DVCProHD could be edited offline directly. I'm pretty sure Avid and Final Cut support it, I think it would just be a matter of capturing it all.

Seth Melnick · April 25, 2007

My understanding was that DVCProHD could be edited offline directly. I'm pretty sure Avid and Final Cut support it, I think it would just be a matter of capturing it all.

do you mean that you can hook the panny deck by firewire to an avid system and capture the tapes? Do the panny decks do an offline downrez and burn timecode in?

adam berk · April 25, 2007

do you mean that you can hook the panny deck by firewire to an avid system and capture the tapes? Do the panny decks do an offline downrez and burn timecode in?

Any newer machine, AKA, anything capable of doing a multistream DV edit should be able to edit the DVCPROHD natively without a problem. I've cut DVCPROHD on my 1.67ghz G4 powerbook from the internal HDD several times in FCP- captured from the panasonic deck via firewire. Dubbing down to digibeta for offline editing purposes is the biggest waste of time and money you could possibly undertake.

Seth Melnick · April 25, 2007

Any newer machine, AKA, anything capable of doing a multistream DV edit should be able to edit the DVCPROHD natively without a problem. I've cut DVCPROHD on my 1.67ghz G4 powerbook from the internal HDD several times in FCP- captured from the panasonic deck via firewire. Dubbing down to digibeta for offline editing purposes is the biggest waste of time and money you could possibly undertake.

I know this and have done it in avid. But it seems our editor is from the film world and is used to offline editing. So its going to take some convincing.

I know they have a digibeta deck but no dvcpro deck - whats the best way to capture - rent a deck to capture or can a post house just capture to avid media on a portable disk array?

Walter Graff · April 28, 2007

I know this and have done it in avid. But it seems our editor is from the film world and is used to offline editing. So its going to take some convincing.

I know they have a digibeta deck but no dvcpro deck - whats the best way to capture - rent a deck to capture or can a post house just capture to avid media on a portable disk array?

Capture directly to disk. You dont need to make those dubs, a waste of money.

Evangelos Achillopoulos · April 30, 2007

Simply rent an AJ-HD1400 for a couple of days that?s about 200$/ day or 800$/per week, capture the material directly to avid or dub it your self to a miniDV from Firewire and that?s all.

As an example, we offer that work for our clients for 60? per tape with the miniDV tapes included. And we also offer the Online HD for 60?/minute final product with two days for titling and finishing. If you want more we can Color grade for film out with 120?/hour (plus the fee of the Colorist) and then we print it in 5212 kodak for 190? (including stock and processing) per minute.

Regards,

Oliver Ojeil · May 9, 2007

Hey Seth,

You don't need a disk array setup in order to capture DVCPRO HD footage 1:1 because it has a data rate of 100Mbps when a sustained transfer rate of a 7200rpm external IDE can reach 400mbps via firewire 400 and 800mbps with the new Fire wire800 hard disks out. It is actually pretty cheap as a post production work flow.

Like everyone said, down-converting to DigiBeta is the biggest waste of time and especially money.

Good luck!