Data workflow for high-end online (broadcast/TV)?

[GlennChan]

I'm curious:
How will the data workflow work for high-end online systems? i.e. Discreet FFI (SGI and Linux), Quantel iQ, Nitris DS, etc.

Presumably...
A- Finish offline edit. Output EDL, cutting copy.

B- Bring EDL into Redcine. Redcine copies section of Redcode media onto an external drive (i.e. RAIDed FW800 so the transfer goes faster).

C- Drive is couriered to online facility. This is unless the offline editor is in the same building as the online, which does happen.

D- An online assistant takes the footage and dumps it into a computer with Redcine.

E- Redcine converts media into a file format that the online system will accept (still TIFF sequences?). Is it safe to assume that performance of these (possibly uncompressed 4:4:4) files will be the same as 4:2:2 Y'CbCr? And what about clipping of out-of-range values?
*It may be that the online system accepts some 4:2:2 Y'CbCr data format. I don't know.

F- These files are written directly onto a SAN or the online system's storage. Is it safe to assume that the network protocols and/or file systems are compatible, and that network speed is fast?

G- Things like field order and pixel aspect ratio are guessed correctly. If not, it is not a big PITA to manually change these settings.

H- If you had shot 24p (NDF) and you need to edit in 60i (NDF), and you go through this process, with that complicate things? Can the Red pull list work backwards from a 60i EDL and reference that to the 24p Red clips?

I- Can the online system take in an EDL, and conform that from data files? The online system needs to be able to read timecode from the data files.

J- If you need to change the reel names to no more than 5, 6, or 8 characters, can Redcine handle that?

K- Can Redcine warn you if you put a "B" on the end of the reel name? This would be to avoid conflicts with B-reel naming convention; I'm not sure if this is necessary.

My inquiring mind would like to know! (in the context of HD and SD production for broadcast)

Some previous discussion:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=76081&page=2

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Based on what we have been told about RedCine: if you know what flavor you want to have go into your online pipeline then you should be able to set RedCine to output that particular format and everything after that should be your usual program. Issues of file naming, EDL management and the rest of the details may require a bit of testing but IMHO it shouldn't be a big PITA.

[Graeme Nattress]

Glenn, when these high end suites take still image files, it's usually dps, which is 10bit, 4:4:4 RGB. I don't know any that would deal with Y'CbCr at this point.

G - what field order? We're talking progressive here, surely. RED PAR =1.0;

H = datacentric, so why would you be dealing with pulldown and interlace and all that nonsense?

[GlennChan]

1- You mean DPX?

G- Field order: You might end up in a situation with interlaced output, if you need to add 3:2 pulldown.

As far as PAR, what if you need to output 720x486, or 720x576 ?

In any case, field order and PAR shouldn't be that big a deal if they are misinterpreted since you can grind through and tell your program to interpret everything correctly. It's just an annoyance when importing material... i.e. IME when you import footage into AE or Combustion, it may not always be interpreted correctly.

H- You may need your offline edit to be 60i if you are editing a documentary with a lot of 60i footage. 60i also has an advantage when it comes to overall workflow + packaging, since packaging almost always needs to be done in 60i (broadcasters require a 60i master). Yes interlacing is evil but... sometimes you have to deal with it.

[Graeme Nattress]

But all of the above are NLE issues. REDCINE makes the files you ask for. After that, the NLE has it's job to play.

Graeme

[GlennChan]

I think it's a Redcine issue.

If Redcine is to add pulldown (Stuart seemed to agree that it would be useful; the original plan was no), then when you send an EDL back to Redcine it should know to pull the right timecodes. It should convert from 59.97NDF timecodes to 23.98NDF, then pull, and then add pulldown to the output with (the same) 59.97NDF timecode.

[Rob Lohman]

Okay, I'm out of my area of expertise here, but I'm gonna try to say something useful:

1) The 59.97 framerates are only important for TV. So that's SD or HD. My suggestion: shoot at 720 or 1080 in either interlaced or progressive at 59.97 or 29.97. This should mix well with other clips you might pull in.

2) If you're working in 23.98 fps you're probably shooting a movie all on this camera, so you don't need to mix & match, so no problem there either.

So you only need pulldown for #2. This can be done when you export your 24 fps (or 23.98) timeline to whatever format needs pulldown. No need to do this during editing.

Am I missing something, or?

[GlennChan]

Rob, that would be a very sensible thing to do. I agree with you on #1.

However... some people will want to shoot 24p for the ""film look"". And because of the marketing by companies selling 24p cameras, a lot of people think about shooting in 24p. And in practice, some productions are shot 24p and 60i on the same camera. Because, supposedly, 24p=film look and 60i=documentary/news look. It's silly, but that's what happens. HDCAM decks can deal with adding pulldown (and TC issues), so this route is doable (although it's still a PITA, and complicated and confusing and slows you down when you set the system up wrong).

