Best NLE For XDCam HD 330 & 350

[Alister Chapman]

I run FCP on a max'd out macbook as well as on a G5 Quad. I can edit XDCAM HD with both, they both work. BUT it is a much smoother, easier, faster experience on the G5. I have true realtime HD SDi preview via a Decklink card. Timeline playback is totaly smooth. I have HD-SDi and component out for mastering to HDCAM or whatever. I have realtime downconversion to SD component that I use for grading with a Grade 1 monitor. In therory there should be very little performance difference between the Macbook and G5, the reality is very different as the macbook chokes from time to time spoiling and otherwise pleasant experience.

I also have Vegas on a dual core P4 windows box. This is pretty slick and I use Vegas for some of it's batch processing capabilities, but it's no where near as smooth as the Macs, Premier with mainconcept is simply a non starter.

I run Avid Media Composer on both the Mac G5 and PC. On both this has excellent playback and is very smooth and slick. For clean jerk free playback this is the top dog. But I have better monitoring options with FCP and decklink so that's what I tend to use. If I was stuck on a PC then Avid Media Composer would be my software of choice. It's such a shame that Avid have chosen to restrict Xpress to 25Mb.

[Brian Jansen]

We just upgraded to Edius Broadcast using the canopus NX card for HD output. Now supports XDCAM HD in and out.
http://www.canopus.com/

[Thierry Humeau]

Can someone answer the few questions bellow in regard to XDCAM HD support on Final Cut Pro using the new PDZK-P1 v1.1 XDCAM Transfer software:

- Can you import proxy clips in a FCPro project, off-line with those and rez-up to hi-res clips?

- Are all 3 HD resolutions supported?

- Can you mix different HD resolution in the same timeline and playback in real time?

- Can MXF HD clips playback in realtime without rendering to an external HD monitor connected using a third party HD hardware interface like DeckLink?

- Can you do partial import of MXF files ?

- Can you select the number of audio tracks to be imported ?

- Can you import clips shot using the F350's variable frame rate feature?

- Can these clips play realtime in a timeline or do they need to be processed or rendered first?

- Are they any limitations when writing a FCPro sequence back to XDCAM disc and how long does it take?

- Any other limitation that is not listed above?

Thanks.

Thierry.

[Greg Boston]

I can answer most of your questions...

Can someone answer the few questions bellow in regard to XDCAM HD support on Final Cut Pro using the new PDZK-P1 v1.1 XDCAM Transfer software:

- Can you import proxy clips in a FCPro project, off-line with those and rez-up to hi-res clips? Not directly. You can export the low res proxy to MP4 then import that file to FCP. But there's really no need to use the low res stuff in FCP.

- Are all 3 HD resolutions supported? Yes, although there is no setup for 18mb VBR, I've used footage at that datarate and dropped it into the 35mb VBR sequence and it didn't require rendering.

- Can you mix different HD resolution in the same timeline and playback in real time? I'm thinking no, but it depends partly on the horsepower of your system due to FCP's Dynamic RT feature.

- Can MXF HD clips playback in realtime without rendering to an external HD monitor connected using a third party HD hardware interface like DeckLink? Pretty sure you can since the datarate isn't that much higher than HDV.

- Can you do partial import of MXF files ? Absolutely! That's one of the main functions of the XDCAM Transfer app. It is effectively your log and capture interface although you aren't really capturing.

- Can you select the number of audio tracks to be imported ?Yes.

- Can you import clips shot using the F350's variable frame rate feature?Yes, these files are no different except when you overcrank beyond 30, the vertical resolution drops to 540.

- Can these clips play realtime in a timeline or do they need to be processed or rendered first?No need to render, that's the beauty of doing it in camera.

- Are they any limitations when writing a FCPro sequence back to XDCAM disc and how long does it take?I've only written one finished sequence back to XDCAM disc. You'll need to set your stereo audio to dual mono. I haven't timed the output yet.

- Any other limitation that is not listed above?None that I've found, but Nate may have run across something.

[Nate Weaver]

I have to add to and clarify some of these answers...

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

Can you import proxy clips in a FCPro project, off-line with those and rez-up to hi-res clips? Not directly. You can export the low res proxy to MP4 then import that file to FCP. But there's really no need to use the low res stuff in FCP.

I've been working on an Automator script to take a folder of proxies, recompress them to Offline HD format, and rename them so they will match the imported full res media. If I ever get it working right you'll all be the first to know. Compressor will recompress the original proxies to Photo-JPEG 320x180 res at 1x real time, so if I can ever get an automated process working, it won't be a horrible way to go.

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

Can MXF HD clips playback in realtime without rendering to an external HD monitor connected using a third party HD hardware interface like DeckLink? Pretty sure you can since the datarate isn't that much higher than HDV.

