A Few Questions About Avid MC5 for MichaelP or Other Early Users ...

[Andrew Patterson]

RED RELATED QUESTIONS:
1. Will tutorials exist for linking up Avid to R3D media right out of the gate?
I'm thinking back to the Avid/Panasonic P2 Tutorials that were available before anyone could get their hands on the camera ... that was nice! I know it may be easy for some, but even Metafuze took me a little getting used to.

2. Will there be controls to reframe, pick white balance, access FLUT, ISO, etc. from within AVID?

3. How will a Quicktime Reference work from a finished AVID timeline?
For example, if I want to take a sequence from AVID to After Effects via a Quicktime Reference will that cause any problems?

NON RED RELATION QUESTIONS:
1. Upon import, will the pulldown be removed from AVCHD files shot at 24p on cameras such as the Panasonic AG-HMC40?

2. Will rendering be required for media transcoded through Raylight MXFX?
For me currently, a 1080p MXF file rendered from a Panasonic HVX through Raylight's MXFX to remove pulldown shows up natively with a green dot over the clip and requires rendering before final output. Any chance this will go away and AVID will take advantage of the process MXFX just supposedly provided?

3. Or better yet, can 1080p MXF material have the pulldown removed inside AVID somewhere?
This may already be an option, I just can't find it ...

4. Can HDV capture from a Canon 24p Camera take place into a 24p 1440x1080 HDV Project?
Once again, this may already be a fully functional option, but it has never worked for me, despite have tried multiple cameras and every setting I can think of ... I'd just like to capture native 24p straight into AVID from a Canon HV20 or XH A1 without it timing out or giving me an error after 1-2 minutes of capture. As a side note, capture from these cameras works perfectly in a 60i timeline ...

5. Will the Cineform Codecs work with AMA?

6. Will ProRes import work on a PC?

Thank you all in advance for any answers. I am an AVID junkie and have NEVER edited on another platform. So these questions come with great anticipation!

Here are my system specs if that pertains to any of the questions above:
Intel i7 Bloomfield Core 2.8 GHZ
Nvidia Quadro 1800
24GB RAM
128 GB KINGSTON SSD

 

[James Rayburn]

I would watch this podcast, it answers a lot of those questions:
http://community.avid.com/blogs/events/archive/2010/04/14/new-features-media-composer-5.aspx

 

[MichaelP]

RED RELATED QUESTIONS:
1. Will tutorials exist for linking up Avid to R3D media right out of the gate?
I'm thinking back to the Avid/Panasonic P2 Tutorials that were available before anyone could get their hands on the camera ... that was nice! I know it may be easy for some, but even Metafuze took me a little getting used to.

[mep] Video tutorials are in the pipeline. Documentation will have AMA and RED. I am working on updating the Avid+RED whitepaper for the near future.


2. Will there be controls to reframe, pick white balance, access FLUT, ISO, etc. from within AVID?

[mep] Everything but reframe and "pick white balance".

3. How will a Quicktime Reference work from a finished AVID timeline?
For example, if I want to take a sequence from AVID to After Effects via a Quicktime Reference will that cause any problems?

[mep] No different than in v4. No QT reference from AMA linked media. Transcode first.


NON RED RELATION QUESTIONS:
1. Upon import, will the pulldown be removed from AVCHD files shot at 24p on cameras such as the Panasonic AG-HMC40?

[mep] Using mix and match (even in v4) will remove the pulldown. Open files in their recorded native rate e.g. 1080i with 2:3 pulldown. Open bin containing media in a 23.976 project. Load clip, it will be 23.976.

2. Will rendering be required for media transcoded through Raylight MXFX?
For me currently, a 1080p MXF file rendered from a Panasonic HVX through Raylight's MXFX to remove pulldown shows up natively with a green dot over the clip and requires rendering before final output. Any chance this will go away and AVID will take advantage of the process MXFX just supposedly provided?

[mep] Unknown. I need to get sample files from MXFX to see what the issue is to start with. See previous for skipping this process altogether.

3. Or better yet, can 1080p MXF material have the pulldown removed inside AVID somewhere?
This may already be an option, I just can't find it ...

[mep] See previous response.

4. Can HDV capture from a Canon 24p Camera take place into a 24p 1440x1080 HDV Project?
Once again, this may already be a fully functional option, but it has never worked for me, despite have tried multiple cameras and every setting I can think of ... I'd just like to capture native 24p straight into AVID from a Canon HV20 or XH A1 without it timing out or giving me an error after 1-2 minutes of capture. As a side note, capture from these cameras works perfectly in a 60i timeline ...

[mep] Did you turn off the timecode track when capturing in 23.976 project? Also see previous response if you only have 1080i capture working.

5. Will the Cineform Codecs work with AMA?

[mep] Early tests are positive for QT wrapped Cineform. Performance is still something that needs to be tested - especially for formats greater than 1920 x 1080.

6. Will ProRes import work on a PC?

[mep] AMA link to or import will work on a PC.


Michael

 

[Andrew Patterson]

James -- Thank you for the link to the Podcast. That explained and clarified a lot of my questions.

MichaelP -- Thanks for the quick response to all my inquiries. I have now had a chance to try a handful of the methods written in response to my questions.

The areas where I am not having any success are the following:
1. I cannot seem to remove pulldown from a Panasonic P2 1080 24p MXF Clip inside AVID without an extreme Judder or the effect looking like I'm shooting with a 270 Degree shutter -- in other words motion blur and trailing with all motion camera movement. I can take the same clip, remove pulldown in DVFILM's MXFX and attain the intended look -- which is aesthetically entirely different.
It's possible I'm still doing this process wrong, but I'll try anything to get it right. Is there a tutorial on opening Panasonic P2 1080 24p MXF in a 24p Timeline? Or documentation?

2. HDV 24p Capture from a Canon HV20 causes a multitude of problems. When I Auto-Configure the camera, it shows up as a Generic-PAL Device. This doesn't work, obviously. So when I reconfigure it manually to a Canon camera -- either XH A1 24 or XHG1 24 -- the following error occurs after about 1 minute:
Capture aborted due to lack of progress ... then asks if I want to discard, etc.
I'm having no problem with the capture into 60i and opening it up in a 24p Project. When I place the captured clip in the timeline, it has the unrendered green dot on it. After I render it, the pulldown seems to be gone in some places and other places have the same effects I've had with the Panasonic P2 1080 24p MXF Media -- judder and trailing.
I can't figure out why this is inconsistent, but I'll gladly post footage somewhere to display the difference.

Again, I may be performing these operations incorrectly. I'll gladly take any direction or read/watch any tutorials on pulldown removal for HDV or MXF Content.

Thanks for working with me on these issues in my workflow.
Andrew

 

[Peter Moretti]

Andrew, as for the pulldown and the HV-20 there is an issue w/ the HV-20's pulldown. It does not have flags (while I believe the HV-40's does). This means you cannot, AFAIK, remove the pulldown in Avid.

You need to use a program that can recognize duplicate fields by analyzing the actual image. Offerings by DVFilm, Cineform and TMPGEnc can do this. You can rencode as HDV 23.976 or you can choose a different codec like DNxHD.

HTH.