Telecine Options

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Ok, so I have been looking around on the forums for a few days now, trying to figure out what's the best format to telecine-to to preserve high quality based on the decks we have around [it's a school project]. The original would be 7218 stock coming off my Arri SR2. We will be finishing, originally, to go to DVD, but the Director/producer wants an option for fests as well, so we'll need something or at least moderately acceptable quality for larger screens. In any case, cost is an issue so I just want options and opinions based upon the decks as I said and also if it's possible (and economical) to go directly to Hard Disc. I was thinking DVCPRO HD, but I'm not sure if this is possible if going directly to Hard Disc or not. So here go the decks

 

Sony HVRM15U

Sony HVRM10U

Sony DSR11

Sony DSR20

Sony DSR25.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Kevin Zanit]

Going to hard disc is a fairly easy option these days. It just depends on how your post house is set up.

 

If you were to do your telecine on a decent HD machine, say a Shadow, they would transfer your footage to HDCam and then from there they would transfer it to hard drive in HD Quicktime files (or perhaps a tiff sequence).

 

I am not aware of any companies who offer telecine DIRECT to hard drive, they all transfer to hard drive off a tape, so it is a second fee (around $100 an hour I think).

 

I don't know where you are located, but Entertainment Post in Burbank, CA may be a good option for you. They offer all the above with pretty good colorists and equipment.

 

Kevin Zanit

[Adrian Sierkowski]

I don't know where you are located, but Entertainment Post in Burbank, CA may be a good option for you. They offer all the above with pretty good colorists and equipment.

 

Kevin Zanit

 

 

Sadly I'm sitting on the other coast in Philadelphia. What about DRCPRO HD? Any good of a mid-ground between the higher end HDs and the DVCAM option?

[Chris Burke]

Going to hard disc is a fairly easy option these days. It just depends on how your post house is set up.

 

If you were to do your telecine on a decent HD machine, say a Shadow, they would transfer your footage to HDCam and then from there they would transfer it to hard drive in HD Quicktime files (or perhaps a tiff sequence).

 

I am not aware of any companies who offer telecine DIRECT to hard drive, they all transfer to hard drive off a tape, so it is a second fee (around $100 an hour I think).

 

I don't know where you are located, but Entertainment Post in Burbank, CA may be a good option for you. They offer all the above with pretty good colorists and equipment.

 

Kevin Zanit

 

 

there are many places that offer straight to hard drive telecine. The problem are the storage requirement, which can get huge, depending upon the codec you are using. For a short, I recommend going to hard drive as uncompressed.

[David Mullen ASC]

Sadly I'm sitting on the other coast in Philadelphia. What about DRCPRO HD? Any good of a mid-ground between the higher end HDs and the DVCAM option?

 

Talk to Shooters in Philadelphia and see if they can transfer HD to hard drives for you. DVCPRO HD is an 8-bit 4:2:2 compressed HD format usually used for tape (though the HVX200 records it to P2 cards).

[Glenn Hanns]

The other option, if you want to preserve the full benefits of shooting on film, is to do a neg select grade and THEN go to tape. That way you can grade uncompressed and with everything the film offers, latitude and colour etc before compressing. We just negotiated a film that took both options into account and it actually worked out cheaper because tape stock for HDCAM SR was so expensive.

Cheers G

[Kevin Zanit]

Most of the service I have seen that are "direct to disc" all go at least through a deck, and usually first go to tape, and then they capture the final tape onto hard drive.

 

The reason I was told for this is because of how the Da Vinci creates its cues in conjunction with deck control can not easily be done strait to hard drive.

 

I am not 100% on the technical reasons why, but just in my experience this is how they are set up (Laser Pacific, Modern, The Post Group, Entertainment Post, Level 3 just to name a few of the post houses I have dealt with that had the above setup).

[Michael Most]

Most of the service I have seen that are "direct to disc" all go at least through a deck, and usually first go to tape, and then they capture the final tape onto hard drive.

 

The reason I was told for this is because of how the Da Vinci creates its cues in conjunction with deck control can not easily be done strait to hard drive.

 

I am not 100% on the technical reasons why, but just in my experience this is how they are set up (Laser Pacific, Modern, The Post Group, Entertainment Post, Level 3 just to name a few of the post houses I have dealt with that had the above setup).

 

As I learned when I moved to Miami after nearly 30 years in Los Angeles, L.A. is not the world. The way things are done there is not necessarily the model for the way they're done elsewhere. There are a number of different ways to record to a computer, depending on what type of files you're trying to create. Some can be created only on a Mac, others can only be created on a PC. On the PC side, there is software and hardware available to create a vtr emulator that can be treated like a tape machine, so you can control it and record to it as if you were going to tape. On the Mac side, such software does not exist, but you can use a program called Virtual VTR to allow start/stop recording, with time code. This means you have to take a bit of time to color correct the entire roll prior to recording it (you can't edit), but it does work and eliminates the extra step and extra compression of a trip through an HDCam machine. This is how we do direct to hard disk transfers for various clients - we control the Mac directly from telecine for stop and start recording, and at the same time, make an HDCam backup that also supplies time code to Virtual VTR. This gives the client what is essentially a first generation recording, but allows us to have backup and repeatable time code for that backup in case the file or disk gets corrupted (gee, that never happens, does it??). Ironically, Avid built a system to do this years ago (Avid Media Station Telecine), but was never really able to get it to work reliably, and ultimately abandoned it - although I believe the functionality is still present in the Symphony. There are also devices that are built specifically for this task - Maximum Throughput's Sledgehammer (Windows based), Drastic Technologies' QuickClip Pro (Windows), DVS' Clipster and Pronto (Windows), and SpectSoft's RaveHD (Linux based) come to mind, although you obviously can't do Mac specific Quicktime formats - which are generally the most requested for this kind of work, primarily in the form of DVCPro HD Quicktimes, and probably in the near future, ProRes - on any of them.

