MiniDV -> ProRes422 or H.264

_Rok_

_Rok_

A friend has 163 hours of documentary footage on MiniDV tapes, and wants to edit in FCP on a 2010 17" MacBookPro.

She is going to hire a company to capture all the footage, and they've given her the choice of H.264 and ProRes422. After some research I'm almost certain she should use ProRes422, but this play isn't in my book, so I need to punt to the forum.

Your advice is appreciated.


Thomas
 
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I'm sorry, this is totally not answering your question, but...

If it were me, I wouldn't hire an outside company to capture the footage. She's gonna need to log the footage, anyway. And while she logs it, in the sense of just watching it and taking notes, she also logs it on her computer, marking in and out points (from within FCP). Then do a batch-capture and only capture the footage you actually might want to use.

Seeing as how logging of footage is a VERY necessary step in making a documentary, you're not actually spending much extra time to capture the footage, but saving a lot of money.
 
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100% agreed.
I've really pushed her avoid using a "1-Hour Photo"-type service bureau, and do it right, but she's not one to look very far into the future, and can't see the organizational disaster on the horizon. She's incredibly creative, and stubborn.
 
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ProRes all the way. H.264 will take much less space, but she likely won't be able to edit it natively on that laptop so she'll end up having to convert to some flavor of ProRes anyway.

Actually, wait a minute - these are just standard DV tapes? They shouldn't be converting to any format, just capturing the native DV via firewire. That'll take ~40% less disk space than ProRes, and should be very easy to edit on the laptop - there's nothing to be gained by doing any conversion.

I disagree that having someone else capture the footage won't speed things up. To capture that herself, in real time, is 3-4 weeks of full-time work. Sure, she can log as she does that - but I don't think there's any advantage to logging in real time. Once it's captured she can scan through footage faster, and actively select and sort the best material as she goes - you can't do this while you're doing a real-time capture. Unless she's working with other editors and needs to hand them a detailed, full log of all footage, it's just going to take up a lot of her time.
 
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ItDonnedOnMe said:
I disagree that having someone else capture the footage won't speed things up. To capture that herself, in real time, is 3-4 weeks of full-time work. Sure, she can log as she does that - but I don't think there's any advantage to logging in real time. Once it's captured she can scan through footage faster, and actively select and sort the best material as she goes - you can't do this while you're doing a real-time capture. Unless she's working with other editors and needs to hand them a detailed, full log of all footage, it's just going to take up a lot of her time.
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First of all, I agree that it's silly to use either h.264 or ProRes. For editing, keep it in it's native DV.

On the matter of logging, needless to say, I'm not saying that either my or your method is better or worse -- there's more than one way to skin a cat. But I don't think we're imagining the same thing.

I'm not recommending logging it in real-time. I'm recommending logging it in logging-time (which is much slower, and more laborious than real-time). I don't know where you stand on this matter, but for me, detailed logging is an absolute must. Watch the footage, take notes. The note-taking takes long enough that I can't do it in real time. I have to pause and write my thoughts, than start again. Rinse, and repeat.

I'm also not recommending capturing all of the footage. In my opinion, that would be a nightmare in editing. How the heck do you sort through 160 hours of footage? For editing, I only want the clips that I might actually use. The plethora of footage that has absolutely no chance of being used -- I don't want that captured.

In the method I'm recommending, you watch the footage until you see something, anything, that is note-worthy. You press pause and take down your notes. You then set the in/out points (but don't yet capture). Rinse, and repeat. By the end of your 60-minute tape, you've probably spent at least 2 hours logging, maybe more, depending on how detailed your notes are. At that point you put it on batch capture. This might take your computer 10-15 minutes to perform, which gives you time for a much-needed coffee/bathroom break. :)
 
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I'd agree. 24-hour capturing would place this capture time at nearly 7 whole days.
Logging and capturing provides the benefits of:

-You know what you have. You know what you have and don't have. You know what's where, and you have a fair idea of what filename equals what clip
-You only capture what you need. Even considering an hour and a half documentary, thats more than a 100:1 shooting ratio. I highly doubt that every thing on those tapes is going to be used. Not only that, but if you do get to editing and you start to think 'oh hey, I didn't think I'd use that part where x, but it would fit really well here'. You find Tape 7, find the part and capture that bit. You don't have to unnecessarily hog up space.
-You're much more organised. You can start editing and know that the clip named 'kid throws rock at car' is going to be footage of a kid throwing a rock at a car. If someone else does it, you're going to get one long file for each tape, which you'd have to spend the time going through organising anyway before you start editing. Doing it without organising, especially with that much footage, means you might be looking for 30 minutes or more before you eventually find the clip of the kid throwing the rock at the car.
-You save money that you can use for colour timing/sound post/marketing/distro etc.
 
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Ultimately, you need to take notes as you shoot, bring those notes to dailies and make your selects. After two viewings you should see what you need to capture.

You either do your homework as it's assigned, or you goof off all semester and sit through 163 tapes all at once :crazy:

Unfortunately, best practices were not (and will not) be followed.

