HD For Indies

Was talking to some folks tonight about a possible project to work on. It was shot with the Panasonic 24p camera that shoots 1280x720 pixel, 24 progressive frames per second. They had downconversion dubs made to DVCAM tapes. I don't know if they burned timecode onto those, or letterboxed, or handled the telecine & pulldown process yet. I know they had 6 tapes, with a total of about 3 1/2 hours of footage for a final total running time (TRT) of about 12 minutes.

Let's assume for the moment, to keep it simple, that is was telecined to 30i from 24p. How can we post this in an environment without decks, without HD monitoring?

Let's look at some possible workflows to post this to maximum quality for minimal cost.

Fortunately, he's already done downconverts to DVCAM, which answers one of the first questions/challenges: whether to do the offline in HD res or downconverted to something easy, like DV.

It's already DVCAM, so the question is moot for this project, but an interesting one to ask for other projects. Is it cheaper, or is there a turnover point, to downconvert all your footage to DVCAM (720x480@30i), rather than rent a deck and capture all your footage at offline (PhotoJPEG circa 50% quality in Final Cut Pro) but at final target resolution (1280x720@24p in this case)?

I don't know the cost issues yet.

IF YOU DOWNCONVERT TO DVCAM:

PROS: If you downconvert to DVCAM, you're paying on a tape by tape basis. The more tapes, the higher the cost. Once DVCAM, it has very light/low system and storage requirements. DV is about 13 GB/hr of storage with audio. Can edit on low end systems, including laptops. Easy to run tests out to DV or DVD, and preview those on easy, standard, consumer gear.

CONS: It isn't the same resolution as your final. It is interlaced 30fps footage instead of 24 progressive frames per second. That means there is some variation in exactly where your edit might lie. Colors may shift during conversion, the color space of DV isn't as good as HD so some values may be clipped, throwing off color correction decisions that you make.

IF YOU GO HDCAM LORES - If rent a deck (fixed cost per day) and capture to an offline compression (say, PhotoJPEG, somewhere around 30-60% quality)

PROS: You are now working with the same pixel dimensions and frame rate as your final copy will be. Colors will be accurate, but images compressed somewhat. In my casual testing, PhotoJPEG 50% looks about 80-90% as good as uncompressed footage to the naked eye. Editing points could be counted on to stay exactly the same, down to the frame. High quality previews can be exported as high quality proxies for effects work, knowing full quality can be subbed out later. Data rate is reasonable - PhotoJPEG 50% is usually within 2.5 to 5 MB/sec - ballpark of DV. That's roughly 10-20GB per hour of footage. Could make a D-VHS HD offline rough with some (or a lot of) export work.

CONS: You have to have a system with an HD capture card, and right now that requires a G4 or G5. Keying or color correction would exacerbate the quality difference between this compressed and your final uncompressed footage. Previewing is more difficult, you'd need some kind of HD monitoring throughout post production if you wanted to see even vaguely accurate colors (on computer screen just flat out doesn't count). Making a copy to view on standard definition systems, such as VHS, DVD, or any NTSC display system, is more complex than with an NTSC offline version.

Pros and cons either way. There different costs involved with either path. Depending on what equipment you had, specifically monitoring equipment and/or HD capture card, can tilt it one direction or the other.

Either way - if you edit 720p24 or 480i30, when you're done with your offline, you need to do an online edit.

You'd need to rent a deck at this point, and presuming that your timecodes all matched up nice and neat, recapture just the final selects in your edit with appropriate heads and tails. This'll take some time, and if you've gone the DVCAM route involves some careful footsteps with CinemaTools perhaps.

Batch capture all your final selects that are in your final edit. Decisions need to be made. If you have a DeckLinkHD card (as I do), you can either do real time color correction in 8 bit per channel color (256 values per color channel), or do non-real time color correction on 10 bit/channel color (1024 values per color channel). Speed or quality? Your call.

My tests on a dual 2.0GHz G5 indicate that 1080p24 footage takes about 6 times longer than real time to render a color correction using the 3 way color correction filter in Final Cut Pro. 720p24 footage should go faster, probably about 3 times real time. Not so bad.

Do your color corrections in 8 or 10bit color. When done, tell to Render All if you haven't been rendering as you go. For a 12 minute short, will probably take 35-40 minutes to render all those color corrections and transitions (your cross dissolves etc.).

Now is the time that you need a color accurate HD monitor. Rent one. If it doesn't have an SDI input, you'll need an HD-SDI to HD component adaptor. I don't know rental costs, but they cost $1800-$3000 to buy new. How long does it take to color correct all the scenes in a 12 minute short? I don't know, but I'd think at least a day of monitor rental.

If it isn't the same day that you rented the HDCAM deck, go back and rent it again now and lay down your master to tape. Make multiple copies while you're at it. Hopefully you scheduled it such that you have the HD deck & monitor together for as little time as is necessary.

Congratulations - you now have a high quality uncompressed digital master, you did uncompressed color correction at up to 10 bits per channel (very nice quality).

If you want your own digital master for future downconversion to whatever media of choice (say, uncompressed SD for a broadcast Digibeta master, or for a DVD), just Export a digital master from Final Cut Pro to your external FireWire drive. Also keep your FCP project file on that drive or burn it to a CD. Congrats, now all you'd need to make further changes is an editing system with deck and that data on CD.

More thoughts on this process later. If this project moves ahead, I'll be documenting the steps in detail, step by step, with screengrabs etc., as I go.