What’s My Flow?

Eric Hanson
CEO of Spy Post

Transfer HD to data for use during the creative editorial process on an indie feature, Valley of the Heart’s Delight, without going to tape

"The production company shot the whole project in HD at 1080p/23.98. They delivered tapes to us each day to be transferred to a Spy Post custom offline format based on Apple’s DV codec at 23.98. We delivered the media back to them the next morning on FireWire drives with source time code for review with the director and to begin the offline editorial process. In the end, approximately 50 source tapes were shot and transferred.

The production company took the Final Cut bins with the transferred media we delivered and edited the 90-plus-minute feature. Once the offline was completed, the sequences were delivered to us referencing the original QuickTime media that was delivered to them on drives. The sequences were then re-linked to the HD source for the final conform. Once conformed, Spy Post reviewed and made tweaks in the cut to the feature with the director and production company. The sequences were then prepared for the final color grade. Final color was done in Spy Post’s da Vinci 2K Plus by Gary Coates. Final titling was done in Spy Post’s Autodesk Discreet Smoke/Flame. We delivered final masters on HDCAM.

This process was a precursor to a workflow currently under development at Spy Post that specifically addresses the requirements of independent features. The idea is to give filmmakers a means to transfer film or HD to data for use during the creative editorial process, without going to tape. One of the challenges of currently available technology is that most DDR-like devices record everything as image sequences, instead of QuickTimes. Our process goes directly to high resolution and offline resolution QuickTimes with source time code for use in Final Cut. While filmmakers could use inexpensive color correction or effects software, for high-end feature color grading and visual effects, nothing compares to working with a professional colorist in real time in a da Vinci 2K Plus color corrector or with a visual effects artist in Smoke or Flame in an environment with a high-resolution, professional-grade CRT-based monitor.

In the case of film, this means that a film could be transferred once versus the traditional process of going to tape-based dailies and then doing a final transfer of selects for the final color grade and delivery.

The goal is to make the media as portable as possible with the highest image quality (up to 10-bit, 4:4:4 RGB) to reduce the roadblocks for the creative editorial process and to make it part of an overall tapeless pipeline that ends with the final color grading and visual effects we do here at Spy Post."

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