I have an AdrenalineHD in my studio.  I am going on the road for 4 weeks to cut a feature being shot on HD at true 24fps .  I am bringing my mobile MC Soft system.  What is the best way to load true 24fps material from the HDCamSR and stay true 24fps?  Can the MC Soft do true 24fps?  Can I use a MojoDX?  Is there a low enough bandwidth flavor of HD to use MC Soft?

Nothing small plays SR. The tapes themselves are bigger than a macbook. If you were HDCAM, the plain ol' kind, you could use a JH-3 with the firewire interface and then pray that the pulldown was solid.

If your mobile rig is a laptop then no DX series, you need a PCI-e card. If it's a desktop machine, then you can use the Mojo DX and take HD-SDI in at whatever offline res you like. DNX looks nice, if you need HD and it'll roll off of a G-Raid if you hold the rabbit ears just right.

Mostly, with SR, it's not like you're gonna be "mobile" really, so just drop a bay in a hotel room. I hear the battery life on an SRW-5500 is lame. ;)

We've done it in trucks, we've done it in climate controlled tents but laptop HD is a pain in the a$$ and seldom fun for any editor. Bring a nice big rig to match that deck.

Seriously, my thoughts are, send your tapes back somewhere safe and have them digitized and put on a shelf, they can send you a firewire drive, fed ex everyday and you will have a master at home on the shelf and fresh footage everyday after the third day. (one to fedex home and one to fedex back) If that's not fast enough, courier to the airport and you can get the drive same day at the freight counter.

Peace,

hidefcowboy:

Seriously, my thoughts are, send your tapes back somewhere safe and have them digitized and put on a shelf, they can send you a firewire drive, fed ex everyday and you will have a master at home on the shelf and fresh footage everyday after the third day. (one to fedex home and one to fedex back) If that's not fast enough, courier to the airport and you can get the drive same day at the freight counter.

First, thank you for your responses.

OK.  Coupla things...

1-We are shooting HD to be going to a DI and 35mm filmout after editorial.  

2-We are going to be in a house that we rented, not actually mobile.

3-The production company is providing the HDCamSR.  They want me to be able to QC the footage as I load end of day.

4-The production company wants to stay true 24fps in editorial to stay true to the 24fps HD.

Questions:

Can you reverse telecine to true 24fps via firewire?

What is gained by staying true 24fps in editorial?  As opposed to editing in 23.97?

Make sure that the HD deck that you are supplied with comes with the right boards. If they are going to be shooting 4:4:4, you need it to be able to play out at 4:2:2, and even then, the footage will often look greenish and a bit soft contrast, since a default LUT will be applied.

The main reason for the production company to stay at true 24.00fps, is if they are required to deliver some form of true 24.00fps 48KHz master. I recall reading that Sony demand all their films are done at 24.00 rather than 23.98.

If you want to capture and edit in HD, you will need an HD capturing device, like Mojo DX, Nitris DX, Adrenaline+HD, or Nitris.

I don't think there's an HDCAM-SR deck that has a FW output. If you use a transcoder in between, you'll likely have to correct for TC discrepancies because of the processing.

Capturing over FW in a 24p NTSC project should do inverse telecine, AFAIK.

In general, I'd recommend getting a box that lets you capture in HD, and use the DNxHD36 codec. If not that, I'd still go for a box with an SDI input. You are shooting HD-SR, you will be doing DI, you will have a 35mm interneg, all costly stuff; why would it be impossible to get an I/O box for your Avid on this project?

It's not impossible, I was just exploring if it was possible to have my mobile system do the job.  It seems not.  I'll have to bring along my AdrenalineHD.

As far as the LUT, I think we are shooting linear, so the green/contrast shouldn't be an issue, correct?

Off subject, is the work to shoot log worth the gains availed by it?

is the work to shoot log worth the gains availed by it?

In theory, it gives you a whole lot more color info to work with in the DI grading process. In practice, you will definitely need a facility that can handle it, and has handled it, because the whole process depends on specific calibrations of all the elements in the post chain (including the filmout equipment).

I don't think it is any harder to shoot log on set, rather than lin, since that is basically the flip of a switch.

I'd say don't guess on FW. Just bring the adrenaline and be done with it. Nothing worse than eye matching a cut because the code got botched. I just don't trust FW for something that expensive. (just my .02)

But the notes on color and LUT's are correct. "Checking the footage" will likely scare the producers to death, depending on the camera you are using. The look can vary widely, of course. Kindly remind them that they are not seeing final. lol And then remind them again... every time they say, "but this is not the final color right?" - "You're going to fix that green tint, right?" ;)

A nice big HD monitor will make them (and you) happy too. There are even some that will manage the LUTs for you.Check with your film out folks as far as 23.98 vs. "true" 24. There's a lot of confusion about that and a free forum isn't reliable enough to make that call.

(While you're at it, think about what "psf" actually means and realize that the whole world is interlaced. lol)

From what I know, the Log vs. Lin discussion is a post thing, as Job ter Burg says. So it's really about how much post processing you are doing. If you are doing a real film out, I'd say go for it. If it's gonna end up on TV or DVD, you might save the hassle. But seldom do people have a true idea of the destination of a feature before it shoots. (unless you have a major studio and a guaranteed theatrical release) so I guess you have to take the "just in case" route, but remind them that the post money goes up.

I've seen a lot of good 4:2:2 .

OK, so I am bringing my AdrenalineHD, that's settled.

As far as log, it is not harder to shoot, but it is harder to deal with on a monitor.  What kind of monitoring setup would I need to see the picture correctly?

Mike, have you slected a post facility yet?  If not, PM me and I'll get you connected with our Technical Director & Online Finishing staff.  We're in the heart of Hollywood.

We have (lots of) SR decks, DS Nitris's, Clipsters, Nucodas, and can handle pretty much anything you need.  We can also explain the pro's & con's of 24 vs 23.976, and log vs lin.