XDCAM to HDCAM
 

Have any of you had occasion to need your XDCAM master transferred to HDCAM for sending to Discovery or Outdoor Channel and such? Out here in Medford Oregon there is no such animal as an HDCAM deck.

It seems to be a fairly expensive proposition. Any recommendations?

Couple of options. Export the show back to XDCAM HD and then send the disc to somewhere that can dub it to HDCAM.

For better quality:

Render the whole project out to a Pro-Res or Uncompressed file. Stick that on a hard drive and send the drive to a facilities co. that can play it out to HDCAM for you.

transfer facilities
 

Hi Warren,

AFAIK we are the only studio in Portland w/ XDCAM HD -- but we master to D5 HD, not HDCAM. We'll eventually get an HDCAM deck, but on the few occasions we've needed something to/from HDCAM, I've just taken our PDW-F70 to another facility here in town.

I believe Victory in Seattle supports both the "X" and the "H" formats.

Keith

Thanks guys. Keith, what facility do you use in Portland for transfer? I've done a search from here in Medford with no results.

Yeah, I was going to say, Alister's recommendation of putting a ProRes or DNxHD file on a hard drive and sending to a facility that can lay that off to tape is the best solution; it keeps your program from getting hit by the MPEG2 codec twice.

Here in Los Angeles it is standard procedure to FCP at home or in office, and layoff somewhere else. Often it's worth the expense to have an experienced online editor go through your program so it won't be rejected. An experienced online editor can do lots of fixes even if he has just the program in one big file, and not the original FCP project.

Warren,

I was told that Mission Control in Portland has an HDCAM SR deck. You might want to give them a call.

Forrest

Thanks again everyone.

@ Nate, I'm concerned that the final transfer will turn out to be a significant portion of the budget for a FCP edit of a 30 minute show. What do you budget for that kind of transfer/fix with an online editor. For that matter, what kind of fixes are they doing?

Thanks for the Portland info, Forest. I've not heard of them.