FCP7 on a Mac Book Pro and EX3 footage

[mark norfolk]

I am about to undertake a new project that combines EX3, P2 and Canon D5MK2 material.
I am looking for info regarding codecs and the best way to handle this. Material will be shot overseas and then laid off to drives and given to me for edit and eventually making a master file.
Any guidance will be most appreciated.

Many thanks,

Mark

[projectsplat]

I realise this is hideously late, and that you may have already set your workflow. I post this just in case it can help others looking at your question and hoping for an answer.

My previous experience doing exactly what you are doing would be to transcode the DSLR footage to ProRes 422, and leave the P2 and XDCAM-EX 'native'. ie. let Final Cut Pro do its rewrapping and use it from there.

As far as you timeline setup, I would encourage you to setup it up using the ProRes 422 codec as this will enable realtime for mixing the different codecs. As long as your drives are quick enough, you will be able to cut between these codecs happily without incurring any initial render times. For delivery, you may want to change your codec to ProRes 422 HQ, but so far delivering projects to ABC, CH10 & OneHD they have all been very happy with the quality ProRes 422 has provided (although they may not have been alerted to that fact....)

Any other queries, feel free to get in touch.

Cheers

Alister

[mark norfolk]

HI Alister,

I have been going through my postings to the forums and have just seen your reply. A very belated thank yiu for your advice. I ended up doing the job at Pro Res 422. I got myself a 4T Sonnet Fusion F3 drive using the Esata connection through the express card port on my Mac Book Pro, it worked well.
I did have some problems with a stop motion sequence shot on the Canon and had to eventually use QT7 pro in an old comp I had to make a very good motion seq out of the stills from the Canon.

My final programme ended up 4 min long and 5.5GB. The FTP delivery took 9 hours.

Many thanks again from sunny (and sometimes very wet) Queensland.

Mark