• Apple Final Cut Pro

  Rendering, For Playback or For Quality?

  Posted by Kevin Patrick on October 11, 2011 at 7:01 pm

  It’s my understanding that rendering makes playback easier on the system.

  But, does rendering do anything for the quality of your project?

  If I’m using some compressed format (like XDCAM EX), would rendering this format to ProRes 422 do anything to improve the final quality?

  Does it help for transitions, effects or time remapping?

  Craig Seeman replied 14 years, 10 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Craig Seeman

  October 11, 2011 at 9:02 pm

  [Kevin Patrick] “But, does rendering do anything for the quality of your project?

  If I’m using some compressed format (like XDCAM EX), would rendering this format to ProRes 422 do anything to improve the final quality? “

  Any transcoding has the potential to have a possible negative impact. In the case of ProRes, which is visually, but not technically lossless, you generally shouldn’t notice anything.

  What ProRes may afford you, besides easier real time decoding, is it tends to hold up well if you’re doing heavy compositing. A few titles or transition won’t hurt EX and I’ve been happy with chroma keys as well. If you’re going to go many layers deep, ProRes 422 can help.

  Sony is working with Apple’s SDK to allow import of EX into FCPX. Some people have requested that they allow background transcode to ProRes just as AVCHD does.

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up