Sony F55 4K with HD Proxy

cortex
1

Curious if anyone is being provided both and only using the HD Proxy for transcoding? We are hoping to start doing this for a show that is shooting over 10 hours/day and needing the material turned around overnight. One thing from a Sony “how-to” is:

You may choose to rename these Sub clips so that they have the exact same file name as the full-resolution material (usually renaming a clip is a bad thing, but in this case we can do it without much consequence). Remove the S02 from the end of each clip if you want; this will make it much easier to match back to your 4K material later.

Meaning that the 4K material will be named A005C002_120904KV.MXF and the proxy A005C002_120904KVS02.MXF. Is there anyway in Cortex to do this modification across all clips? If Sony had chosen to use _S02 it would be easy to have the grading ignore it.

2

There’s no facility within Cortex to do that mass-renaming, but you might want to check out Better File Rename.

3

I need to think on this - not necessarily terrible, but naming the file before transcode might not be totally ideal. Thanks for confirming I wasn’t missing something in Cortex.

4

There’s two ways to get the HD proxy:

  1. Record on both SxS and AXS cards simultaneously.
  2. Record 4K XAVC and XDCAM HD on single SxS card

Option 1 gives you the option of recording XDCAM or XAVC HD proxy to the SxS card. 4K RAW will be recorded to the AXS cards. Both the RAW and proxy files will have the same names. We typically run dailies using XDCAM proxy files and convert to DNxHD 36. Conversion speed is 80-90 fps on our rigs.

Option 2 means you don’t need to worry about two types of cards, but you can only have 4K XAVC (no RAW). If you’re working on a reality show or comedy, then it shouldn’t matter too much; XAVC should work fine but you should do tests to make sure.

We’ve actually done some shows with option 2. By renaming the proxy files before dailies, the Tape column in Avid will point back to the 4K file. So when you’re ready to conform/online, it should relink to the 4K very quickly.

Better File Rename is a pretty slick program and works really fast. You can set it up so you just drag a folder onto the window (the “Sub” folder) and it will find the files and rename them quickly. It will take less than a minute to do renames on dozens of clips. Worthwhile in my opinion.

2 Likes
5

I wasn’t aware of the AXS card option. This is very helpful - it’s much appreciated.

I’m wondering if we should only present the system the Sub folder - is there an issue breaking Sony’s folder structure to when loading the media in Cortex? Thanks again.

6

As far as I know, there’s no problem when “breaking” the folder structure. Cortex just reads the media, not the folder structure. If you go with option 2 above (only SxS card with 4K XAVC + XDCAM HD proxy) then here’s the steps I would recommend:

  1. Offload SxS cards to media (preferably with checksum like Shotput Pro or Cortex’s copy function*)
  2. Batch rename the files in the Sub folder
  3. Import just the Sub folder into Cortex and start logging.
    • if you use Cortex copy it will also import the media into the project. Make sure you remove the files with the original names (ie A005C002_120904KVS02.MXF) and only use media with the new name (ie A005C002_120904KV.MXF)

FYI if you go the SxS + AXS option, the proxy files will be on the SxS “Clip” folder, not the “Sub” folder (there will not be anything in Sub).

Also, keep in mind that AXS files are much MUCH bigger than XAVC so this might impact your storage/archive workflow.