2009

Popular Formats
Scanned film is typically stored as uncompressed 10-bit logarithmic DPX or Cineon image
sequences. Both DPX and Cineon are RGB color space formats with 4:4:4 chroma sampling.
Method of Ingest
There are several ways you can ingest scanned DPX or Cineon image sequences into
Final Cut Pro:
• Using Color, you can convert the scanned image sequences to Apple ProRes 4444
media, which you can then use directly for mastering your program.
• Using Color, you can also convert the scanned image sequences to offline QuickTime
files using a lower-bandwidth Apple ProRes codec. There are several Apple ProRes
codecs to choose from, which lets you strike an appropriate balance between image
quality and file size. This approach requires you to reconform your program to the
original image sequences in Color after you finish editing.
• You can also use a third-party utility to convert each image sequence to a format that’s
usable in Final Cut Pro.
Clip Organization
The first round of organization happens during film transfer, when you initially decide
what footage to transfer. Afterward, archiving and organizing the resulting DPX or Cineon
media is similar to working with tapeless media. It’s extremely important that each camera
roll be scanned and written to a separate directory that’s named after that roll, so that at
the end of the process you have a series of separate directories, each corresponding to
a roll of camera negative.
After scanning, you should back everything up (preferably in two separate places), and
you should maintain the organizational directory structure of the media.
Tracking and Organizational Information
The organizational data for DPX and Cineon media should be worked out in advance
with the facility doing the film-to-data transfer. A typical strategy is to assign a marker
frame to each roll of film at a point before the first shot begins, with a hole punch
permanently identifying that frame. Each roll’s marker frame is assigned the timecode
value of XX:00:00:00 (where XX is an hour value that is incremented for each subsequent
camera roll being transferred). The marker frame creates an absolute timecode reference
for each frame of film on that roll.
You should request that the frame numbers incorporated into the filenames of the
transferred image files be based on this timecode. Your final DPX or Cineon image
sequences will then have frame numbers in the filename that, with a bit of mathematical
conversion, match the timecode value in the header information, providing valuable data
redundancy.
39Chapter 2 Ingesting and Organizing Your Media