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Compression codec for archival documentary
Hello all,
What codec should be used for editing the documentary that uses 90% archival footage? Most clips are from 1989 to 2015. Very few HD, mostly tapes and video, no 4k. Entended for broadcast and festivals.
Thank you very much in advance!
Lucy -
12 Replies
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ProRes LT would work but perhaps if you’re doing a lot of compositing or grading you may want to go up the ProRes scale. It won’t make it better but it’ll hold up to the heavy moving of bits.
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The material is probably in various formats — some already captured off tape, AVI files, etc. Some of it may have been pre-edited with an external clipping utility to cut up long files captured from tape. Although she said mostly SD, if it includes through 2015 there could even be consumer AVCHD content. You never know the pedigree and handling of that.
This is especially problematic when those clipping utilities extract ranges from long-GOP formats like AVCHD. They can often mangle the head and tail of the file which in turn can crash or destabilize editing software.
Even if FCPX is capable of editing the (allegedly) native files, it might be good to externally convert it to ProRes/MOV using EditReady or a similar tool, then verify the result is OK before importing it to FCPX.
Before doing some big bulk import or transcode, I’d suggest taking an inventory of each media type and testing the transcode/import method on a sample of each type. Then if that works, proceed to larger batches of data.
Pointing the editor import dialog at some huge folder tree of unknown (but old) media and codec types will often cause unpredictable behavior.
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Hi Joe,
Thank you very much for your response. You are absolutely right – there are all the formats that were available at that time and from all the different sources. You have mentioned EditReady. I have Compressor. Besides the significant diference in the conversion time are there any other advantages for using EditReady? Should I consider Priemier over Final Cut? Am I looking for ProRes 422 as the editing format?
Regards,
Lucy -
Thank you very much!
Lucy -
I would go ProRes HQ. LT is a bit low bitrate for the master codec format. FCPX is great for this because you can automatically optimize to that codec as you copy into FCPX. And you won’t necessarily need anything like EditReady, the flavor of ProRes generated by FCPX is the best it gets since its Apple’s own codec…
Noah
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[Lucy Slavinsky] “there are all the formats that were available at that time and from all the different sources. You have mentioned EditReady. I have Compressor. Besides the significant diference in the conversion time are there any other advantages for using EditReady? Should I consider Priemier over Final Cut? Am I looking for ProRes 422 as the editing format? “
EditReady uses Apple’s own ProRes codec, but it is much faster than Compressor. As a documentary editor I normally do not externally transcode before ingesting to FCPX, since FCPX usually does OK by itself. However for importing huge batches of widely varying older content, I find it’s often better to externally transcode, esp. the older stuff which may have already been processed by some clipping tool. Here is a recent review of EditReady by Larry Jordan:
https://larryjordan.com/articles/product-review-editready-from-divergent-media/Re Premiere vs FCPX, both are OK and I have edited documentaries in both. However FCPX has a major advantage for projects with high shooting ratios like documentaries. This is especially so for older material captured off tape which usually produces several very long files. FCPX can tag ranges within clips and present those as searchable items.
The skimmer and Event Browser in FCPX enables hyper-fast review and tagging of content. That enables a different workflow than is traditionally used. With most editors the ability to rapidly evaluate and tag content is limited, so you tend to do this outside the editor. IOW use VLC or some playback utility to review and separate the desired clips, then import only those, then re-review and re-classify them within the editor. For a large documentary this is redundant and slow, plus there is no easy way to mark short regions of interest within longer clips.
By contrast with FCPX it is often better to just import *everything* and do the initial review and classification within the editor. The unwanted stuff can later be excluded when you copy the used material to another library. Taking time up front to keyword tag and mark favorite and rejected ranges (not just clips) — before putting anything on a timeline — will greatly expedite things.
Re what ProRes format to use, most of your content is apparently standard-def older stuff. I’m not sure how much visible advantage there would be from using ProRes 422 HQ vs LT but you could transcode a couple of clips and see if there is any difference.
Another key issue is interlaced material and how you handle that. This is further complicated if the final product is a DVD vs a video file. You will often see material that has “baked in” interlacing artifacts because of improper handling.
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I’m involved in a long term doc project which has archives on tape going back almost 30 years. I used pro res lt and pro res 422 when digitizing tape material. Some tape is VHS, 8mm, hi-8 and digital 8 and anything more than pro res lt seemed a total waste of storage space. Pro res 422 was used for digitizing Betacam and some DV tapes. After about 2005 everything is file based, so no problem with that stuff as it all works in X just fine.
I captured tape to digits using a Black Magic ultra studio box which did a fine job of converting analog tape to pro res files.
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Thank you, Mark! What type of storage do you use for your project?
Best,
Lucy -
Joe, thank you so much for such comprehensive explanation.
“Another key issue is interlaced material and how you handle that. This is further complicated if the final product is a DVD vs a video file. You will often see material that has “baked in” interlacing artifacts because of improper handling.”
By “final product” do you mean distribution? I am not sure if I understand it fully. The film is intended for broadcast, festivals. Further distribution strategy is probably streaming or downloading. How would you handle the interlacing issue?
Best,
Lucy -
Thank you very much, Noah!
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