HDV and AIC captured footage in the same project and timeline.

Hello,

I am being asked to problem solve a large finishing issue on a colleague's project. He has a fully edited 90-minute documentary shot entirely on the Sony Z1U @ HDV 1080i60. Somehow, he logged 1/4 of the footage using Apple Intermediate Codec and 3/4 of the footage as Native HDV 1080i60.

Now, he's trying to export as a Quicktime movie as a master file to disseminate into down-converted formats, DVDs, etc. But FCP 5.1.4 won't allow him to do so. Is there a workaround for these issues? Does he have to recapture some of the tapes so that he has everything in the same format? It seems that there should be a way to render multiple formats using one over-arching compression setting, no?

I edit a lot of HDV from the Z1U, and have always done so using the Native HDV workflow, and never had any issues, so the AIC is entirely foreign to me.

I am attempting to solve this on my MacBook Pro 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo with 2 GB of RAM. The project's media is spread across 4 LaCie hard drives . . . kind of a nightmare.

The final part of my question is whether my colleague can media mange the project onto one drive for me to easier solve his issues.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated. These issues have already spoiled the premiere screening of the film . . .

Thanks

AQSURF

Quote

he's trying to export as a Quicktime movie as a master file to disseminate into down-converted formats, DVDs, etc. But FCP 5.1.4 won't allow him to do so.

never heard of that.
how is FCP not allowing this?
do you get a warning?

FCP should export a QTMovie just fine.
it will convert everything i the timeline to that format.


nick

FCP stops the render and gives a "codec error"

It is odd, I edit in mixed formats all the time and FCP simply exports everything in the sequence as whatever the sequence compression settings are set to . . .

is everything in the timeline rendered?
that would solve all codec errors, as the footage has already been converted (the render files will be the codec of the timeline)

i can answer your part2 a bit better:

YES you can pretty easily use Media Manager to put all the used media onto another drive.
the easiest way to work is if you can get away without using "DELETE UNUSED"
that'll obviously need more room, but will be quit bullet proof.

the Media Manger tends to make it;s mistakes when it is asked to Delete Unused.
"Mistakes" most ofetn take the form of you getting the incorrect part of a shot that has speed effects on it.
simple speed mods are safer. time re-maps more troublesome.
smaller files seem to cause less problems
(a time re-map on a small segment of a large clip is the worst scenario)

use COPY mode in MM.
it you need to "Delete Unused" for space reasons then check the MM'd version prior to your taking it off-site.

good way to check:
load the original seq in the VIEWER
the MM version in the Timeline
park at the head of both.
set Canvas to GANG mode (middle drop down menu at top)

not you can step thru or scrub both versions at same time.


nick

Thanks Nick,

I think the best thing to do is dump the media managed project onto a fresh drive and try a fresh render on a different system. I will take your advice and see how it goes.

If anything else pops up in your mind regarding compatibility issues with AIC and Native HDV 1080i60, I'd love to hear about them. I ALWAYS edit Native when I edit HDV, and this headache is making me want to keep it that way. If you have an "ideal" HDV workflow that uses AIC for long projects, I will entertain the notion, however.

For me, waiting an extra minute for a color-correction render, as well as the extra storage space, is worth it for me to edit Native. But I am self taught, after all . . .

thanks again.

AQ

well the important question here is: what's your delivery format?

if you are delivering you final show in SD, then you might be best to convert all to that.
if you're delivering some form of HD, or if you just want to keep an HD version to "future-protect" yourself, then stay HD.

BUT maybe not HDV...

if you can see FCP6 being in your near future, i'd suggest not using IAC, but the new ProRes codec.

i haven't used AIC, so i cant comment on it, but people are really raving about teh new ProRes


nick