OT: DVFilm Releases DVFilm EPIC I For Mac

[www.studiodaily.com]

Could be very cool

Michael Horton
-------------------

Direct link: [dvfilm.com]



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

Quote

Important Note: Epic "overrides" the ProRes 422 decoder, so Quicktimes encoded with ProRes 422 cannot be played back with Epic installed. However ProRes 422 (HQ), ProRes 422 (LT), or ProRes 422 (Proxy) are OK. If you should happen to have a vanilla ProRes 422 Quicktime, remove Epic to play it back or transcode it to ProRes 422 (HQ), then re-install Epic.

Pardon my French, but that is @#$%& weak.

If this means no ProRes 422 at all for other non-epic timelines;
then NO THANKS!


Jeff Harrell Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Important Note: Epic "overrides" the ProRes 422
> decoder, so Quicktimes encoded with ProRes 422
> cannot be played back with Epic installed. However
> ProRes 422 (HQ), ProRes 422 (LT), or ProRes 422
> (Proxy) are OK. If you should happen to have a
> vanilla ProRes 422 Quicktime, remove Epic to play
> it back or transcode it to ProRes 422 (HQ), then
> re-install Epic.
>
> Pardon my French, but that is @#$%& weak.

Has anyone used this yet? I'm skeptical about the claims of "transcoding losses" affecting the quality of the imported footage; it's already been shot at 4:2:0 and squeezed into H.264, so how much better can it get if it's edited 'natively?'

FWIW, I consider the Log & Transfer time from H.264 to ProRes as just another necessary stage of post with these cameras, no different than P2 or other tapeless formats that require conversion...

JVK

_______________________________________
SCQT! Self-contained QuickTime ? pass it on!

mark@avolution Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If this means no ProRes 422 at all for other
> non-epic timelines;
> then NO THANKS!
>
>
You can also use the alternative Epic component, it does not override ProRes, it overrides AVC-Intra 1080/100MB/s instead. For details read document at
[dvfilm.com]

John K Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Has anyone used this yet? I'm skeptical about the
> claims of "transcoding losses" affecting the
> quality of the imported footage; it's already been
> shot at 4:2:0 and squeezed into H.264, so how much
> better can it get if it's edited 'natively?'
>

It does not get better, it degrades less.

> FWIW, I consider the Log & Transfer time from
> H.264 to ProRes as just another necessary stage of
> post with these cameras, no different than P2 or
> other tapeless formats that require conversion...
>
> JVK

P2 does not require transcoding in FCP if you use Raylight for Mac
see [dvfilm.com]

Most modern NLEs do not require transcoding for P2 formats (Avid,
Premiere CS5, Vegas+Raylight, Edius).

For 7 minutes of footage it can take about 30 minutes to transcode DSLR to
Pro Res. YMMV. With Epic you can start editing pretty much immediately, and possibly
finish your edit in that same 30 minutes. That time saving, plus less degradation
in the export, might make it worth trying.

Quote

For 7 minutes of footage it can take about 30 minutes to transcode DSLR to
Pro Res.

I think that's way out of line with reality. A couple weeks ago I L&T'd some 7D shots from CF card through the EOS L&T plugin, and the process was roughly realtime. And that was on an iMac, not even a "real" edit system.

Taking the time up front to do things right is not bad. It's far better than putting your faith in hackery and hoping for the best.

>Most modern NLEs do not require transcoding for P2 formats (Avid,
>Premiere CS5, Vegas+Raylight, Edius).

FCP does not transcode either. It rewraps to Quicktime, effectively creating a separate set of rushes for editing. This process is lossless. Transcoding is a lossy process. They are two different things. You can generally view the Log and Transfer process of creating editing rushes as making a full back up of your digital mags. The speed of this process largely depends on the I/O speed of your drives, so if you use USB drives for your digital mags, you will have to wait a long time before you start editing, and you can't edit off USB drives anyway.



www.strypesinpost.com

[Edited to tone down my comments... ]

I suspect that "mvb" is Marcus, the owner of DVFilm. He probably should have made that clear up front, unless it was obvious to everyone else. I just wanted to mention this as his comments, so far, haven't provided that info and could be misconstrued by some...


-Dave

Jeff Harrell Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For 7 minutes of footage it can take about 30
> minutes to transcode DSLR to
> Pro Res.
>
> I think that's way out of line with reality. A
> couple weeks ago I L&T'd some 7D shots from CF
> card through the EOS L&T plugin, and the process
> was roughly realtime. And that was on an iMac, not
> even a "real" edit system.
>
> Taking the time up front to do things right is not
> bad. It's far better than putting your faith in
> hackery and hoping for the best.

I understand. We did our tests on a 1.8GHz dual-core Macbook Pro with the internal drive. I think its reasonable to expect real-time, direct editing of DSLR on a platform like that, and that's what Epic is aimed for. It's not hackery but largely based on the technology that we developed for Raylight, and the desire in the market to be able to edit without transcoding (nor rewrapping) the footage before you can start, and to able to do it on a low-cost workstation and one without an expensive graphics card (as is needed, it seems, for PPro CS5 for example).

Another consideration is the very large amount of disk drive space used by the ProRes
transcodes.

