re: HD offline workflow

Question from my boss: He's planning on shooting an infomercial on HD -- not DVCPro HD or HDV, but true HD. He wants to capture at offline quality, DVCPro HD, and online later back to HD, so I'm doing some homework to know what to expect. We'll be doing tests as well -- capture test footage offline, then recapture online to test the waters. A couple of questions:

a) He wants to stay within a 24fps environment. I'm a little confused over that one. Is there a benefit to this other than to watch the image as it was shot? I'm under the impression that this thing is going to end up on broadcast where it will have to be 29.97fps. Is there a benefit to staying in 24fps? If we stay 24fps all the way through, including our future FCP timeline and exported movies, are we still good for DVD burns?

b) How different might the onlining process be? Is it similar to the "Offline RT" process described in the Andrew Balis article on www.kenstone.net (http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/offline_rt.html) -- ie. we must use Media Manager to create the new project and timeline at HD quality in order for FCP-created graphics, motion settings etc. to adapt themselves to the new image size?

c) What about graphics that aren't FCP-generated? For example, a TIFF resized for a 320x240 frame will be too small once the project is onlined to 720x480. Do zoom settings for such objects also get adjusted? Or do those have to be done by hand?

Directions and comments would be much appreciated.

Howdy,

a) The big benefit comes with the conform and online process. If your offline editing timebase is the same as your online, then conforming and finishing the show is MUCH easier (there will be a 1:1 correlation between the offline frames and the online frames). In addition, professional HD down-converters are quite common at all post facilities these days and you're footage will look great if/when it needs to be downconverted to NTSC/PAL. If you're burning DVD's locally, Compressor (included with Final Cut Studio) has great MPEG-2 encoding presets designed work well with this footage, do down-converts, etc. Check out the "Advanced Image Conversion" presets in Compressor.

b) It's even easier. Just open Sequence Settings, and load the uncompressed HD preset. Then select everything in the sequence and do a batch re-capture.

c) You'll have to do some minor adjusting by hand as the raster size for DVCPRO HD is slightly different than uncompressed, but it's not as drastic as the Offline RT example you cited above.

-PfA



Paul from Apple