Recording master back to XDCam disc with Final Cut (and making master b-roll discs)

[PaulMoore]

Hello there
Sorry for the vague question- I work at a TV station using XDCam for shooting/editing (a mixture of SD and HD)... but they haven't worked out how to archive material... eg where to keep masters of finished programs, compilations of b-roll likely to be needed again etc.

Can the XDCam decks (we have PDW-F30 models) be used to record back onto with Final Cut? Is there anyone using them in this way- eg to generate master copies of programs or segments?

This station can't afford a server-based archive, and we can't archive onto digital tape so would this work? Could we make compilation discs of b-roll and slowly fill them up on XDCam? (Then we could re-use discs for shooting and save some more money).

I have previously worked in environments where DigiBeta was the standard and everything could be kept on tape, from finished programs to b-roll- can XDCam be used in the same way?

I asked this question on Apple's own forums and someone mentioned it can be done but is incredibly slow... does anyone else have this experience?

 

[LethalWolfe]

I'm not familiar w/the F30 so I can't speak w/100% certainty, but here is my best guess. The F30 doesn't have video recording functions (obviously) so your only other option is FAM (final access mode) which is basically "data mode". If you don't already have it download the Sony XDCAM HD Transfer software for FCP. This will allow you to, inside FCP, access the contents of the XDCAM disc. You can also export clips back to the XDCAM disc, but any non-XDCAM data will get transcoded into the proper format before being transfered over to the disc. Depending on what the source footage is and how fast your computer is this is where things can slow down. For example, I recently did a test taking 1min of footage from the Sony EX-1 and exporting it onto an XDCAM disc using a MacBook Pro and the process took 10 minutes. But when I transfered 1 minute of native XDCAM HD material back to the disc (using the same setup) it only took 2-3 minutes.


Lethal

 

[PaulMoore]

Either way this sounds slower than real time... is that really the case?

 

[LethalWolfe]

Either way this sounds slower than real time... is that really the case?

In my limited experience, yes, going back to XDCAM via FAM is slower than realtime. Taking a single, unedited XDCAM clip might be faster than realtime because there would be no transcoding and no "conforming" of the GOP cadence needed, but I haven't tried that and it's not very practical anyway.


Lethal