Timothy Harry
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Apr 10, 2008, 7:53 PM
Post #5 of 11
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Re: [Sparky] Looks like I'm going to upgrade
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More questions -
Here's the scenario ...
ZERO HD experience and close to the same amount of knowledge about HD. I had a buyer for my cameras and took advantage of it while they still had value.
I purchased the Z7 and it will be here next Tuesday. I'm holding off on a second camera for right now, because I want something that I can use to feed tapes to the Mac and use as a second camera ... mostly for the balcony and from a tripod at the reception with a light.
I keep hearing things about Prores cards or something. Again ... no knowledge. Is this something I have to add?
My understanding is that I have to have the latest and greatest version of FCP to capture the footage from the CF cards.
So I upgrade fcP ... what else to I have to purchase to make HD work ... as in capture? It appears that both my iMac and G5 meet the requirements for the upgrade in software.
I have a show to shoot in a couple of weeks that will obviously be delivered in SD. Do you shoot in HD and then convert or do you just shoot it in SD?
I'm starting to freak out a bit over this transition, but that's one reason I'm doing it now. I'm afraid that if I keep waiting I'll never get caught up.
BTW ... I don't know anything about terms like bit rates, codec, and stuff like that. If you can ... keep it simple for me.
I actually considered jumping ship with Apple and going to less expensive editing system, but then I start a whole new learning curve, so that's probably not good.
Any and all help will be greatly appreciated.
1. I am not aware of prores cards, but it is my understanding that the G5's cannot capture prores from a camera direct as in doing a transcode from HDV to PrRes....not enough umph in the system is my understanding, however I understand that you can capture HDV and then do the conversion using compressor or your choice of program for that conversion. Not sure how old your G5 is, but mine was retired last year to do my books and store the MP3 collection because it was not fast enough to handle what I was throwing at it. It had a good 3 year run, but it was a dog when it came to rendering anything in HD, and letting it crunch 1 hour of video into DVD format at best quality took 2 days to do. With my new mac Pro, it can be done in about 4-6 hours.
2. yes you will need the latest version of FCP.
3. Honestly as I said before, you may want to consider purchasing a mac pro and either Ebaying the G5 or giving it a new set of tasks. It will do what you are wanting to do, but it will not do it in any sort of a hurry.
4. If final delivery is done in SD, I shoot in SD. If they decide they want HD later I reshoot in HD and charge them accordingly. Weddings are obviously an event that cannot be reshot, but I ask my clients beforehand if they want HD or SD, and let them know that if they choose SD, there is no way to go back and make it HD. TO do HD wedding video, I charge 400 Extra to cover the cost of archiving to a hard drive. For corporate vide I charge 200 an hour for HD and 150 an hour for HD.
5. Now is the time to transition. The new product line is great, however you might want to hold on additional purchases until next week. NAB is happening in Vegas Starting I believe on Sunday, should be some new products on the market that could make life easier.
6. If you decide to bail on apple, you should seriously look at EDIUS, but I would not touch any other editor but those 2. Keep in mind that cheaper hardly ever means better, unless you are comparing AVID to FCP, in which case the cheaper option also happens to be the better option.
Tim Harry
Bandwagon Media
Odessa, TX
"I'd rather be a conservative nut job than a liberal with no nuts and no job."
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