Many broadcasters use AVCHD cameras for their VJs. In an Apple Final Cut Pro environment this means your VJs need to convert their media into ProRes using Final Cut Pro’s Log & Transfer before they can edit their files.
I had the chance to test elgato’s Turbo.264 HD solution the other day, and it seems that what they do might be interesting for many people.
The Turbo.264 HD is a combination of hard- and software. The little USB stick they provide adds processing power for your conversion process, while the software helps you to batch edit files and combine multiple files into a single file using chapter markers where a new clip would begin.
Let’s look at the software interface:
You see multiple clips on the left side, which I just dragged over from the file system. You can drag files over from your AVCHD camera or anything else that QuickTime can read.
Please note the part marked in red at the bottom of the window. Using this little slider you can merge multiple source clips into a single target clip.
If you choose to edit settings and create your own custom setting (called PostPro in our example), you can then choose to create chapter markers for every new source file within your single clip:
This will result in a video clip with chapter markers. Now you can shuttle through your whole footage and will still be able to jump to certain clips using markers:
As we are creating a file for postproduction purposes, we might want to use i-frames only:
If you work with a central Final Cut Server system (or any other DAM), you can copy your files over to a watch folder using any file path mounted on your local machine as well as using FTP:
Elgato’s software uses both your Mac’s CPU (multiple cores) and the processing power of their little USB device, so encoding is incredibly fast.
So why would you want to buy the Turbo.264 HD for your VJs?
- You can merge multiple clips into one long clip with chapter markers
- Encoding an i-frame only clip well-suited for postproduction is very fast
- Very easy-to-use interface
- Very cheap solution for professional environments
There’s much more to this solution than mentioned here, but I guess for VJ workflows the features mentioned here might be the most interesting.