That’s not even talking about when I would need to convert frame rates, I mean when the show onlines in 1080p/23.976, why not shoot two months of GoPro footage (three separate angles) at 1080i/59.94 right?! I would then have a new “master” QuickTime to import into my low-resolution project at DNxHD 36 (maybe even 28:1- AHHH!) or DNxHD 45, depending on the frame rate, storage types and storage capacities available. In the end, I would have to spend many weeks converting H.264 QuickTimes to DNxHD flavored QuickTimes - ironically in Apple’s Compressor or even Sorenson Squeeze. I have personally spent a ton of time trying to figure out a better solution in my predominantly Avid Media Composer-based workflow and found that creating new master QuickTimes at the final output spec - Avid DNxHD for my world - would help speed up the preparation for online editing by embracing the fast-import feature inside of Media Composer. “Why would a file take longer than tape?” was a common inquiry. A lot of supervisors and editors who had no clue how long it took to get footage into the system properly would get upset and frustrated at the prospect of QuickTimes taking longer than real time to import, a constant battle. It caused assistants to go from digitizing tape and importing a few QuickTimes to importing hundreds of hours of QuickTimes. Subsequently this also turned the assistant editor world upside down. Once the GoPro camera came along, the file-based camera workflow really kicked into high gear. While XDCAM had its kinks at first, it’s a pretty proven method these days, at least in reality television production where I work.

Sony has a solid solution using file-based and tape-based media with the XDCAM format: simultaneously writing low-resolution proxy files and high-resolution files for mastering. I have also seen the many different workflows people have used to get footage into a system, and most of the time it’s either wrong or overly complicated. In those various roles, I have seen tons of tape and file formats come and go over the years. Prior to that I spent four years as a post production coordinator/post supervisor. Before I became a full-time editor, I spent over four years as an assistant editor.

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