Sony HDR-SR11 Workflow in Final Cut Pro Studio
Now that I'm working with the HDR-SR11 camera ingesting footage for editing and display on our home theater system, I figured I'd take a minute to outline workflow using this camera and FCP Studio for Blu-Ray compatible playback files.
A few things worth noting.
FCP Logging
Once hooked up to your system, and USB connect enabled on camera menu, you can open Final Cut, and use File>Log & Tranfer to access the hard drive and select in/out points and do your logging here.
With the USB speeds, I found that the computer would consistently choke and crash if you are attempting to ingest footage from one clip while scrolling through other clips on the camera hard drive for logging.
The camera desperately needs a faster interface for getting stuff off the internal hard drive. Firewire 800 would be great, but I can see where the 9-pin connector of FW800 would be a problem to incorporate into the tiny camera body, so I'm not sure if there's a good solution.
Unfortunately, it seems that even if you record to Memory Stick, the Express34 card readers all run at USB2.0 speeds as well.
FCP Transfer
Now, once you've set your in and out points and are ready to drag media in the transfer queue, it's time to go grab a cup of coffee, or maybe the whole pot, because you're going to wait a while.
When ingesting into FCP, the automatic ingest settings (that I've not found a way to change) are to transcode all the 16mb/s AVCHD encoded footage into Quicktime files using Apple ProRes422.
The good news about this, is the resulting files look spectacular.
The bad news about this, is that it almost doubles the data rate from the originals.
The 16mb/s of AVCHD turns into roughly 25mb/s in ProRes 422. This means you'll need about 1.5GB of storage per minute of footage you'd like to bring into the system. Needless to say, plan ahead for how much space you're going to need.
UPDATE: 4/23/09 - Just to update this thread, I get a lot of questions from folks about bringing in footage, and have found one trick that improves speed significantly.
The trick is to simply COPY the AVCHD folder from your camera hard drive, to a folder on your computer, THEN use that folder to import footage from.
Otherwise, data has to come off the camera and go to transcode from the USB connection and that takes a lot of time. Transferring AND transcoding can take 4 to 5 times real-time via USB.
If you transfer straight over, it'll take maybe 20 minutes for 30 gigs of material, and then transcoding locally will run close to real-time.
Don't forget to delete your AVCHD folder after you've successfully transcoded everything you need:) (unless of course, you'd rather archive it off to DVD or have room to keep it...)
Editing in FCP
Now, for some more good news. Once ingested in this manner, your files will NOT need rendering once placed in the timeline. FCP 6.0.4 works flawlessly with dropping ProRes clips into the timeline, and even plays back simple transitions and reversed frames without rendering.
Edit as usual:)
Compressor Output for Blu-Ray compatible playback
Our home theater setup is built around a Sony Playstation 3, connected via component cables to a Panasonic TH-50PHD7UY.
While Compressor only comes with settings for HD-DVD compatible file output, as noted in the threads over at Apple's FCP boards, there's a simple check box in the Inspector that will change the file suffix from .m2v, to .m2t, which is all that is needed to create an MPG2 file format with HD playback rates on the PS3.
Here are a couple of screen grabs of the settings I use in Compressor.
Since most of the stuff I'm editing in tests is fairly short, I'm using really high bit rates to get the most out of it.
These will be the .M2T files I'll post later in the week that you can download and test for playback on your PS3 (or other compatible device) and for checking out the image quality from the HDR-SR11.
Under the "Extras" tab is where you'll find the option for "Multiplexed MPEG-1/Layer 2 Audio"; checking this box will change the file type from .m2v, to .m2t - Voila!
I have not yet figured out if there's a way to encode Dolby Digital 5.1 in this file type, though that's something I hope to experiment with soon.
At any rate, there's the way to do it, check it out, and if you have anything I got wrong, or a better way to get through it, feel free to drop me a line!
A few things worth noting.
- I record all files on the camera at (FH) or AVC HD 16M (which is 16mb/s). This is the highest picture quality this camera records, at 1920x1080i, and with their AVC encoding still results in over 300 minutes of record time for the onboard 60gb hard drive.
- I'm using Final Cut Pro 6.0.4 and Compressor 3.0.3 running on a Macbook Pro 2.4ghz C2D with 4gb RAM.
FCP Logging
Once hooked up to your system, and USB connect enabled on camera menu, you can open Final Cut, and use File>Log & Tranfer to access the hard drive and select in/out points and do your logging here.
With the USB speeds, I found that the computer would consistently choke and crash if you are attempting to ingest footage from one clip while scrolling through other clips on the camera hard drive for logging.
The camera desperately needs a faster interface for getting stuff off the internal hard drive. Firewire 800 would be great, but I can see where the 9-pin connector of FW800 would be a problem to incorporate into the tiny camera body, so I'm not sure if there's a good solution.
Unfortunately, it seems that even if you record to Memory Stick, the Express34 card readers all run at USB2.0 speeds as well.
FCP Transfer
Now, once you've set your in and out points and are ready to drag media in the transfer queue, it's time to go grab a cup of coffee, or maybe the whole pot, because you're going to wait a while.
