Faster way to make TC Burn?

Dear Smart People,

This may be a bit of a wishful thinking but I'd love to find a way to make a long form TC burn in faster. I'm usually working on 60 or 90min shows and when we need to upload a digital file or make DVDs - rendering the burn in, usually DVCProHD 720p, just takes a damn long time - even on my 8 core and caldigit Raid 5.

I think that's just the way it is for now but does anyone out there have any ideas? Even if I could play it out in realtime to DVD recorder - that still seems too long for a 90min show.....

CHL

Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Television Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Instructor

Do not add the TC generator filter in FCP. Rather add the TC in filters in Compressor. Saves you the render and create a useless master. Just make your master in FCP. Output it and burn it into the MPEG-2 file for the DVD built.

[www.qtsync.com]

Or,

Bring your DVCPro project into a new DV NTSC sequence as a nest and use timecode effect. You still need to render but it should be way faster than full rez DVCPro rendering.

Hmmm...you would like low resolution proxies of your footage with timecode burn in that you can burn to a data DVD for your clients, or to e-mail? Well...have I got a product for you...coming in Jan from Image Products (makers of HD Log and ShotPut products.)

PROXYMILL...read about it here:

[lfhd.blogspot.com]

Makes proxies of your P2 cards, OR of any footage you capture into your system. VERY slick. I am beta testing and it is getting better every day.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Hey guys,

Tom's method is interesting with compressor using a virtual cluster on an 8 core - it's damn fast. Haven't used it to make TC yet but I'll try it. Have you guys heard of an "bad join" at the dividing points where Compressor "joins" the pieces back together from the virtual cluster? Some sort of jump in the picture? I haven't seen it myself but my friend says he has.

Shane - The proxymill certainly sounds cool in the particular situation in your article with source footage- but would it be beneficial when making a file from the rough cut/fine cut timeline for network approval?

CHL

Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Television Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Instructor

Nick,

Is this method any faster then selecting DV sequence setting output from the Export to Quicktime option? Because it doesn't seem any faster...

CHL

Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Television Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Instructor

Errrr... no. Rendering HD clips in an SD timeline will still take the same amount of time as rendering in an HD timeline, as FCP will render all those amount of pixels..

But QT sync is very fast. Export a self contained QT movie, run it in QT sync and watch it rip.



www.strypesinpost.com

CHL,

maybe you missed it, but nick also posted a link to QT Sync.
this app will add a TC Burn-in to a QT file INSTANTLY.

the drawback is it Creates a Timecode text document and a new reference movie with the TC burnt in.
so not great for sending off to clients, (you have to send all 3 files)
but presumably great for making DVDs from.

adding effects in Compressor does make it take longer.
(we add watermarks)
but i haven't compressed a QTsync flle, so cant compare.


cheers,
nick

Wow, I've been in the exact same dilemma. Only I'm working in a 23.98 DV sequence. I've got to make different renders with individual burn in for Sound, Music and DI on a feature. I'm giving them footage burn, 24fps timecode burn and 30 NDF burn. The only way I figured how to do it was to create a 29.97 DV file, 22 minutes long (reel length) with all the counters... then crop it. Then I dropped it on the timeline and exported. Because they're both DV, it's a decent speed. Maybe this approach would improve your speed. The worst part for me is that I have to make one for each timecode hour, or else rendering the hour number as a text clip will slow things down.

Dan

Strypes...

I gave the HD to SD DV to DVD -workflow for a reason. If you don't have qtsync it is by far the second best option. I am doing this all the time and don't want to waste my time / precious HD space for dailies with TC burn.

- Yes you are somewhat correct about rendering the burn on DVCPro HD vs. doing it on DV NTSC with downscaling.

but...

- It will take a lot longer to export your whole sequence as a self contained DVCPro HD QT than it will take exporting plain DV NTSC QT. A LOT less writing to do and HUGE saving on HD space. It might be 60-80% faster to export in SD DV

- DVD compression is roughly 50% faster when source is SD DV instead of DVCPro HD


.. so there you have it!!

If you work with auto render, then exporting a self-contained QT/reference movie will be pretty fast.

I'm not too sure if exporting in a different codec will be faster as everything then requires a render. And inserting HD in an SD sequence doesn't seem to render faster than rendering an HD sequence.

DVD compression is definitely a lot faster on SD than it is on HD.

On the other hand, it seems that speed of drive/drive interface could be a very important factor. Lately I've been working on a HD project with FW RAID 0 drives, and it takes about an hour to encode to mpeg2 with 4 cores (with Frame Controls off). Comparatively, it takes me just under 16 mins to encode an SD program of the same length with 2 cores on a Dual 2Ghz G5 and a RAID 5 fibre optic external.

Also, I've tried a short test in burning TC on XDCAM EX footage with QT sync. Although timecode seems to skip on playback (also skips on full raster ProRes HD, so I'm suspecting the FW drives can't handle RT playback of both tracks), it seems to encode QTsync timecode without issues on final encoding to mpeg2 or any other delivery format.



www.strypesinpost.com