Hello,

I'm a student, in college, working on a short film that I will be editing on Avid MC3. The film will be shot on 16mm film, and sent to a tape house for digitizing to 2K. The tape house will provide footage in DNxHD 175 or DVCPRO HD. My inclination is to go for DNxHD175.

My question is whether 2K footage can be handled by an iMAC with 2Gigs of memory and 2.16GHz intel core2 duo processors? I've been told by the DP that the iMAC won't handle the footage, however, I've done some work with DNxHD 220x, and it seems to work fine. Anyone who can offer some experience would be greatfully appreciated.

Best regards,

Bill R.

Please do not double post your questions. IF you need to reach more than one forum, there is a general discussions forum to allow you to do so.

You first posted this question (With some additions) about 24fps in the PC forum. Which platform will you be using and which thread would you like to use?

To answer your question, the iMac should be fine as long as your storage is fast enough. 

This, coupled with the 24fps question, makes me ask...why are you listening to a DP about post?

My apologies for posting what looks like a double post. I thought each question was different, so I posted each in their own thread. I don't ordinarily double post.

At any rate, the DP has more experience than I, as he's imported from film and I have not. I am perfectly capable of arguing with him, if I know the facts I am arguing to be factual. There's no point in arguing if I'm wrong. I'm still learning Avid, it's not an easy program to grasp when it comes to film. In the future, I'll combine all questions in one.

My personal workstation is a PC, however, the school uses Mac's. So, I am at a double lack of experience, Mac's and Avid.

But, thanx for answering one of my q's.

Unless I am missing something, remember, once you have had your 2k footage turned into Dnx175, it isn't 2k footage anymore.  It's data rate is 175 mbs.   It has been highly compressed.  So what you are doing is sort of like making a DV25 downconvert of HD source material.  (An exageration of sorts, but not way off.)  The picture size is different, the color space is different.  The image quality is different.

Your question should then be how will I conform my film in 2k after my offline in DNX175?  The only Avid product that works with native 2k material is the DS.

If you were planning on using this DNX175 as you final output, you are wasting your money on a film scan to 2K.  You should just have the film transfer people transfer to a HD format (of which DNX175 is a compressed variant).

Hope that helps sort out your situation.  Or at least does not confuse it more.

Jef

Jef...

Thanx. That helps. Is it realistic to get the tape house to provide 2K and DNx175 or 220? I edit in DNx175 0r 220 in the offline mode, then export vie EDL to a faster machine that can handle 2K?

I was editing my post as you responded.  Read that.

Jef

cuervo:

then export vie EDL to a faster machine that can handle 2K?

Doing 2k editing is more than just a "faster computer".  The system has to be capable and designed for it.  Avid DS.  Autodesk smoke 2K.  Scratch.  These are some of the systems designed for this workflow.  You really need to get in touch with some who does this on a regular basis because the workflow is a bit different from the normal offline / online route.

Jef

I realize that not all of the details are posted here - but if all you are trying to accomplish is a 2K conform of a 16mm film - you'd save yourself a whole lot of money and conversion issues if you did this traditionally:

1. Get a cheap "sync dailies telecine" to DVCAM with TC/Keycode window burn.
2. Edit at 29.97i
3. Approve on DVD or video tape

and when you are locked:

Take a "Source" EDL to your film-post house and do a supervised Color-Corrected 2k transfer and conform.

This way is not very sexy - you don't get to play with any of the new fancy features but it will end up costing a fraction of the price over doing a 2K transfer AND and DNxHD conversion of the ENTIRE shoot.

If the post-house is giving you free services - then by all means have a great time playing with the formats - but if this is on someones dime - you can look like a hero for bringing the post cost way down on this (and charge more for your editorial skills).

There are a few ways you could do a project like this.  The traditional way would be the way curiosity suggested above.  That's probably the gold standard in terms of quality, and it's what's generally done in the "real world", but it's not the only way of doing it.

You could transfer your dailies to HDCAM SR (or some other mastering quality HD format), then downconvert to DVCAM for the offline (or if you want to offline in HD, get them to provide you a drive with the DNxHD media).  Then, instead of doing a digital intermediate or a film conform, you essentially do an HD online.  You spend a bit more at the outset, but you might well save it when you don't have to do a D.I.  Granted, you'll end up at 1080 resolution, not 2K, but 1080 may be good enough.  Especially with 16mm, I don't think you're going to notice much of a difference.  I'm sure someone will tell me I'm an immoral person for even suggesting that, but what the heck.  I'm willing to go on record as saying I can't even tell the difference between DVCAM and DigiBeta, so take it for what it's worth.