2- People might assume that it's ok to shoot 24p (i.e. with huge workflow hassles).

You even see that happen now, where people shoot 24pA and don't realize that the online system they will be using can't remove the advanced pulldown.

[Michael Schrengohst]

I am going to use the RED like it is a film camera running at 24p.
Feature films are shot and edited 24p. You don't see Spielberg
saying "This is going to TV lets shoot 29.97". There are established
workflows to go from film back to TV.

[donatello b]

"2) If you're working in 23.98 fps "

is it really 23.98 or are you just rounding up from 23.976 ...

[GlennChan]

23.98fps really refers to 24 * 1000 / 1001 fps (which is close to 23.976fps). In common use, it doesn't refer to anything else.

The 1000 / 1001 part is important since it affects timecode and you get into potential timecode issues.


Feature films are shot and edited 24p. You don't see Spielberg
saying "This is going to TV lets shoot 29.97". There are established
workflows to go from film back to TV.
Hi Red Guy, I don't believe I understand what you're trying to say. I am talking about projects targeted primarily towards broadcast. Some of them mix 24p and 60i for the different motion aesthetics, in 60i timelines. So those projects need to deal with these issues. Obviously you can avoid these issues by shooting 24p, but some people want to mix 24p and 60i.

[Michael Schrengohst]

Sure you can add pulldown to 24p material to make it 29.97. I just hate editing 60i and have not shot 60i since I retired my BetaCam almost three years ago. I guess if you were doing a sports show and wanted to shoot the live part in 60i and the feature segments as 24p that makes sense. But I doubt you will see much RED shooting in 60i.

[Rob Lohman]

Glenn is right about 1000 / 1001. 23.98 was just convenient.

Obviously for my option 1 you could also shoot in 2K or 4K at those frame rates and down-sample in post. If you want to maintain a higher resolution negative.

The other question should already have an answer outside RED. A lot of people shoot 24 fps film. No doubt a lot of them edit in 24 fps. But what if they do need to add in 60i originated footage or add the film footage into a 60i timeline, what happens? These questions should already have answers before RED arrived on the scene.

And I think that's what Graeme was sort of implying (correct me if I'm wrong here Graeme!). Shoot the way you want to shoot it and use the established methods to get it into your proper editing workflow. Whether that is adding pulldown or shooting at a proper framerate.

[Graeme Nattress]

Rob, you read me right, but also there are too many workflows (like tape to tape colour correction) that are archaic and not data centric. I think that's the issue that Glenn is talking about. I guess such people could just put their RED footage on a timeline, output to HDCAM and then "treat as normal".

Graeme

[Lucas Wilson]

23.98fps really refers to 24 * 1000 / 1001 fps (which is close to 23.976fps). In common use, it doesn't refer to anything else.

The 1000 / 1001 part is important since it affects timecode and you get into potential timecode issues.

Glenn, sorry to contradict - but this is incorrect. There is no timecode difference between 23.976 and 24fps. Take this example: two cameras - one shooting at 23.976 and one at 24. They both shoot for (by a stopwatch) an hour. The end timecode will be different on both tapes, because they count time-by-the-clock differently. But the timecode on the two tapes will count identically. The frames go from :00 - :23 on both tapes.

The #1 reason for deciding whether to shoot 23.976 or 24 in a digital world is keeping your deliverable in mind. What will the final result be -theatrical or broadcast? If the answer is US (or another NTSC-based country) broadcast release, then it's a no-brainer. Shoot 23.976. If it is going for theatrical release, then the number one consideration is audio.

In digital acquisition, there are 24 frames of imagery in the camera regardless of 23.976 or 24. They are just played back at a different speed. In audio, that's not the case. Assuming a 48K sample rate, in digitally acquired audio, there are 48,000 samples in one second of 24fps synced audio. There are 47,952 samples (48 * (1000/1001)) in one second of 23.976 audio. On a dual-system show, if you now attempt to playback that audio at 24fps, it will not be in sync with a true 24fps-acquired material. Happens all the time. And then the fun starts...

There are great ways of dealing with 23.976 vs. 24fps audio in the Avid world. Because of the history of telecine - which *always* slowed down film to 23.976fps in order to properly telecine to NTSC - Avid came up with what at the time was a groundbreaking way of dealing with this and editing at true 24fps for theatrical. Thus was born the Film Composer... and a Sci/Tech Academy Award to go along with it...

But I digress. :)


Hi Red Guy, I don't believe I understand what you're trying to say. I am talking about projects targeted primarily towards broadcast. Some of them mix 24p and 60i for the different motion aesthetics, in 60i timelines. So those projects need to deal with these issues. Obviously you can avoid these issues by shooting 24p, but some people want to mix 24p and 60i.

