Here's my cautionary tale about recording DNxHD in the field.
2 months ago a producer asks me to approve the equipment list of a
crew he's hired for a shoot in another city (I'm responsible for the
post, so wisely he's been involving me in production). I see that
they have a KiPro Mini, so I email the crew and ask if they can record
DNxHD; they say "sure, no problem." So the producer flies off, and on
the morning of the shoot I get a frantic call from the crew, saying
that my hard drive isn't working, that they've just finished copying
their first CF card of camera files to it, and it plays back the audio
but the video isn't there.
Say what?
Turns out they had always recorded ProRes in the past, and they had
always copied their CF cards using a stock MacBook. And it had never
occurred to them to install any codecs like DNxHD; after all,
everything had worked just fine up to then, right? So when they said
they could record DNxHD (which they'd never done before) they just
sorta assumed that they were all set for their tried-and-true
workflow. When the producer flies back the next day, all the video is
just fine, despite the big scare on location.
A month after that, the same producer has another shoot with another
crew, and again I look over the equipment list, and this time I see
that they have a PIX 240. So I call up the crew and ask if they have
ever recorded DNxHD, and they say no, but they sure can yessirree-Bob!
But I, wiser now, say "never mind, just record ProRes like you
always do, we'll deal with it."
The choice of DNxHD versus ProRes is but one menu choice of dozens to
be found in any modern file-based video recorder. Many crews have
minimal knowledge of these new machines, and from a post perspective,
I see a surprisingly broad range of problems, from audio out of sync,
to wrong frame rate, to camera originals erased in the field before
they were copied.
Wasn't this supposed to be easier than tape?
On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 11:58 AM, Jim Feeley <jfeeley@gmail.com> wrote:
> So a Sound Devices PIX recorder, either the 220 or the 240 (the 260 isn't shipping yet). Info, manuals, tech notes here:
> http://www.sounddevices.com/products/video_recorders/
The recorder isn't perfect, but it's pretty useful and reliable, ime.
I've found it fairly simple to set up triggering, adjust sync offset,
and all that. But that did require spending some time with the manual,
working with the things a bit, and all that. Perhaps the device was
tossed into production's hands without enough time for them to suss it
out.
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