[Sam Wells]

Talk to Shooters in Philadelphia and see if they can transfer HD to hard drives for you. DVCPRO HD is an 8-bit 4:2:2 compressed HD format usually used for tape (though the HVX200 records it to P2 cards).

 

I've transferred to D5HD at Shooters, I dunno if they are doing any direct to disk or not. Again, it can be a question of how best their internal setup can be used for you.

 

If you're on a recent Mac, I'd go to ProRes 422 from there. (I confess I haven't done this yet, well this is the first month of ProRes' publc existence). You can get DVCProHD on a FW drive from D5 at Shooters, been there done that.

 

-Sam

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Beautiful, thank all of you for your opinions and options. I'll be giving shooters a call come Monday.

[Kevin Zanit]

Michael: Never said it was the only way to do it, just the main way that I have seen it done, at least in LA. I also remember a huge thread involving you (I think), Phil Rhodes and someone else on this subject with regard to the viability of the different direct to disc methods. No clear end was reached.

 

Like I said, I never said it?s not possible or that there are not ways to go truly direct to disc, just that I have yet to see them.

[Alexander Joyce]

although you obviously can't do Mac specific Quicktime formats - which are generally the most requested for this kind of work, primarily in the form of DVCPro HD Quicktimes, and probably in the near future, ProRes - on any of them.

 

AJA seem to have a direct to disk solution for the Mac.

 

2K Workflow

The KONA 3 2K path offers significant cost and labor savings over a tape-based approach to 2K. In a unique development for customers on the Macintosh platform, you can go straight from telecine to disk with 2K media and eliminate the steps of using tape stock and then digitizing those tapes for the nonlinear editor. The added 2K support in KONA 3 v2 will benefit large, full-service facilities as well as boutique facilities entering the 2K ?film as digital? landscape.

 

2K telecine to KONA 3 saves time and steps in the process by directly and simultaneously creating 2K DPX files and 2K QuickTime? reference movies.

 

Ironically, Avid built a system to do this years ago (Avid Media Station Telecine), but was never really able to get it to work reliably, and ultimately abandoned it - although I believe the functionality is still present in the Symphony.

 

It's was in the old Symphony Meridien, but not in the present Symphony Nitris.

[Sam Wells]

AJA seem to have a direct to disk solution for the Mac.

 

2K Workflow

The KONA 3 2K path offers significant cost and labor savings over a tape-based approach to 2K. In a unique development for customers on the Macintosh platform, you can go straight from telecine to disk with 2K media and eliminate the steps of using tape stock and then digitizing those tapes for the nonlinear editor. The added 2K support in KONA 3 v2 will benefit large, full-service facilities as well as boutique facilities entering the 2K ?film as digital? landscape.

 

2K telecine to KONA 3 saves time and steps in the process by directly and simultaneously creating 2K DPX files and 2K QuickTime? reference movies.

 

Alexander: this could be DPX and ProRes HQ at the same time ?? That's intruiging....

 

I don't see how/if this is VTR emulation in terms of stop / start / insert ?

 

-Sam

[Michael Most]

AJA seem to have a direct to disk solution for the Mac.

 

2K Workflow

The KONA 3 2K path offers significant cost and labor savings over a tape-based approach to 2K. In a unique development for customers on the Macintosh platform, you can go straight from telecine to disk with 2K media and eliminate the steps of using tape stock and then digitizing those tapes for the nonlinear editor. The added 2K support in KONA 3 v2 will benefit large, full-service facilities as well as boutique facilities entering the 2K ?film as digital? landscape.

 

2K telecine to KONA 3 saves time and steps in the process by directly and simultaneously creating 2K DPX files and 2K QuickTime? reference movies.

 

That might be the case if someone actually manufactured a 2K telecine, or if there were a 2K video standard. They don't, and there isn't. I've never gotten a straight answer from AJA as to what they mean by any of this, other than the ability to import information from an HSDL connection - a non-real time transfer solution that is not used much today.

 

The term "2K" is thrown around very easily these days, but in almost all cases, it's not what's being described. What is being described is dual link HD video. That's 1920x1080, not 2048x1556, and it's 16x9, not 4x3. I really wish people and companies would get their terminology correct so that their product descriptions could actually match reality.

 

They also don't supply any kind of control software that would do what I previously described needs to be done for any kind of efficiency - i.e., VTR emulation, to allow edit system control.

 

It's was in the old Symphony Meridien, but not in the present Symphony Nitris.

 

That is correct, which is why I said "Symphony" and not "Symphony Nitris" ;-)