Opt for More HD Storage

I read with interest Bob Turner's “Evaluating HD Options” (November 2002) since I have been editing on Discreet's Fire since last spring. I think he did a fine job of covering the issues. While Bob states, “HD archiving requires a great deal of hard disk space,” I believe he meant to say that HD material requires the space, and archiving frees it up.

When you buy an HD system, buy at least twice as much storage as the reseller/dealer considers standard, and as much RAM as your system will hold. You won't be sorry (although you may be broke).

We have completed finishing a half-hour documentary, an hour documentary, and a 90-minute documentary in the last three months. I used four two-hour D5 tapes to archive the 90-minute documentary's source clips, graphics, color corrections clips, DVE clips, etc. In order to assemble the show, we did the first 42 minutes from sectional clips, then archived resulting work and deleted the material from the hard drives. Then we input previously archived sectional clips from the archive, made necessary changes, and archived the resulting clips for the second half of the show before loading the first 42-minute show clip from the archive and assembling the entire program. In the middle of this process, we stopped to online the one-hour HD documentary from 145 HDCAM 1080i tapes. This also was done in two halves.

I've found that for every 30 minutes of documentary, there are about 20 minutes of new material generated by DVE, color corrections, etc. I archive these for repurposing.

I recount this tedious process to emphasize the need for “a great deal of hard disk space” in HD. I recognize that not everyone does documentary work. Sales and training videos don't take up such huge amounts of hard disk real estate. But whatever you have, you'll use it and wish for more in HD.
Del Holford
WTVI Public Television
Charlotte, N.C.

OK, I've read the articles on progressive scanning, and it's a lot to consume. If I shoot with the Panasonic AG-DVX100 in 24p cine mode, can I transfer the footage to Betacam and go right into an Avid, edit, and output on Betacam without any pulldown issues? If yes, does that give me the “film look” but not true film quality?

Is the pulldown only if I intend to make a film print? Can it be converted after it's cut or is that a digitizing issue? I want to keep my options open to make a film print. What's the solution?
Andrew Jones

Steve Mullen responds: The in-camera pulldown is necessary to put 24p onto NTSC 60i tape. Both 24p modes use pulldown. If you shoot 24p with 2:3 pulldown, you can treat your source as film that has been telecined to video. That means you have to observe the rules for editing video with pulldown in the Avid. Then you can output this video and use it as video. You do get the “film look,” but not true film quality. There is no need for any conversion before or after it's cut. If you want a film print, your lab will remove the pulldown to get 24fps.

I greatly appreciated October's article “Going Pro.” It answered many questions about Panasonic's AG-DVX100 camera. I do have another question. Steve Mullen mentions the aspect ratio being either 4:3 or 16:9 letterbox (not anamorphic). What does “not anamorphic” mean?
Mark Leonard
Kuroiwa-Leonard Media Arts
Seattle, WA

Steve Mullen responds: An anamorphic image has been horizontally squeezed. In film, a “spherical” rather than “flat” camera lens is used to alter the image. When projected, a matching lens unsqueezes the image to throw a wide image on the screen. In video, an optical anamorphic lens adapter can be used, or electronic anamorphic can turned on. When this option is turned on, the image is electronically masked so that only 75% of the vertically central portion of the image is visible. Then this portion is electronically expanded to fill the full height of a frame. In either case, the result yields skinny objects. When viewed on a 16:9 TV, the image is naturally expanded and everything looks fine.

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