When ingesting into FCP, the automatic ingest settings (that I've not found a way to change) are to transcode all the 16mb/s AVCHD encoded footage into Quicktime files using Apple ProRes422.
The good news about this, is the resulting files look spectacular.
The bad news about this, is that it almost doubles the data rate from the originals.
The 16mb/s of AVCHD turns into roughly 25mb/s in ProRes 422. This means you'll need about 1.5GB of storage per minute of footage you'd like to bring into the system. Needless to say, plan ahead for how much space you're going to need.
UPDATE: 4/23/09 - Just to update this thread, I get a lot of questions from folks about bringing in footage, and have found one trick that improves speed significantly.
The trick is to simply COPY the AVCHD folder from your camera hard drive, to a folder on your computer, THEN use that folder to import footage from.
Otherwise, data has to come off the camera and go to transcode from the USB connection and that takes a lot of time. Transferring AND transcoding can take 4 to 5 times real-time via USB.
If you transfer straight over, it'll take maybe 20 minutes for 30 gigs of material, and then transcoding locally will run close to real-time.
Don't forget to delete your AVCHD folder after you've successfully transcoded everything you need:) (unless of course, you'd rather archive it off to DVD or have room to keep it...)
Editing in FCP
Now, for some more good news. Once ingested in this manner, your files will NOT need rendering once placed in the timeline. FCP 6.0.4 works flawlessly with dropping ProRes clips into the timeline, and even plays back simple transitions and reversed frames without rendering.
Edit as usual:)
Compressor Output for Blu-Ray compatible playback
Our home theater setup is built around a Sony Playstation 3, connected via component cables to a Panasonic TH-50PHD7UY.
While Compressor only comes with settings for HD-DVD compatible file output, as noted in the threads over at Apple's FCP boards, there's a simple check box in the Inspector that will change the file suffix from .m2v, to .m2t, which is all that is needed to create an MPG2 file format with HD playback rates on the PS3.
Here are a couple of screen grabs of the settings I use in Compressor.
Since most of the stuff I'm editing in tests is fairly short, I'm using really high bit rates to get the most out of it.
These will be the .M2T files I'll post later in the week that you can download and test for playback on your PS3 (or other compatible device) and for checking out the image quality from the HDR-SR11.
Under the "Extras" tab is where you'll find the option for "Multiplexed MPEG-1/Layer 2 Audio"; checking this box will change the file type from .m2v, to .m2t - Voila!
I have not yet figured out if there's a way to encode Dolby Digital 5.1 in this file type, though that's something I hope to experiment with soon.At any rate, there's the way to do it, check it out, and if you have anything I got wrong, or a better way to get through it, feel free to drop me a line!
Labels: Apple ProRes422, AVC HD transcode, Final Cut Pro, sony hdr-sr11
posted by Jon Lawrence at 4:27 PM
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9 Comments:
Hey, thanks for the article! I'm -dying- to know what settings you've used in "Easy Setup" in Final Cut Pro, or, the capture and all those additional settings when you don't use an Easy Setup preset.
Thanks SO much.
No problem JD - I'll have to take a look, I never use the "Easy Settings" - I usually just set up an HD sequence with 1920x1080i as the size (NOT HDV), and use ProRes422 as the compressor on the timeline.
One other note, you should set the "field dominance" to NONE. Otherwise when you render out, you'll notice a lot of interlacing problems.
I'll double check later tonight and post a screen capture:)
I appreciate it a lot.
I'm going a bit nuts. I just got the SR11 tonight, and no matter what I do, I can't seem to get the video to import properly. I get 'skips' every near-second or so. Here's an exported clip:
http://www.sparklingwhine.com/LJ/test_vid.mp4
I see what you say regarding setting up an HD sequence, but I just don't seem to get it. Anyway, screen caps would be amazing.
Hi JD, yeah, I see your skipping, that almost looks like a camera error.
At any rate I can't post screen cap in comments, I'll post in a new blog post for ya...
hi, i just got sony HDR-SR11 and i captured some footage. now am trying to log and transfer in final cut pro it would work. everything is connected but nothing shows up when i try to log and transfer. what do you think is wrong? do i have to do some settings in the easy setup because am running out of ideas.
Hey Anonymous, does the "No Name" disk show up in Log & Transfer? If not, you need to enable the USB connection on the touchscreen of the camera.
When I first got the SR11 I didn't realize that FCP had the "Log and Transfer". I spent many hours figuring out how to convert the files to the proper format. The image quality, for a consumer product, seems spectacular. The cost of this camera equaled the cost of repairing the tape drive of my previous camera. The only problem with the SR11, and its a annoying one, is the lack of audio levels. I do a lot of narrative and documentary style videos, and this feature would of come in handy. Regardless, I've yet to send the footage to Shake and see how well it handles the HD footage.
Hey Jay - agreed, spectacular picture quality for the $$$. Shake should handle the footage without a problem.
Totally agreed on the audio input, especially since you can only plug in one stereo channel and have no levels monitor.
A good solution for this camera for balanced line input with level monitoring though is the BeachTek DXA-6vu Dual Phantom XLR adapter. They can be a bit tough to find, but perfect solution:)
great stuff. I am trying your trick of copying the AVCHD folder to my desktop before log and transfer. thanks for the advice
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