Hi, 

It is the first time I am working on a project with this characteristics and I do not know where to start.

My client has given me some HDCAM -1080i 50- footage captured with a Blackmagic card with the Photo JPEG codec. I have all this files on an external hard drive and I work on a Mac Book Pro so I don't have loads of space. He want the final edit to be an SD video uncompressed.

So I was thinking... is it possible to import this footage on Avid on a 25i PAL project and import it as 15:1s, and then once is finished transcode it to HD again? Is it possible to do something like a batch capture with the already captured files?

Sorry for my ignorance but I finished college -where everything was DVCAM- less than 2 months ago and any of this was taught to me.

I hope someone can help me. Thanks in advance.

Cheers

solomanpro:

is it possible to import this footage on Avid on a 25i PAL project and import it as 15:1s, and then once is finished transcode it to HD again? Is it possible to do something like a batch capture with the already captured files?

Absolutely. You have both a batch capture for tape sources and batch import for files. You can easily recapture or re-import the same source material at HD resolution. Further, you can use the decompose function which will take your 15:1 final timeline, create new offline clips with handles you define, then you batch capture and import from that sequence, which will only bring in HD media used in that sequence with handles. This will help you economize your disk space. Keep an eye on the hardware tool to see how "occupied" any given drive is getting.

 And be sure to check your media creation settings for re-capture and re-import. Also, check your capture settings and be sure under the batch tab that "capture at logged resolution" is de-selected.

Hi Larry,

Thanks for your quick answer!

I have followed your instructions. However, I have found another problem. When I have decomposed my sequence into another bin Avid creates a new offline master clip for everyclip I have used, which means I have to re-import all the footage again at a highest resolution. The problem is I have not got that much space into my internal hard drive.

Is it supposed to do this? Because I thought it would only re-import the footage on the sequence and not the whole clip. 

If the answer is not, is there a way of relinking the media of the external hard drive to the clips I have used without copying -transcoding- everything on my laptop?Because I have to do an edit of about 3 minutes and I have about 6 hours of HD footage.

solomanpro:

The problem is I have not got that much space into my internal hard drive.

OK Soloman, let's look at the workflow.

First of all and I can't stress this strongly enough, you NEVER want to be saving media files to your system (boot) drive. All media should ALWAYS be saved to a separate drive or RAID drive array. The system drive has enough work to do just managing and running the program, let alone storing, retrieving, cueing and playing back media streams seamlessly in realtime.

Regarding decomposing, the decompose function was designed to economize on disk space. Again, what it does is look at the sequence you've given it and, as you have seen, creates a bin of new offline clips that are ONLY the source material in that sequence, and then again ONLY the duration of the sequence clip plus whatever handles you define. For example, if you only used 30 seconds out of a 10 minute clip in your sequence, only those 30 seconds of material (+ handles)will be batch captured to re-construct your sequence at hi-rez. There is no transcoding going on in this process. You can't transcode 15:1 material to any higher resolution, SD or HD. You are re-capturing and re-importing only your sequence at hi-rez, not the whole project. After creating the decompose clip list, you could even delete your 15:1 media files before you re-construct at high rez.

Hi Larry,

I understand what you are saying and I agree with you. So now I am batch importing to an external hard drive the clips Avid decomposed from my sequence. 

I have done a small edit, 1 minute long, from a clip that is 4 minutes. This is done with the 15:1s resolution. I decomposed the sequence and I put that I wanted 50 frames handles. After the decompose I have imported the offline clip. The problem comes now, as Avid is importing the whole clip at the resolution I want -DNxHD 185- not only the subclips I used on the sequence. Which means I end up with two copies of the video on the external hard drive with almost identical size. I would like to import only the minute I used and not the whole 4 minutes. 

I am starting to think that because the way Avid deals with the files, converting everything to mxf and so on it can not reference different parts of the video except when it has the whole video.

 I want to confirm a specific workflow here. You duplicate a copy of your final sequence to a new, empty bin (which I usually label "Decompose"). You highlight the sequence and choose decompose. A set of new clips are created in the bin that correspond to that sequence. You then highlight all the decompose clips, NOT the sequence itself and launch batch re-capture.

Please confirm.

Thanks for your patience!

I am doing every step you have said, except that I am not re-capturing but re-importing. Ok, and I am not naming the empty bin "Decompose" A part from this everything else is identical.

 OK, after the re-import, set up a bin view that includes "start" and "end". Compare those time code values against the start and end of the full master clip. This way you can confirm whether or not portions of the master clip are being created, or the entire clip is being re-created. It could be that if you made enough sub-clips across a wide enough time code range, it might default to recapturing the entire master clip as more efficient.

In any case, keep in mind that creating sub clips from a master clip does not create additional media files - all sub clips still point back to the original master clip and it's associated media file.

 Soloman:
Here's a storage calculator I think you'll find useful in plotting your storage needs. BTW, do you have adequate storage capacity for your projects?

solomanpro:

My client has given me some HDCAM -1080i 50- footage captured with a Blackmagic card with the Photo JPEG codec. I have all this files on an external hard drive and I work on a Mac Book Pro so I don't have loads of space. He want the final edit to be an SD video uncompressed.

So I was thinking... is it possible to import this footage on Avid on a 25i PAL project and import it as 15:1s, and then once is finished transcode it to HD again?

 I believe you will not be able to do this in a 25i project. You should establish the project format as 1080i/50 in order to be able to deliver an HD finished product along with an SD down convert.

Larry,

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought that on file based footage, decompose would do you no good - that the entire file would be recaptured during a batch IMPORT.  This is a painful memory from a project about a year ago.  Has this changed or am I missing something?

Jef

 Jef:

You may well be right about that, I'm not sure. Any decompose I've done has been from tape sources and re-capturing, but it is possible to import only a portion of an XDCAM clip, using the PWZ-1 Sony software to make sub clips before import.

Hi Larry,

Again thanks for your time and patience!

I'm afraid it seems so, that as Jef said ' that the entire file would be recaptured during a batch IMPORT'. It is what is happening to me all the time, even with the project set to HD. I've done it with batch capture before but never with import, so here lies the problem. Maybe the only way of making it work is xdcam footage...

By the way you said something about 'adequate storage'. Can you recommend me any? It'll be really helpful.

Regarding what you said :I believe you will not be able to do this in a 25i project. You should establish the project format as 1080i/50 in order to be able to deliver an HD finished product along with an SD down convert.

I think this is the way to go, as they want SD uncompressed for the final output, so here we are again: I open a new project with HD 1080i/50... and import the footage but

which settings should I choose for importing it? As it would be great if I can choose the size of the imported material not only the codec.

 Hi Soloman,

Given that you're going to be working in HD, you're looking at TBs of storage, not GBs. Only you can determine how many TBs you need based on your project workload, total source footage needed and resolutions to work at. That's where the storage calculator I pointed you to will be a great help to estimate.

Here's an example of two RAID arrays available from Avid. We're using the SR models on our edit suites now - very happy with their performance.

Regarding import size, on the import tool is an options tab. Try each of the choices in "aspect ratio" to see the different sizes you can get.