Yes... and then the question becomes - what is the dominant format? If *most* of the footage is 24p, and there is just some 60i material to deal with, then the standard in most online bays is to Teranex the 60i material to 24fps, and edit it in with the 24fps material, then re-introduce a consistent cadence on output.

Follow the workflow here. Let's assume (for an hour-long doc) you have 50 minutes of 24p material, and 10 minutes of 60i material. In an editorial timeline - in the actual application - how will you mix these? This is not a rhetorical question... :)

Lucas Wilson
------------
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
jet-lagged in Asia

[GlennChan]

Luki: My comment about 1000 / 1001 was in the context of dropframe versus non-dropframe; not 23.976 versus 24.000. (I believe DF is never used since it gets into TC weirdness.)


Yes... and then the question becomes - what is the dominant format? If *most* of the footage is 24p, and there is just some 60i material to deal with, then the standard in most online bays is to Teranex the 60i material to 24fps, and edit it in with the 24fps material, then re-introduce a consistent cadence on output.
Yes, that would work. But a few oddball productions want that 60i look. The Canadian show "I do let's eat" uses 60i and 24p footage (it's all shot on HDCAM); incidentally, the 24p motion segment disturb me but that I suppose was part of the creative intent (interviews = 24p/"film", documentary segments = 60i).


I guess such people could just put their RED footage on a timeline, output to HDCAM and then "treat as normal".

That does work, but defeats the point of a data-centric workflow (no expensive VTRs; ideally, more efficient).

[Graeme Nattress]

But if the editing software doesn't support a data centric workflow (and if it did, we wouldn't behaving this disucssion) you wouldn't need to dub to HDCAm and treat as normal! It's about time that NLEs stopped treating "time" as a fixed parameter and gave it the flexibility it deserves.

Graeme

[Nick Shaw]

I guess it would make life (for you North Americans at least) a lot easier if eg Final Cut would let you drop a 24p clip on a 60i time-line, and add pull-down on playback. No real reason this shouldn't be possible. Even if the computer couldn't do it at broadcast quality in real time, it could give you a preview while working, and render it before mastering.

Problem solved!

Nick

[Graeme Nattress]

Indeed, but FCP was designed with a very rigidly defined concept of time - and conversion of one time base to another has always been screwy. It would be lovely to see them move to more of a timebase agnostic solution, but I don't see it happening myself.

Graeme

[Nick Shaw]

Just realised after I wrote that, your 'G Add Pulldown' plugin does pretty much exactly what I was describing! However as you say, Final Cut's rigid time-base structure makes it a less than ideal workflow.

Nick

[Rob Lohman]

I'm quite surprised by this. I'm sort of a Windows user and have done most my editing on Sony Vegas. I can just drop any framerate in any timeline. Too bad it's 8-bit only at the moment.

[Graeme Nattress]

How does it deal with off-rate frames though - does it add proper pulldown?

Graeme

[Nick Shaw]

Final Cut will let you drop a clip of any frame rate in a time-line of any frame rate, and you can edit with it. It's just controlling how it converts between the frame rates for final quality mastering that is an issue. Graeme's standards conversion plug-ins certainly help.

I have done edits with a mix of NTSC and PAL rushes, and been able to work with them in the same time-line. It's just that once the cut was locked, it took a fair bit of fiddling to get the best final result. It didn't help that some of the NTSC footage was film originated with pull-down, and some was 'real' 60i. I didn't have Graeme's plug-ins at the time, so there was a lot of bouncing back and forth to After Effects!

Nick

[Michael Schrengohst]

Hello Rob,
Yes I used Vegas until the HVX200 came out. Made the switch to FCP.
It was hard at first but now I would not go back. Especially now that it looks like RED footage will be more comfortable in FCP.

[GlennChan]

I think a reasonable solution for Red is to allow Redcine to add pulldown if necessary, and pay attention to the details (i.e. in EDLs, Red pull list). Convert all your 24p footage to 60i, and edit the footage as if it were 60i.

[donatello b]

from my experience - 23.976 & 24fps are two different frame rates when editing ...
if you have a 23.976 time line and you drop a true 24fps clip in it - the NLE does not slow the clip down so it plays back at 23.976 it converts the clip to 23.976 ( it will drop a frame/field every X sec- which is different the slowing it down to 23.976 which would not drop any frame/fields ) ....

AE can change the speed of a clip from 24fps to 23.976 ( slowing it down)..or it can convert it to 23.976 by drpping a frame/field every X sec ...

[Rob Lohman]

the NLE does not slow the clip down

'm assuming you are talking about a specific NLE? At least some NLE's let you choose which way you want to go (with a default when you drop the clip in)

[donatello b]

i don't know of a NLE that slows/speeds up a clip that has a different frame rate once the properties of the project is set ( as in change the speed of the clip without adding/deleting fields/frames)
24 & 23.976 are pretty close - so it's a bit hard for the mind to really think it would make a difference ...
the mind can see the difference if you take a 29.97 clip and drop it into a 23.976 TL it doesn't slow the clip down - it drops frames/fields to get the speed down to 23.976.. or if you take a 23.976 clip and drop it in a 29.97 TL it doesn't speed it up - it adds frames/fields to equal 29.97 fps ..

