I have edited together a sequence on our Media Composer using HD footage.  However, our DS editor only works in SD at the moment.  What do I need to do to recreate the sequence onto the DS?

Basically I am looking for a way to downconvert the footage and export something similar to an EDL to allow the DS to recreate the project for me.

Would prefer not to export each individual clip as a QT and have to recreate the entire sequence from scratch onto the DS, even though this would work.

Any ideas are welcomed.  Thank you in advance.

If it helps, I am running MC Version 3.0 and our DS is Version 7.6

I have also seen that with Upgrading the MC to 3.5, we could export QT files with embedded timecode for transfer into the DS.  Or the DS could view the MXF files if it were upgraded to 8.0.

Outside of that, I am not finding any solutions without upgrading.  Again, any help is appriciated.

What is the media originally, tape or file?

Jef

Media are P2 Files

Ok, here is my idea.

You would need to be at at least ver 8.4 for this to work.  With software at v10.2.1, how you get there is one thing ...

That aside, you do a decompose / consolidate of the media to a portable drive.  Make an AFE of that decomposed sequence in the Media Composer where the HD offline was done.

Create a folder on your DS storage as read only MXF and copy the media from the portable drive to this folder.  Set your storage configuration up in the DS to point to that new folder.

Import the AFE into the DS.  The media should link up as a HD sequence.  To make it SD, create a new SD sequence, cut the HD sequence into it after setting the conversion mode in Sequence Prefs to Scale, Keep Aspect Ratio for both the Presets and Media Tabs.

Now, you should have a letterbox SD version of your show and a lot of rendereing to do.

This assumes you are going from and to acceptable sequence formats.  And if you have never tried this before, give your self plenty of time.  You will hit bumps in the road, but it should work.

There are other ways, this is just one.

Jef

EDIT:  Oh yeah, the format of the P2 material could screw all this up.

Yeah.

I will try this however when I get the time.

For the time being though, I am just going to stagger my timeline on 2 video tracks on the MC, to allow myself about 60 frames of heads and tails.  I will then export each track as a QT and use that to import into the DS.  I'll have to cut the 60 frames, heads and tails to form the original MC timeline, but this shouldn't take too long.

Seems like this is the 'quickest' way to accomplish what I am trying to do.  Now, whether or not this is the best way, after attempting your solution above, I'm sure I'll find out.

Thanks Jef.

Well, quickest is always a relative thing.

If you have done what I am suggesting before, then I am sure my way is quickest.

But, if this is a new workflow, then work way is probably quicker because you are comfortable with the idea.

Try to find time to experiment with this workflow.  You will be glad once you get through it.

Cheers,

Jef

Good point.  But also realize that we are running v7.6 on our DS and are trying to find solutions without upgrading.

If we were to upgrade the MC to 3.5, we could output QT files with embedded timecodes and could solve this as well.

And with the upgrade to v3.5 for the MC being cheaper than an upgrade to the DS, that would most likely be preferable as the most cost-effective way.

However, once we do upgrade the DS, I agree that your solution is definitely the best way to accomplish this.