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Exporting from original media
I’m sure others have had this question, but I can’t seem to search the right keywords, so forgive any redundancy.
I imported footage from a Canon C300 (XF in MXF container). I created proxy media during the import process, did my edit, exported (with viewer set to Original/Optimized), got a nice ProRess 422 Quicktime file, delivered, everything was great.
But now the color corrector has asked for a 422HQ. Of course I could export a 422HQ, but when I reach the export dialog, the “Source” is marked as 422, which is obviously the transcoded media, not the original camera footage. That 422HQ would be derivative of the transcoded media and wouldn’t contain any more color information than the 422 I already delivered, right?
So my question is, how do I make an export from the original footage so I can use higher quality codecs? It seems to me right now that once I imported the footage, it just “became” ProRes 422 and now that’s the best I can export. It’s like my edit is being held hostage.
I know this can’t possibly be the case. If I were using Premiere (even with proxies), my exports would derive from the XF media. What am I missing in FCPX?
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2 Replies
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As the option suggests, if you set the export to original/optimised FCPX will use one of those two sources to export. If you only created proxies and didn’t create any optimised media then the original source media is being used. If you did create optimised media then delete the optimised media to force FCPX to use the original source.
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Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer & Cinematographer
Hobart, Tasmania | Twitter: @jeffkirkland -
I ended up calling Apple earlier and they gave me the same answer as Jeff just did here – thanks Jeff!
The source of my confusion was the fact that in the export dialog, one of the codec choices is “Source – Apple ProRes 422”, which made me think that ProRes 422 was the most original media I could work with.
The Apple rep told me to pretend it doesn’t say “Source” there, which works. But I think now I understand that “Source” is referring to what’s being used in the viewer, rather than the original media source for the export. If you switch the viewer to Proxy, the “Source” codec option will change to 422 Proxy.
He also assured me that unless you choose to make optimized or proxy media, you are editing natively. That’s cool. I didn’t know FCP could do that nowadays.
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