This is the one I mainly wanted to comment on. I have a Blackmagic Decklink HD Pro card. All XDCAM HD plays out to it full res to my 20" JVC HD CRT. It's a beautiful thing...almost as fast as working with DV.

Incidentally, I rendered out an XDCAM HD 1080p24 timeline to uncompressed for the first time the other week for an HDCAM layoff...the uncompressed at 98 megabytes/sec plays back wonderfully on my cheap SATA 4 drive raid.

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

Can these overcranked clips play realtime in a timeline or do they need to be processed or rendered first?No need to render, that's the beauty of doing it in camera.

They play in real time in the viewer, but after they're put on a timeline they need to be rendered. Quicktime is doing the vertical stretch in the background (540 to 1080), so unfortunately they don't play back in real time.

If you do the same to am SD clip in an SD timeline, it all happens in RT, so it's a bit disappointing.

[Greg Boston]

Thanks Nate, I knew you would be able to amplify and/or clarify. Just a question though since I haven't had a chance to do it myself. If you undercrank, which maintains full resolution, there shouldn't be any need for FCP to render it, correct?

I could have sworn I brought in some overcrank stuff and it played back without render.

-gb-

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

If you undercrank, which maintains full resolution, there shouldn't be any need for FCP to render it, correct?

I could have sworn I brought in some overcrank stuff and it played back without render.

The underlying MPEG data is is 1440x540. The Transfer software will report these overcranked clips at this resolution to confirm.

When the XDCAM Transfer software wraps the MPEG into a Quicktime wrapper, the Quicktime header informs the player to display at 1920x1080.

So for regular XDCAM HD clips, FCP is always scaling the 1440 1.33x horizontally so it fills out to 1920. The overcranked clips need to be scaled both horizontally 1.33x (to 1920) and vertically 2x (540 to 1080), and FCP can't do both at the same time without a render (at least on my machine)

Maybe on machines with better graphics cards (offload some processing to GPU), they don't need to render.

[Simon Wyndham]

Going back to the original question. I use Vegas 7. No re-rendering needed for anything, direct connection to the XDCAM device, proxy files and full res files all supported along with cliplists which can be dragged to the timeline, essence markers etc. Mastering back to XDCAM discs. No special processing needed for slow motion clips. It doesn't have GPU support, but then it doesn't really need it on a modern machine, especially something like a Core Duo 2.

If they did a Mac version I'd dump the PC tomorrow.

[Steve Connor]

Simon,

hadn't you heard - you can run Vegas on an Intel Mac!

[Simon Wyndham]

Can you?
<sound of PC being thrown out of the window> ;-)

[Nigel Cooper]

Originally Posted by Steve Connor

Simon,

hadn't you heard - you can run Vegas on an Intel Mac!

No you can't, not without Bootcamp, but the performance would be so bad you might as well just buy a PC to start with.

Macs are for Final Cut; end of.

Simon, you should try Final Cut, from what I can gather it does everything Vagus does anyway; and then some.

Also, FCP interface is really sleek and clean. Whenever I see Vagus, Edius or Premiere the interfaces remind me of those cheap comics I used to read when I was a kid, like the Dandy, Beano etc.

[Thierry Humeau]

Originally Posted by Simon Wyndham

Going back to the original question. I use Vegas 7. No re-rendering needed for anything, direct connection to the XDCAM device, proxy files and full res files all supported along with cliplists which can be dragged to the timeline, essence markers etc. Mastering back to XDCAM discs. No special processing needed for slow motion clips. It doesn't have GPU support, but then it doesn't really need it on a modern machine, especially something like a Core Duo 2.

If they did a Mac version I'd dump the PC tomorrow.

But as far as I could tell from the few test I ran with Vegas 7 demo, before writing back to XDCAM disc, Vegas first renders the timeline? An depending on how much FX you have, this could be a fairly lenghty process right? Also, this step would be necessary to playout a Vegas timeline through the now supported third party hardware like DeckLink and others, correct?

Thierry.

[Alister Chapman]

Vegas runs faster and better on my macbook under bootcamp than it does on my Dual core P4!

It also runs very well using parallels within OSX.

[Nigel Cooper]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

Vegas runs faster and better on my macbook under bootcamp than it does on my Dual core P4!

It also runs very well using parallels within OSX.

That seems hard to believe, but if you say so your word is good enough for me. I'm supprised though.

[Steve Connor]

Shouldn't make definitive comments when you don't know the full story!

Bootcamp is not a PC simulator for the Mac it runs everything EXACTLY the same as a PC would. The new Macs have pretty much the same architecture as other PC's