[Nick Shaw]

I'm pretty sure FCP let's you mix 23.976 and 24 fps on the same time-line without dropping frames. I always thought the only real difference was drop frame and non drop frame time-code. But what do I know. I normally work at 25 fps.

Nick

[Nick Shaw]

Following on from my last comment, I just did a test in FCP, and you can indeed drop a 24 fps clip into a 23.976 fps timeline. It just treats it as if it was at the time-line frame rate, and goes in frame for frame.

Nick

[tj williams]

Strange how posts morph. Glen's original post didn't much deal with the 23.976 24fps dichotomy.

It seems to me a more central question about this proposed workflow is the assumption of ownership of RED Cine by the online facility. Will part of RED Cine be given away like quick time player etc. Will the Online facility have to buy it. Will we then be limited to facilities who own RED Cine??

[Nick Shaw]

Will we then be limited to facilities who own RED Cine??

If you want to online HDCam, you need to go to an online facility that owns HDCam decks. It's not that different.

Of course anyone can rent an HDCam deck. Maybe REDCINE licenses will be 'rentable', or maybe they will just have to out-source the conversion to somebody who does have a REDCINE license. I have a post facility who will have a REDCINE license, so in some ways I have a vested interest in it not being freely available.

But of course if RED ONE becomes as big as we all hope it will be, then it will become the next 'must have' format for facilities. Maybe REDCODE RGB will be the new standard for mastering!

[tj williams]

Hi Nick
Yes I see why you would be interested in restricting the license for RED Cine.
You also own a red camera. Will it only shoot for your post? We often rent an F900 from a company who also does post but post at a different company. In that kind of situation your days of rental, might depend on the preferred editorial company accepting RED Files.

[Nick Shaw]

Hi Nick
Yes I see why you would be interested in restricting the license for RED Cine.
You also own a red camera. Will it only shoot for your post? We often rent an F900 from a company who also does post but post at a different company. In that kind of situation your days of rental, might depend on the preferred editorial company accepting RED Files.

I don't intend to dry hire my RED out. I am working with a director (who has also reserved a RED, for backup and two camera shoots) and a couple of cameramen. We hope to offer a complete shoot and post solution. We are also considering the option of forming a production company.

[Lucas Wilson]

i don't know of a NLE that slows/speeds up a clip that has a different frame rate once the properties of the project is set ( as in change the speed of the clip without adding/deleting fields/frames)
24 & 23.976 are pretty close - so it's a bit hard for the mind to really think it would make a difference ...

I know of one - the entire Avid family of products.

Lucas
------
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
Los Angeles (but now in an airport lounge in Manila)

[Rob Lohman]

I know of another, Sony Vegas. Unless I'm reading your statement wrong. Are you saying you know of no NLE that can do this or no NLE that does "it" (and that's what I don't 100% understand from your post) automatically?

[donatello b]

i know of no NLE that changes the play back speed (drop a 29.97 clip and it plays it back at 23.976 as in keeping every frame so it should be playing it back slightly slo-mo- i know AE can do it as a effect) ..all the NLE's i know add or drop fields/frames so it ends up at speed of project properties ...

so you have a film clip scan at true 24fps ... then you take same film clip and have it telecined at 23.976 ... choose a 23.976 or 24fps project properties - then drop both clips into TL ( video track 1 & 2) = they will start out perfectly matched on 1st frame ... go down TL 10 min and the frames no longer match ( one clip might be 1-2 frames ahead or behind )

i use VEGAS ... drop any frame rate into Vegas and it will convert it to whatever frame rate is set in the properties by either dropping or adding frames/fields ..set project properties to 23.976 and drop a 24fps clip into it and it will drop a frame/field every X seconds ...
set project properties to 24fps drop in 23.976 clip and vegas will add a frame/field to it every X seconds ...

[Rob Lohman]

Yes, but you can right-click on a clip in Vegas and change the frame rate of the clip (doing what you want). Unfortunately I do not have Vegas installed here at the moment so can't really give you specifics. I'm pretty sure it's there though.

[donatello b]

re: Vegas - clip playback speed
yes but changing the playback speed is no different then if you use Ctrl & mouse to drag end of clip shorter or longer (slo-mo/fastmo) ... from what i can see if you set playback to 2X it skips every other frame on playback ( 30fps progressive clip with progressive project propteries - it appears to handle interlace different & i have no time for interlace ) ... changing the playback to .5 appears to just double every frame ..
so in the end Vegas adjust the speed by either adding or deleting frames/fields ....