Critique this workflow

-We are doing a 3 camera shoot of a church service
-each camera goes direct to a G5 via SDI SD
-we currently record at 19:9 DVCPro50
-we then remove the hard drives and take them to the post area

We need several formats:
-4:3 DV25 NTSC for broadcast
-4:3 DV25 PAL for broadcast in europe
(the 4:3 format uses a letterboxed 16:9 video with graphic above and below, using the whole 4:3 space)
-16:9 anamorphic widescreen DVD in both PAL and NTSC

Our post system is a quad core G5 with 10TB GVS fiber attached raid5
Panasonic DVCpro50 deck. The network in the US can't use DVCpro50 so we give them DV25

Here is what I am thinking:

Edit the DVCpro50 footage for widescreen NTSC DVD
-render to uncompressed 8 or 10bit 4:2:2
-set up a PC on the network running Canopus Procoder
-have Procoder start to render both PAL and NTSC mpeg files for DVD

-modify the project to begin work on the 4:3 broadcast edition
-render that to Uncompressed
-send it to Procoder, to create DV25 PAL and NTSC which can be transfered to the deck via firewire

Procoder can be set to watch a folder for new material to encode. Theoretically the editor will never need to look at the PC or prococder once it has been set up.

After the files have all been rendered he can then author the DVDs, and dump the DV25 to the deck.

While Procoder is rendering all the video the audio can be exported as OMF for the audio guy to mix and provide stereo for broadcast and AC3 for DVD.

Procoder can also be set to create any webcasts we may want to do.

This workflow will allow most rendering to happen in the background on a different machine.

After all the parts are complete we can choose what to archive and save it on an LTO3 tape

Will this work? Is there anything I didn't think of?

thanks,
~Jay

Personally I wouldn't bother with the uncompressed render. Go straight out to DVCPRO 50. Because you're taking it out to a PC you can't use QuickTime Movie, I don't think, but have to go through QuickTime Conversion. Though you might be able to go out to QT Movie and then use something like FileType to change the creator to QuickTime. That would save you a recompression cycle.

All the best,

Tom

Agreed, you won't gain anything from working 8-bit or 10-bit uncompressed except larger files.

Ben



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Thanks for the replies,

My concern is that there might not be a way to render out a DVCpro50 from FCP that isn't in a QT wrapper. I don't know of any possible way to read a QT DVCpro50 file on a PC.

Would uncompressed render faster than DVCpro50?

thanks,
~Jay

why not use Compressor to make the mpg?

I have heard a lot of great things about the speed and quality of Procoder. It also does batch processing which can really help make production more efficient.

I have also heard that Procoder does a really good job of converting from NTSC to PAL.

You can export to a DVCPRO50 AVI file if you use "Using QuickTime Conversion" and change the Options. I have no idea what the PC has to have installed to be able to play it back though.

Martin Baker
[www.digital-heaven.co.uk]
Unique plug-ins and tools for Apple Pro Apps

digitalheaven Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You can export to a DVCPRO50 AVI file if you use
> "Using QuickTime Conversion" and change the
> Options. I have no idea what the PC has to have
> installed to be able to play it back though.

Thanks for the tip.... Matrox offers a free codec that might work. I'll have to try that.

~Jay