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Reader Q&A : How do YOU work in HD?

 

Dear Kevin,

I am right in the middle of doing it for a PBS series that I am producing and editing, and we are shooting using the Sony CineAlta. I am thinking of the dual 3T Power Pro, 2 internal 500 gig harddrives, an Kona 3 card, and a 7 Terabyte Raid from Promax.

I have a question - if you don't mind. Are you editing complete uncompressed HD or something Else? What are you delivering on HD Cam?

Thanks.

Thanks for your question. Right now, I am currently working on thirty episodes of Jon Elkin's Goalie Schools Online Goaltender Training series that is shot in HD on an F-900 CineAlta HDCam camera. We shoot in various frame rates depending on what the content is that we are shooting. What I mean by this is that we shoot all of the on-ice footage in 1080i, and the interview footage in 23.98psF. I am editing in ProRes in the comfort of my home office in Final Cut Studio 2, so I capture all our material onto external FW800 hard drives using a Kona 3 (which is great as it gives me the flexibility of Up/Down/Cross conversions on the fly, as well as access to tons of codecs and editing options) that I use off-site, and once the footage is captured, I bring it back to my house, sit down and start editing. Since the training is web-based, I don't need to go back to tape, but if I did, I would simply rent a suite for half a day, take my FW800 drive with me, and just do a straight output to HDCam. All the conversions I do for the web are done in Compressor, and then sent off via FTP to the US for streaming on the web. My best suggestion is to purchase on the hardware you need to do the editing portion of your job. The Kona 3 is an excellent investment, as for me, it is the best capture card on the market today. When editing in HD, the more storage you have the better, so that way you are covered, no matter what codec you are using. I personally like the Huge Systems Media Vault 4G Fibre Channel storage. It hasn't steered me wrong yet! I highly recommend NOT purchasing any VTR's or anything like that. Rent them on a per project basis, and you can include it in the budget! For more information on Jon Elkin's Goalie Schools, click here, to see the promotional video I cut for the video training series, click here. For more information on AJA and the Kona 3, click here, and for more information on the Huge Systems Media Vault, click here!

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