On-Set DVD Dailies Workflow

[theinfantry]

What is the fastest workflow to produce DVD dailies for clients? Any takers?

-a commercial set
-Producer expects multiple standard-def (or fancy blu-ray) DVDs delivered first thing in the morning to the Director & Producers' hotel rooms
-shot four hours on RED at 4K
-expects the equivalent of a 'one-light' color time
-timecode burned in
-you're in a small town in Brazil with no post help

Possible? How would YOU do it? (and no you can't hire imaginary gnomes.)

 

[M Most]

What is the fastest workflow to produce DVD dailies for clients? Any takers?

-a commercial set
-Producer expects multiple standard-def (or fancy blu-ray) DVDs delivered first thing in the morning to the Director & Producers' hotel rooms
-shot four hours on RED at 4K
-expects the equivalent of a 'one-light' color time
-timecode burned in
-you're in a small town in Brazil with no post help

Possible? How would YOU do it? (and no you can't hire imaginary gnomes.)

Time code burns reflecting what? The R3d file time codes? Time of day? And for what purpose?

Cheap way (although to do this reasonably reliably, you really need to use a pretty hefty Mac Pro):
1. Do the "one light" setting in Red Alert, making sure to set your monitor to 2.2 gamma.
2. Load 2K or 1K proxies into FCP running on a machine with some type of video output and downconverting capability (a Kona 3 card, for instance). Drop them on an HD timeline and size as necessary. Add the FCP timecode effect and set to reflect the source TC. Set the timeline parameters to Unlimited RT, Dynamic quality, and Full frame rate.
3. If you need sync sound, use double system recording and sync the sound, or use the sound from the original camera generated proxies.
4. Set up the Kona 3 to output downconverted SD video on the Analog output (or on SDI, if you happen to have either an SDI DVD recorder or a D/A converter).
5. Play into a real time DVD recorder.
6. Repeat as needed or duplicate the DVD using either a software burner or a DVD duplicator.

You might get a few frame skips, but you'll get what you need in the time frame you're talking about (although if you really have 4 hours of material, you're probably talking about a minimum 8-10 hour turnaround, since you have to take every shot into Red Alert separately). Any rendering will make the turnaround impossible.

Better way:
1. Load R3d files into a ScratchCine system.
2. Color correct as necessary.
3. Play out to a real time DVD recorder with whatever metadata burn-ins you want.
4. Duplicate.
5. Thank yourself for being wise enough to use a tool made for the job ;-).

Best way:
1. Use the second method, but instead of trying to do this yourself, give it to a facility that's set up with a Scratch or ScratchCine system, a decent colorist, and lots of DVD duplication capability.
2. Sleep well knowing it's all being taken care of.

 

[Tv_Red]

I had to set up dailies every night for the director and DP to review and this is how i did it. Please keep in mind that this was a low budget film and i personally know both the director and DP so this method was fine for them and me.

I would be on set all day downloading all the R3D's to my G Speed ES and bring them into FCP. I would bring the _H and _M files and log them and put them into their bins and what not. Then i would assemble timelines for the day with the _M files and do a quick color pass with FCP 3 way color wheel and that was just for reference. At the end of the Day i would let the timeline render, somedays 15 min other days where 1 hour. Meet up at the directors house and plug my laptop straight to his 42' Visio and proceed to watch the dailies that way.

I had one MacBook Pro 2.66 with 2 GB Ram Running the G Speed ES through a Sata express Card.

Also during that time i had other drives that i was backing up the R3D files on to as well as cutting scenes in the _H files and i got pretty decent playback, well thats when i wasnt rendering, haha.

At another note i would render after every download because if i didnt then it would take forever at the end of the day.

Not sure if that way works for you, but it worked perfect for us.

Good Luck!

 

[Matthew Rogers]

I want to confirm this idea that I had that I am sure doesn't work (I had never seen any information that said otherwise)

There is no way to "color correct" the proxies like in RedAlert and then play back the correction in something like Quicktime Player, correct?

