I have a quick question about avid xpress. if I capture at offline resolution at what stage should I recapture at full resolution? right after the rough cut? or after trimming?

thanks

I always thought you only need to come back online for finishing - as in tweaking the final look. For trimming, you really want good performance and real time playback as that's when you go back and forth several times to get it just right. I don't know about you, but I couldn't stand waiting for HD or whatever to playback after every trim.

James,

Depends on what your project requires... which isn't much help. Are you finishing in a high-end suite? Lot's of effects? Is it a simple project?

Lots of people get right down to the fine cut, then up-rez in the Symphony suite for color correction and final audio. Are you finishing the piece? Do you plan to finish on Xpress Pro? Is it a matter of storage space... IE you are cutting on your laptop, and plan to finnish on your workstation at home?

There's no hard and fast rule. It' just a matter of conserving your drivespace (the low rez solution) and conserving your time on a high end suite until the last possible minute, so you don't rank up high cost rental rates unnecessarily.

I'm planning on finishing everything on my laptop. The reason I asked is because if you trim and then batch recapture will avid recapture it in its trimmed form? also if you do any audio editing or color correction in the lower resolution you will lose it when you recapture at the higher resolution. right?

What exactly are you working with here?
What are the constraints stopping online production?

I have 30 tapes to capture and I wouldn't have enough hard drive space to capture everything at full resolution. so my plan is to capture everything at 15:1 where I would do the main cutting.

James, the best way to do it is get all of your main content cuts down before onlining. 15:1 is fine to see it well enough to do trimming, too, but the main thing is getting the main story/shots done before onlining.

When you capture, make sure you tell it to "add handles" of 60 or 90 frames. This will give you more than enough footage to trim something or add a fade/effect that you didn't have in the rough cut.

We routinely do this for Discovery shows and it works great. Offline entire show via DV codec at home on firewire drives in AVID Xpress DV and conform the show in the DS suite. Works like a charm.

Kevin

I can't see how there would be a major issue with trimming at 15:1 unless it's really high detailed stuff.
I'd do colouring online though.

But Kevin would have more experience so go with that ;)

ok thanks for the info guys. much appreciated.