Do you have plans to correct the problem with ProRes? The loss of an enormously popular, useful codec like ProRes, to me, is definitely not worth trying to edit H.264 without transcoding. H.264s are unstable, non-frame-accurate, system-resource-intensive, and without timecode. Log and Transfer is able to stamp time-of-day timecode when transcoding from Canon 5D footage (and I'm assuming the other DSLR flavours as well, though I haven't used them).


www.derekmok.com

What Derek said. Breaking the system to the point that existing codecs no longer function as designed is my working definition of hackery.

Transcoding H.264 media to ProRes has two undeniable benefits: It always works, and it works everywhere. Once the media's been converted, it's rock-solid, because it's ProRes through-and-through. And I know the job can be moved to any Final Cut system in the world, and everything will be fine. The value of those benefits cannot be overestimated, in my opinion.

derekmok Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Do you have plans to correct the problem with
> ProRes? The loss of an enormously popular, useful
> codec like ProRes, to me, is definitely not worth
> trying to edit H.264 without transcoding.


Yes we are looking at it. First of all, it's not bad as you might
think. Only ProRes 422 is affected, not ProRes HQ, LT or proxy.

Also there is an option right now to override the AVC-Intra 100M 24P codec
instead of Prores 422, if you are using FCP 7. We may add other options,
like maybe use AVC-Intra 25P if you never deal with 25P. What's your
poison?

Another way to solve it, Apple would have to approve Epic and
include it in the list of RT Extreme codecs. Assuming that they're
OK with that it would be put into in a future bug release of FCP 7.

Another possibility is we will call the ProRes 422 codec from Epic
to play back honest-to-god ProRes clips. We thought we almost had that
working but it was not ready for this release.

> H.264s
> are unstable, non-frame-accurate,
> system-resource-intensive, and without timecode.
> Log and Transfer is able to stamp time-of-day
> timecode when transcoding from Canon 5D footage
> (and I'm assuming the other DSLR flavours as well,
> though I haven't used them).

Epic handles H.264 in a way that is extremely stable and limits
the memory used. It does that by using a single frame server and buffer for
all clips, protected by system semaphores. Epic is frame accurate.

A release coming very soon will assign timecode to each clip based on
their clip number and length. You will be able to assign the starting timecode
for each folder or it will get it from the clip itself if possible.

DVFilm
Epic I for Mac: [dvfilm.com]
Raylight for Mac: [dvfilm.com]

Thanks for taking the time to join this thread and explaining Epic to us Marcus. I think we all look forward to the updates and are excited about what you are trying to do.

Michael Horton
-------------------

I'm excited about what you are trying to do too, but like the others, am not at all keen on losing another codec I might need in a hurry. That worries me, given I could have anyone come in the door needing AVCHD at any time, and I use ProRes a lot. But I will definitely be watching to see where it goes - this is something we really need.

Jude, it's not AvcHD it's Avc-Intra.



www.strypesinpost.com

I'm curious to know what happens when you use media manager on a project that follows this process.

Peter

Oh, right. Even still. hard to give up something you will possibly need, without knowing how to get it back. That's a world of hurt coming down from the Producer, in my mind.

Peter Wiggins Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm curious to know what happens when you use
> media manager on a project that follows this
> process.
>
> Peter


Don't have an answer yet but we are looking at it. It may be
that Epic will provide a tool for helping media manager with Epic projects. What
functions do you use in Media manager or consider most important?

DVFilm
Epic I for Mac: [dvfilm.com]
Raylight for Mac: [dvfilm.com]

Jude Cotter Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Oh, right. Even still. hard to give up something
> you will possibly need, without knowing how to get
> it back. That's a world of hurt coming down from
> the Producer, in my mind.


Epic does not leave you hanging in that case, there is
a message that appears in white letters on the video
frame itself telling you the problem and the solution
(which is either to use the epic alternate component or
temporarily disable epic).

We see this (having to override a codec) as a temporary problem
in any case and hope to resolve it soon.

DVFilm
Epic I for Mac: [dvfilm.com]
Raylight for Mac: [dvfilm.com]

Making a consolidated copy of a project. i.e. if I have a 10 second shot from a 12 minute clip used in a project, it only copies the 10 second clip with optional handles.

Peter

And be aware that Media Manager is an extremely finicky tool. It been buggy in versions past, (v5, v6 v7?).
And that's without behind the scenes codec magic like you are using.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

>What functions do you use in Media manager or consider most important?

What Peter Wiggins said, as well as MM Recompress (and trim), if I want to consolidate and recompress to an intermediate codec to send clips and the EDL to a third party application like Color, AE, or the Resolve.


>And be aware that Media Manager is an extremely finicky tool.

It has a tendency to surprise. I had an offline subclip with a massive speed ramp (basically a timelapse shot), and I managed to get it to trim reliably for recapture.



www.strypesinpost.com

So I have experimented with the demo version of Epic I on a quad core Mac Pro and it seems to behave as expected. I am in the start-up prep stages of a film project, looking at ingesting 100 to 150 hours of Canon 5D footage, possibly more. Some green screen to be keyed. Multi-cam shoots to be multi-clipped. External audio to be sync'd. My knee-jerk reaction is to follow standard protocol and have everything transcoded to Prores HQ before I even touch it...but, as we all know, that is time consuming, and will require significant drive space - initial estimates of 50TB. Does anyone have any real-world experience with Epic I in FCP7 on a large project?

You might find some folks over on dvinfo.net who have used it or are using it. Sure would like your impressions though as you keep working with it. Please post back here and let everyone know all about it.

Michael Horton
-------------------