re: DigiBeta online

I've just been appointed a job that I've never done before so I wanted to check if I have the methods down correctly. Any help would be appreciated.

Forty-five-second commercial shot on 35mm, telecined to DigiBeta normally at 29.97fps, will stay there (for obvious reasons) for broadcast. Show has been captured at Uncompressed 8-bit. They have colour-corrected some shots and re-exported them onto a new DigiBeta tape, with matching timecode to the original tapes. The non-colour-corrected shots will stay put. My task is to go in, recapture and recut the new shots into the timeline, and then export an EDL for the Flame artists who would be onlining the show.

So what I think I'll be doing is:
- Cross-checking capture settings with the old clips and making sure current settings match
- Load tapes, log, capture individual shots. (The station has been known to have dropped-frame problems and Capture Now or logging as one big chunk could end up costing more time than it saves.)
- Replace clips in timeline with colour-corrected clips.
- Check accuracy of new captures against old picture cut. I'm planning on using Crop to do a temporary split-screen -- old clip on one side, new clip on the other -- to check codes as well as picture matching.
- Fine-tune editing where necessary, as instructed by the producer.
- Export EDL.

There will be two versions in two languages, so it's a double workload.

Since the whole spot is 45 seconds, and the producer said the new clips (from four different tapes) matched timecode to the original tapes, I'm thinking the new tape will also have TC breaks, so it may be easier to do this by hand?

I will be working on an FCP5 station with a Sony DigiBeta deck (don't know the model yet). They are using a Kona 2 card (with a K-Box or KL-Box, don't know which) with SDI going out of the deck, and SDI going into the computer.

Am I missing anything? Also, never having worked with any Flame users, will I be exporting an EDL as if it were film? The few times when I've exported an EDL from FCP, I've exported as CMX3600 with the audio turned off. Does that sound right? How long do you guys see this job will take?

To cut in a few new shots & export an EDL? An hour (depending on if the client/Producer is in the room and how much of a PITA he/she is).

What's buggin' me is I can't understand why a 35MM Digi Transfer would be captured at 8-Bit rather than 10-Bit...especially if the ftg is color corrected and going to end up in a FLAME Artist's hands???

Depending where the TC Breaks are, yeah, you probably will have to do this by hand.

I would get the EDL Export information from the FLAME Operator (when in doubt, I always go to the source).

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Hi Derek,

sounds like you've got it right. Only thing I think I'd do differently from the outset is to eliminate the tc break issues by creating new tape dubs with new continuous matching tc. ( Since the transfer would be from DigiBeta to DigiBeta via SDI, there shouldn't be any quality issues, and you'll have those masters as backup. ) That way, I'd be absolutely sure that my edl at the end of the day is bang on accurate, especially since you're going onwards onto flame for fx or whatever. In an on-line off-line situation, perfect tc is essential.

I'd also have a coffee and chat with the flame operator. It could be, depending on the complexity of the cut, that he/she wants a few additional tc refs for locating any plates, backgrounds, sky, that kind of thing. Maybe with some handles. I usually just cut those on to the end of the sequence and include a hardcopy printout of the edl's with my notes as to what they were used for. Same thing for any supers. They'll want those backgrounds separate too. Same thing too if you've any composites. I'd also give them a MniDV playout of the cut with and without supers as visual reference just in case they have any problems.

As for the edl format, CMX3600 should be what they want for flame work. If there's no audio involved, then just uncheck it. There are different sort options for the edl, so ask them which ones they want.

Hope this helps,
Clay

> What's buggin' me is I can't understand why a 35MM Digi Transfer would be
> captured at 8-Bit rather than 10-Bit...especially if the ftg is color corrected
> and going to end up in a FLAME Artist's hands???

You're right, Joe -- when I toured their facility, I saw the DigiBeta deck and asked the producer if they were working with Uncompressed 10-bit. She said it was 8-bit. Hell, if that's what they want, that's what they'll get. I appreciate the heads-up, though. I have extremely limited experience here and any reminder helps.

> Only thing I think I'd do differently from the outset is to eliminate the tc
> break issues by creating new tape dubs with new continuous matching tc.

Clay, could you elaborate on this a bit? The original captured clips were culled from four different DigiBeta tapes. So the colour-corrected new outputs, if they had matching timecode to the original tapes, would have very disparate timecodes that probably start with 01:00:00:00, 02:00:00:00, etc. Since this is film, we have the benefit of also using keycodes as reference -- but if we were to create a new tape with continuous timecode, wouldn't that eliminate the matching to the originals?

Derek,

sorry for keeping you hanging in the air for answer. My mail server was down, and I just wasn't able to respond sooner. Guess you've fininshed the job in the meantime and all is well.

Just to complete my part of the the thread for anyone's future reference: my thought with new tapes was that if you were going to be redigitizing in 10Bit anyway, and since you mentioned potential dropped frames problems, that it would be better to start with a fresh set of masters including the color corrected shots and with matching source tape TC that you know is aok. Depends of course on the complexity of the edit, though, and how many replacement shots are inolved. Alternatively, and maybe for the future: It's generally easier to re-insert color corrections on the master tapes rather than create a separate tape with corrected shots. That way you just recapture those clips from the masters in a batch import and the job is done.

Again, apologize for the delay.

Best,
Clay