Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Dealing with Convergent Design Odyssey Q+ in post

We've started using the Convergent Design Odyssey Q+ to record directly to ProRes 422.

In addition to the more robust codec, we wanted to save time as well.  But there are a few things that we didn't expect.

For one, it records clips in sections that need to be assembled in post.  

CD has an app for that, the "CD Prores Transfer" available here:
https://convergent-design.com/software.html

From CD website:
"The ProRes Transfer Tool copies and combines Odyssey 7Q & 7Q+ ProRes (.mov) clip files into a single file.

Odyssey 7Q & 7Q+ ProRes files have a 4GByte size limit within the Odyssey, therefore any ProRes recording on the Odyssey that exceeds approximately 2 1/2 minutes will create more than 1 ProRes file for that clip.

This tool allows to have each ProRes clip as a single file rather than multiple files.

This tool also optimizes Odyssey 7Q & 7Q+ ProRes files for playback efficiency on a computer and in editors."

I wonder what else except assembling the tool does to optimize and make playback more efficient?

The thing is that this unexpected step makes the post slower, as one needs to process the original Odyssey files before editing and create a new set of files. Which by the way doubles the amount of data.

Second, we use the Analog input to record reference audio in order to facilitate syncing when the audio recorder is not using Timecode. FCPX does that fairly well.

But we found that the audio is 3 frames early in the recorded ProRes files. So that's another step to adjust the audio by +3fr. slowing us down as well.

Apart form these two quirks, so far so good.

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