not sure where to post this.

I'm working in a PC environment, have Sony Vegas and Adobe CS3 (with this weeks update) available. The camcorder is, surprise surprise, the CineAlta EX1.

Anyway, VFX dept is needing to capture best quality from the EX1 and transfer the footage for compositing in Nuke.

Is there a documented workflow I could point them to? And are there any gotcha's to watch out for?

thx very much
rob

ps ~ I have done a scan of this sub-forum and found the link to Vortexmedia which I'll be passing on to them, but I'm hoping to see/read some 1st-hand experience if possible. thx again

Is the footage already captured? What kind of compositing is needed to be done? I would assume you'd be wanting to export 16bit tiff or png sequences for them to be working on but knowing what their needs are would help. If you mean from point of capture - best quality is going to be out of the HD-SDI output straight into a XENA or BM card or similar.

yeh, HD-SDI output direct to BM/XENA gives 4:2:2 if i recall correctly... but i'm unsure if they're doing this or recording to the SxS card, then transferring the data, giving 4:2:0.

I *believe* what they're concerned about is preserving super-whites.

Sorry for the imprecision. Most of the correspondence i've had with them lately has been via email due to conflicting schedules.

Thx for the speedy response.

rob

I'd say if you're giving them video, keep it in its native format/colorspace and NUKE has a great set of tools in it to work within proper colorspace. From what I've gotten to use of it, its fantastic with keeping footage safe. If they want linear formats turned out and image seq, then pull that footage into AE or Color to export and make sure that you arent cutting off any highs when you export. In AE, switch to 16bit or 32bit workspace and use Synthetic Aperture so you can see your waveform, etc and drop it all enough for RGB output.

They ended up taking the MXF's into Premiere and used ProcAmp to scale luminance to 100 IRE. Haven't seen the results yet but they sounded happy.

Thx for the quick replies Jeremy; have a good weekend.

l8r
rob