Thomas
 
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Oh, I fully agree that detailed notes need to be taken during production. But that doesn't stop me from logging the footage. Some of the best gems are stuff that you didn't notice during production, or that didn't jump out at you until the story really began to gel together.

You mention doing it during viewing dailies. Same-same. You gotta watch it sooner or later. And yeah, sooner is better, so I guess I actually agree with you. :)
 
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I must say, I am intrigued by how someone ends up shooting at a 108:1 ratio (assuming a feature), or 970:1 ratio (assuming a ~10 min short)....
Is this liek a 10 year in the making type doco?
 
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Cracker Funk said:
I'm not recommending logging it in real-time. I'm recommending logging it in logging-time (which is much slower, and more laborious than real-time).
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Definitely, I don't expect you'd be able to log in real time - but that's also why I'd prefer to work with footage on drives rather than tapes...

In the method I'm recommending, you watch the footage until you see something, anything, that is note-worthy. You press pause and take down your notes. You then set the in/out points (but don't yet capture). Rinse, and repeat. By the end of your 60-minute tape, you've probably spent at least 2 hours logging, maybe more, depending on how detailed your notes are. At that point you put it on batch capture. This might take your computer 10-15 minutes to perform, which gives you time for a much-needed coffee/bathroom break. :)
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To me all that starting, stopping, and rewinding is a lot of wear and tear on both your deck and the tapes. Drives are cheap these days, 163 hours of DV will take just over 2TB of storage, that's maybe $300 worth of firewire drives. By capturing it all at once and then going through the process you describe I feel you could move much faster; in addition to taking notes you can sort clips into bins, rough out sequences, etc as you go - which addresses your concerns of having all 163 hours of footage in your edit. Full captured source goes in one set of bins, selects in another, and then you're only doing your actual editing from the select bins.

And certainly, both approaches achieve the same thing. I personally just find it faster to do the logging from drives rather than the tapes. And if you're going to do all the capturing yourself then my way definitely takes more actual time since you need to babysit the capture to some extent - but I'm looking at this situation as slightly different since she'd be handing off the tapes and getting back the full media on the drives with very little time outlay on her part up front.

_Rok_ said:
Ultimately, you need to take notes as you shoot, bring those notes to dailies and make your selects. After two viewings you should see what you need to capture.

You either do your homework as it's assigned, or you goof off all semester and sit through 163 tapes all at once :crazy:

Unfortunately, best practices were not (and will not) be followed.
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Have you shot 100+ hours of documentary footage before? I have. Taking notes as you shoot - at least one's with enough detail to be useful - sounds like a great plan, but is incredibly difficult to do in practice unless you have someone dedicated to the task who's with you all the time. It's much easier on something like a dramatic piece where you can plan the shoot in advance.
 
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ItDonnedOnMe said:
Have you shot 100+ hours of documentary footage before? I have. Taking notes as you shoot - at least one's with enough detail to be useful - sounds like a great plan, but is incredibly difficult to do in practice unless you have someone dedicated to the task who's with you all the time. It's much easier on something like a dramatic piece where you can plan the shoot in advance.
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I've never shot 100+ hours; my max was more like 18 hours. Regardless, you're definitely very limited in what you're able to note during shooting. I think the key thing that Thomas is recommending is that you log footage daily, instead of waiting until the end. Doesn't change how much time you have to put into it, is just a more proactive method.

Admittedly, I've never followed that method, but that's only because the only two significant documentary projects I've ever undertaken were done while I was in school, full-time, with a full-time job. So, logging just kinda had to wait until the end.
 
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ItDonnedOnMe said:
Have you shot 100+ hours of documentary footage before? I have. Taking notes as you shoot - at least one's with enough detail to be useful - sounds like a great plan, but is incredibly difficult to do in practice unless you have someone dedicated to the task who's with you all the time. It's much easier on something like a dramatic piece where you can plan the shoot in advance.
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Nope, but know a guy who shot a doco over a 10 year period and did end up with about that much footage. He ended up getting a distributor and some completion funding so he paid an editor to sort through it all. His exact words to me were 'I had no idea if it could even be edited together at all and I was so happy when I walked into the edit suite and saw what he had done with it'.
 
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Prores. FCP is MADE to cut Prores and works really well with it. H.264 requires quite a bit more realtime processing and would end up slowing down relatively quickly.
 
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She went with ProRes. She's also paying to have the whole thing captured by a local service company :hmm: It's not the way I would do it, but it's not my movie. Regardless, I endorse anyone that throws down the gauntlet and creates something all their own.

Best practices aside, there are a thousand ways to make a good movie.

Thanks for all the feedback.


Thomas
 
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If the tapes have indexmarkers for every shot, every single shot can be captured as a seperate file.
That way you can load the footage from one tape, check it and throw out the shots that won't be used at all.

On short projects I used to load a tape as a single or 2 files.
But with projects with over 25 hours of material I preferred the single shot method.
This way I could kick out 10% after a first look.

Wish her good luck with that much footage. I fear my head would explode with that amount of footage ;)
 
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