MXO2, P2, XDCAM EX and Long Form

About two weeks ago I wrapped up a four day training shoot with a couple of talented educators. We recorded more than six hours of two angle footage each day, which will make a stunning distance learning video collection in a few months.

I rented a couple of HVX200p cameras from the Boulder studio we were shooting at. I did so thinking of the convenience of the rental and the lower cost of direct in house renting. The problem was the studio only had two 32GB and four 16GB P2 cards available. I could’ve rented more P2 cards from a shop in Denver, but that would’ve defeated the cost benefits of shooting with the in house Boulder cameras in the first place.

In the past I’ve rented the Sony EX1 and I’ve never been worried about record time. The SxS cards work perfectly with my MacBook Pro. Each 16GB card held over 50 minutes of 1080 footage. Transferring to my CalDigit VR hard drive was quick and easy; in less than 15 minutes per card. All of that is great, expect I wouldn’t have access to an EX1 for this shoot; what to do?

Enter the Canadian built Matrox MXO2 with Express 34 PCIe adapter. I’d been using the MXO2 for a couple of months for editing back at the shop.

I decided to try out the in-field capturing capabilities of the MXO2 to compensate for the lack of card space and slow P2 to MacBook Pro transfer times (as much as 45 minutes per 32GB card). The MXO2 was attached to my primary talent angle and I recorded to P2 with the jib mounted angle.

The first step is to open up the OSX system preferences screen and navigate to the MXO2 utility. I configured the input setup for Component and XLR audio. Next I loaded a new Final Cut Pro project and choosing the MXO2 DVCProHD easy setup. I hit record now on the capture screen and I was able to record as longs as I had hard drive space (1.8TB). I could have recorded in ProRes HD, but I choose the DVCProHD setting to maintain consistency with the other angle.

The MXO2 performed flawlessly and I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with the production schedule without it. P2 is a nice format, you just have to plan well ahead to consider card space and transfer situations. Adding an MXO2 made it possible to use the lest expensive rental option without compromising our talent’s time.

Adobe Encore, Beyond DVD-Video

At first glance Adobe Encore didn't seem like much of an improvement over my copy of Apple DVD Studio Pro. But, I've found a new reason to consider using it over the aforementioned DVD production staple. Flash capability in an easy to use DVD interface with endless HTML editing possibilities.

I'm not a Flash programmer, but I compress, format and embed content using Flash standards every day. Adobe Encore allows me to build simple flash interfaces for the web or DVD-ROM without having to rebuild from an already existing DVD-Video interface. Case and point: I was asked to assemble a DVD-ROM with a collection of customer testimonial interviews for our sales team. They wanted to click through clips in a browser interface and have the option of downloading iPod ready QuickTime and Windows Media files of videos they choose.

With this set of requirements I knew I was looking at some kind of interactive interface. Enter Adobe Encore. All I had to do is populate my Premiere Pro sequences in the Encore assets panel using dynamic link. Next I used Photoshop to assemble a simple, but professional interface that included links to QuickTime and Windows Media videos. Encore allows the author to enter any HTML hyperlink you can program, including commands such as d://videos, which points to an asset at on the disk. Unfortunately, there's no way to preview hyperlink actions until you burn the project. Also using a d://videos location will prompt a warning stating that the hyperlink is invalid, but the link will work.

With the links established and the rest of the DVD built, you're ready to have Encore encode the Premiere Pro assets to Flash. Just tell Encore to build the DVD project in Flash and the end product is collection of files including an index.html file. The index.html file is the homepage for your Flash presentation, which you can edit in an HTML editor if you feel the need.

I assembled the collection of files Encore produced on to a DVD using Toast software. I then added the "videos" folder containing the QuickTIme and Windows Media files and a simple autorun script asking Windows to open the index.html file when the disk is found. Burned a few copies in Toast and sent them off to the sales team.

This format is simple to produce and provides a great experience for the enduser. There are other ways to deliver a web-like experience for the enduser, such as using an HTML editor or a program like Flash Professional. The advantage of using Encore is speed and lower production costs. There are a lot of possibilities for developing low cost web experiences on a DVD-ROM. I'll be using tools like Encore to explore more possibilities in the future.