Incidentally, if you do go with an HD offline for this method (honestly, though, I wouldn't bother--a lot of us edit offline at SD, even on features), I would advise doing it at 720 rather than 1080.  You need a pretty beefy system to handle 1080 without headaches, and I'm skeptical that an iMac is really going to cut it.  I worked on a project where we offlined in 720, and a four processor Mac Pro with 5GB of RAM was barely enough for that.  Granted, it was using that other editing package *shudder*, but 720 really is pretty darn good for an offline, and it'll make your life that much easier, especially on a school system where you don't have as much control over the hardware configuration.

From your question, though, I gather you're not planning to do any sort of online or film conform.  In that case, you should just get them to transfer your film directly to DNxHD at the highest quality possible (DNxHD 175x), and skip the online.  Maybe take it to a Symphony for final color correction, and then just do the output straight from there.  I can't speak as to what the finished product will look like, but Avid likes to tout DNxHD as being good enough to do an online with.  At any rate, it'll look great when you put it on a DVD. 

You may have to do some extra work with this method, like converting media to a format that is easier for your system to digest during the offline edit (unless you can get some really fast storage like BLKDOG mentioned, but on an iMac, I think it'd be tricky to make it work reliably), and it'll require a ton of drive space.  But once you've gotten the media into the system, that's basically it for post production costs, save for the cost of transferring the output to tape (and possibly hiring a colorist).

If you still go down the regular offline / online road i'd go with DNxHD36 as it works well with lower bandwith setups. I've cut films on dnx36 on an old HP xw8000 and it worked fine and fast enough not to be too frustrating. Obviously I wouldn't recommend 36 for online but if you're taking it to the pro's for conform/grade/fx then it will be more than fine for pure offline. 

I've never liked cutting story with the limitations of high bandwith footage specially when you can still check important things like focus and shot detail with the lower bandwith resolutions like 36 or SD DV25.

If you've got the $$$ then farm it out to post when you lock and let the specialists have their way with it.

Matt

thanx for the suggestions. the director and producer aren't decided about final delivery format, I suspect the cost of going back out to cut film is prohibitive. Chances are, they'll opt for a digital print to film.

I like the idea of editting a dnx36 and using an EDL on whatever final rez format they want to pay for. I wonder, tho', whether transitions and effects will be rendered accurately enough in the dnx36 mode, to show me how well they're working. Any experience with this?

Onlining from EDL to HDCAM SR for tape and dpx files to film burn is fairly standard practice for film finish these days and most big post houses do it with an Arri laser. If you're going that way make sure you get them to some quick test prints to ensure your look from DI is consistent on the screen. 

As far as effects rendering quality goes, it works fine for me although sometimes I chose to render in HQ but fairly rarely. This tends to be on more critical effects.

I still export alot of my more complicated pre-vis to After Effects although Avid's suite of effects tools is definitely saving me from having to do that more and more with Animate, Tracking, spectramatte etc. My main wish for MC is some evolution on the color correction tool.

Matt

All my cheap feature guys are working in HDCAM and SR depending on where they're going but for the "headed to DVD" world, they don't even speak the term "2K". Putting that across you lips costs $$$ in this town. ;)

"1920 is dang close to 2000, except in price."

Matt...

what would I give for keyframeable CC?

HDcowboy..

Sometimes, I think the Director and producer are just daydreaming. Cost and reality  will rear it's ugly head.

cuervo:

The director and producer aren't decided about final delivery format, I suspect the cost of going back out to cut film is prohibitive. Chances are, they'll opt for a digital print to film.

That's short sighted - the cost of completing on film may end up being far less expensive then trying to jump through the conversion hoops of HD. 16mm isn't that expensive, and for a 30min film you can finish, including a color timing session for under $2,000. This gives you a format that is compatible with every projector in the world and has the capacity to be copied to any video format for the least hassle. It would certainly be worth your time to give a phone call to a Negative Matcher in your area and at least ask them how much they think it will cost.