I just ask because it would be great to do a one pass in RA, export the proxy and then compress it with 8 cores in compressor to MPEG2 for dalies.

Matthew

 

[Dave French]

Better way:
1. Load R3d files into a ScratchCine system.
2. Color correct as necessary.
3. Play out to a real time DVD recorder with whatever metadata burn-ins you want.
4. Duplicate.
5. Thank yourself for being wise enough to use a tool made for the job ;-).

The problem with this is that Scratch does not read the audio from the Red files and can't do sync audio either. No audio card to spit the audio out either. That is the big shortcoming of Scratch at the moment if you want to use it for dailies.

Dave

 

[Chris Parker]

scratch will not play out audio??? how do people using scratch sync sound for dailies then?

 

[M Most]

scratch will not play out audio??? how do people using scratch sync sound for dailies then?

There are a number of ways to sync daily sound that are in use at many facilities around the world. One way is to post sync, that is, use a digital audio workstation to make a synched "reel" from original sound that matches the video master, then lay it back. This is not nearly as difficult as it might sound, and in fact is the way film to tape dailies have been done in a number of places outside of Los Angeles for a number of years. Another method is a bit more complex, but it would involve using a device such as a Fostex DV40 (a DVD/DVD Ram recorder/player) to chase time code from the original files. Getting those original time codes to the VTR is the real trick, but one that Assimilate has a solution for. This is a method similar to one that Sony Studios has used for a number of years now to automatically sync production tracks to video shot on the F900 cameras, although theirs involved putting a second time code on one of the audio tracks.

The bottom line is that although it is very convenient to have automatically synced sound, it is not absolutely necessary for an efficient dailies process, although I wouldn't necessarily recommend any of the above methods in a do it yourself situation.

 

[Chris Parker]

any idea when assimilate is going to add automated sync sound to RedCINE? and will this then play out to tape for dailies?

 

[Dave French]

I've been told they are working on it.

 

[Obin Olson]

what about playback out HDSDI on camera to a HDSDI converter for SD and record on a cheap dvd recorder? or DV camera?

 

[Fredrik Harreschou]

any idea when assimilate is going to add automated sync sound to RedCINE? and will this then play out to tape for dailies?

SCRATCH CINE will, Redcine will not - play out to tape.

 

[Chris Parker]

i meant scratchCINE....sorry. so it will play audio out to tape, just not sync audio?

 

[Steve Freebairn]

I'm currently on a feature with Jeremyn. The way we're doing dailies is way easy and very fast. They also look killer.

How we do it.

1 Copy footage to raid

2 open finder, search for _m.mov

3 drag clips to droplet*

4 clips are exported about 1/2 realtime (so 1 hour takes about 2 hours to export, roughly, probably faster)

5 open DVD SP and import all the m2v ac3 files, drag them into a template so that you can skip forward and back from one take to another.

6 Burn Disc


Creating the droplet
I opened compressor, chose m2v and ac3, set the bit rate at 5 mbps and 192kbps, then set the crop to setting so that it cropped the 2:1 footage to 16x9 and I added the timecode filter and made it title safe and centered on the bottom. Then saved the compressor settings out as a droplet, then put it in the dock.

Note:you can also create an applescript, automator workflow, or droplet (all pretty much the same thing) for an ftp connection, then you can add that at the end of a compressor job, and that lets you upload clips as they finish compressing (in our case, we're using h.264). This makes it way easy, because then you've got one droplet to handle the compressing and uploading.

 

[ShannonRawls]

Why not just buy a DVD Recorder and small lcd monitor from best buy and have a PA hit record/stop each time you speed?

*smile*

 

[Chris Parker]

if you do it that way, the PA is bound to either record things that the camera does not, or miss the odd take. dailies are supposed to be EXACTLY what the camera rolled on. doing it that way will make it near impossible for that to happen.