Editing on a laptop

[Freya]

You have created something of an odd dilemma for yourself. You want a high quality machine that will perform well editing R3Ds but it can't be good enough for someone to want to steal it? Not sure that's the way to think about the tradeoff. How about investing in better security? You could aways get a $300 Dell but then I am not sure about the performance.

How about getting a new MBP and then putting it into one of those ugly plastic shell cases and put ugly stickers all over it? LOL

For the record I had pretty good security. It made me realise. If they want in, they will get in.

I havn't really created the dilema you talk of. From the get go I've been talking about creating DV proxies and doing a conform later. Nobody wants to talk about that tho.

In fact I was also talking about Sony Vegas and Premiere CS6.
It's just all the replies have piled in to say I need a macbook.
I don't mind that, I'm grateful for the replies people give and I'm keeping an open mind and will see how things pan out when the time comes.

Freya

 

[Freya]

as for transcoding and working in proxies...its a great theory...but the transcodes take too long to be practical without doing it overnight or with a rocket if you have a lot of material. but if either of those is an option you can work on any laptop then in dnxhd36 or something easy to work with...

Thanks Brian,

Actually overnight is definitely an option. I'm surprised it is so slow. I don't need high quality proxies. They don't even need to be in colour. I just need the images in sync with the audio to do simple cuts and make an EDL or something to do a conform later.

I'd actually prefer to generate SD proxies. I really don't need anything fancy.

I do wonder however, if some resolutions might be mathematically faster to generate than others.

It's something I need to experiment with.

Freya

 

[Brian Merlen]

i was on set recently with a rocket doing transocodes to prores and also h264....the h264s took forever...not sure if its the more compression or just a difficult codec. if i remember right stuff thats divisible transcodes faster...like all the 16/9 HD red settings supposedly transcode faster then a non 16/9 aspect ratio when your going from say 4khd to 1080hd then from 4k (non hd) to 16//9HD... so i'm not sure if SD would slow you down or not since it wont be 16/9... worth doing some testing to see how long different codecs take you on your current system even... lots of post houses use dnxhd36 to cut and then reconform later as far as high processing power workflows go. i also work with r3ds on my three year old mac mini just fine, but i tweak the playback settings down significantly unless i need to actually see an image, in which case i wait for buffering it and watch it with less compression.

if overnights work for you thats a good solution. if you don't shoot off speed and do 30/24/25fps then a third party capture device to generate real time proxies is also a very valid solution. that way you have your proxies in real time on set and skip the overnight wait...but this doesn't work well for shooting off speed unless your willing to lose on set time to doing playback recording into your third party capture device.


so it really depends on what frame rates you shoot...a hyper deck shuttle, samurai, pix240 or equivalent is so much faster then waiting and a lot cheaper then a red rocket or red rocket x. depending what frame rates you shoot, its a very valid real time proxy solution. it essentially can make an epic/red one into an alexa type workflow and is very seamless. compared to tethering to an avid (my typical workflow on a on going job) i like the robustness of the pix240 solution. tethering is kind of a nightmare from the PC crashes once in a while, but i never had problems with third party off board recorders yet personally...


so overnights, or off board proxy recording are two very valid reasons on why you dont need a new computer...same with native r3ds at low playback settings, a very valid way to do a rough cut... i'm not sure why people even insist on doing full res 5k playback unless they really need it for some reason, high end work, colorists, what have you... these 10,000 dollar computer systems are cool and all, but i'd personally look to proxies unless the budget really calls for a 10,000 workstation with rocket, etc

 

[Freya]

i was on set recently with a rocket doing transocodes to prores and also h264....the h264s took forever...not sure if its the more compression or just a difficult codec.

MPEG 4 style codecs are very computationally intensive!
Prores is much more straightforward.

if i remember right stuff thats divisible transcodes faster...like all the 16/9 HD red settings supposedly transcode faster then a non 16/9 aspect ratio when your going from say 4khd to 1080hd then from 4k (non hd) to 16//9HD... so i'm not sure if SD would slow you down or not since it wont be 16/9...

That's a really good point! SD can be 16/9 of course but usually it is anamorphic, certainly is for DV or letterboxed.
I might be able to do MJPEG in native 16:9 tho. Will have to see, but you are right there might be some extra maths there.

Definitely will need a ton of experimenting.

so it really depends on what frame rates you shoot...a hyper deck shuttle, samurai, pix240 or equivalent is so much faster then waiting and a lot cheaper then a red rocket or red rocket x. depending what frame rates you shoot, its a very valid real time proxy solution. it essentially can make an epic/red one into an alexa type workflow and is very seamless. compared to tethering to an avid (my typical workflow on a on going job) i like the robustness of the pix240 solution. tethering is kind of a nightmare from the PC crashes once in a while, but i never had problems with third party off board recorders yet personally...

Do the Samurai and Hyperdeck Shuttle maintain timecode tho? I seem to remember there being issues with matching timecode on some recorders?

Lots of great suggestions here! Thanks Brian!

Freya

 

[Brian Merlen]

when DSMC first came out there were issues with it being off sync by a frame, and with the DSMC cameras not putting out a full 1080 raster, but I believe these were all resolved some time ago. When I used a pix240 the workflow seemed straight forward, it even followed the naming conventions of the mags so I had zero issues. The technical problems seen at first could also be fixed in post, like if the off board recorder has missed the the first frame lets say, just move the r3d over a frame and its synced again... but i haven't heard of any such problems for quite some time. like i said though i typically work tethered to an avid, or off of redmags these days, but i'm fairly positive the firmware update for the pix240 fixed all the problems some time ago...as for the competitors i can't vouch for all of them, there are a lot of off board recorder models these days...

my friend has a hyperdeck and seems to like it, other then he typically shoots off speed which makes it a nightmare to use an offboard recorder in the first place... as far as lost time goes on set...