• Adobe After Effects

  H.264 or Apple ProRes 422 for CS5 on new iMac?

  Posted by Kevin Camin on March 22, 2011 at 2:56 am

  I know that AE and Premier can handle h.264 files-I’m working with footage shot off a HDSLR. But if I am doing a lot of heavy effects work on the footage in AE, would there be any benefit to transcoding it to Apple ProRes 422? Or is h.264 just fine?

  Thanks.

  Kevin Camin replied 15 years, 4 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Tudor “ted” jelescu

  March 22, 2011 at 7:13 am

  H264 is a good codec for final delivery/playback and not for fx work. Best option is transcoding to a lossless format even if you get huge file sizes.

  Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
  Senior VFX Artist
• 

  Michael Szalapski

  March 22, 2011 at 2:26 pm

  The main benefit to transcoding is that the processor no longer has to work so hard to decode the highly compressed H.264 footage. It tends to make things go a little faster while you’re working. (Unless, of course, you’ve got multiple files all trying to play at once off of a slow hard drive setup…)

  – The Great Szalam
  (The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

  No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
• 

  Kevin Camin

  March 22, 2011 at 3:52 pm

  Thanks, Michael and Tudor!

  I’m trying to have my client transcode the video files for me to save some time. He doesn’t have FCP or Quicktime Pro, so we cannot go to Apple ProRes 422. Would the Animation codec be the best bet then?
• 

  Kevin Camin

  March 22, 2011 at 4:29 pm

  Thanks, Dave.

  Information much appreciated!

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