Editor Dave Winter and his Venice, CA, creative editorial and design house WinterWorks figured it out when they finished over an hour of basketball footage for DVD release StreetBall Confidential, Vol. 1. The client had two demands: an edgy editorial and design look and an HD finish that showed off the 35mm and 24p HD footage. "The producers decided to maintain the highest quality throughout the workflow so the material can be re-used in any way possible," Winter explains. "Previously, only Hollywood studios had done projects at 24 fps and in 1080p, but I edited in that resolution on a Mac, using external FireWire drives and DVCPRO HD." With help from Anton Linecker, a Final Cut Pro guru at Technicolor Creative Services who modified the DVCPRO HD codec to support 1080p, Winter made it all happen.
– Anton Linecker
How do you squeeze 1080p video through a FireWire pipe?
"This workflow is not something Panasonic designed when DVCPRO HD came out, and it’s not even supported via FireWire. It’s something you can only do through a video capture card. So you’re going from D5 through a video capture card to this 1080p format, but using the DVCPRO HD codec as a means to get the data rate down. With Final Cut Pro, there are lots of capabilities that not even the engineers planned."
– Anton Linecker
Illustration by Dave Winter