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Is it bad to edit in .h264?
Hello Everyone,
I just started at a new job that records an hour show each reach to a BlackMagic Hyper Deck Studio Pro.
The end result is the video is stored as a large Pro Res 422 file.What we have to do is take these files back to the office, store them, and edit them at a later date (a few weeks later). Now, archiving the prores files is out of the question, they are simply to large. So what we will start to do is transcode the footage to high quality .h264.
My question to everyone here is, when i take the footage, should i transcode it back to pro res 422 (and would any data of the image be lost?) or should i just keep the file as is and edit as .h264? We use Premiere Pro CS6, on a good machine so im pretty sure the edit should be pretty fluient.
The office is all macs, which i am new to (PC person myself) so i’ve never really had to deal with pro res, and just did everything natively in premier. Am i loosing any quality or anything if i edit the .h264 file,
or will it just make my machine do a lot more work thus run slower?Thanks for any hints, if you have any advice for our workflow as well, please let me know!
Thanks!
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8 Replies
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So to recap: You will be taking your high-quality Pro-Res camera originals, transcoding them into a compressed low-quality H.264 file (even a high-quality H.264 is still pretty compressed and pretty low-quality compared to ProRes) and then deleting forever your original files. Do I have that right?
Well, let me say that this wouldn’t be the way I would do it. Hard drives are cheap and getting cheaper by the day.To answer your primary question:
[Ty Yachaina] “My question to everyone here is, when i take the footage, should i transcode it back to pro res 422 (and would any data of the image be lost?) or should i just keep the file as is and edit as .h264?”Once, you throw away all that data from the ProRes file and compress to a H.264 file, you cannot get any of it back at the end of your edit process, even if you transcode back to ProRes. Maybe an online/offline workflow using proxy files could work for you.
John Young
Surrounding Media -
Hard drives are cheap…Archive the ProRes originals.
Get these:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136874
And this:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817198054
And these:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=888955&is=REG&Q=&A=details
Archive the files to TWO drives…manual RAID 1…because hard drives fail. This is still a darn cheap way to archive the footage.
Converting your masters to H.264 tosses out a LOT of information. Goes from 10-bit to 8-bit…highly compresses the footage. And you won’t get that back going back to ProRes.
No no no no no no no no…do not convert FROM ProRes to anything else. Archive them. Don’t make me come down there and slap you.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Workflow should be:
(1) Record to BlackMagic Hyper Deck Studio Pro
(2) Transfer ProRes(HQ) files
(3) Edit using ProRes(HQ) files OR transcode them down to a lighter weight ProRes version – either standard ProRes422 or ProRes(LT)
(4) Delivery: export various versions – DVD, YouTube, Vimeo, Blu-ray, etc.
(5) Create an archive using either ProRes(LT), ProRes(Proxy) or high data rate h.264 fileLike John says, going from ProRes422(HQ) to h.264 is throwing any most of your data, even if you do a 50mbps or 100mpbs h.264 (but at those data rates just use ProRes(LT) anyway). Plus if you plan on going to other apps for additional color, graphics, etc. h.264 isn’t a very friendly codec to move around. ProRes, on the other hand, is.
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes -
While it seems that everyone wants you to archive ProRes, lets actually address your question. If this company is inflexible about the money they want to throw around then you still need to solve the issue.
Consider the EBU recommendation; if it has to be a compressed codec then h.264 at ~100mbps, 4:2:2 all-i will at least give you some good performance for editing in terms of CPU usage and scrubbing, a good quality image, and at half the bitrate of ProRes HQ. It’s basically like switching to an AVCHD workflow.
At that point you should treat it as a camera native and put in place all the precautions, version checking, etc to reduce or eliminate the possibility of generation loss.
I would then burn out the final show to ProRes standard for archival and whatever other deliverables you do.
I don’t think Premiere’s encoder will do 4:2:2 color, but you may be better off with the scriptability of using FFMPEG or FFMBC to do the conversion.
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Angelo LorenzoNeed to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks -
[Angelo Lorenzo] ” if it has to be a compressed codec then h.264 at ~100mbps, 4:2:2 all-i will at least give you some good performance for editing in terms of CPU usage and scrubbing, a good quality image, and at half the bitrate of ProRes HQ.”
If you’re going to go to this length, why not just transcode the ProRes(HQ) file to ProRes422 or ProRes(LT)? You’re not gaining anything by going to h.264, even @ 100mbps, 422 (which may or not be 10-bit depending on how he transcodes it….so it could even be 8bit). The lost time via transcode alone is probably not worth it. ProRes422 (about the same data rate as you’re describing) or ProRes(LT) (lower than the data rate you’re describing) would do the OP well. Plus it moves to other apps pretty seamlessly (Smoke, Resolve, etc.).
Plus we’re discussing 2 different segments of the post-production pipeline: editing and archiving. I understand the OP doesn’t want to archive ProRes(HQ), but in the actual edit h.264 doesn’t make much sense.
I don’t think it’s bad to edit h.264 footage, but when you’re starting with ProRes(HQ) footage moving to h.264 seems like a larger loss of information than I am willing to accept.
Just my $.02
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes -
Also if you ever do anyhing in Resolve you DO NOT want to use H.264.
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While I’m all for top quality if possible, the OP may be working within constraints of budget, established workflow, and so on to where compromises will have to be made. If he’s a new hire he’s also the low man on the totem pole.
As for ProRes LT vs h.264, if they were both running at ~100mpbs (ProRes LT does, ProRes Std is around 145) then it doesn’t really make sense to think the image quality will be better in a lightly compressed format running at the same bitrate as a highly compressed format.
The use of the BlackMagic Hyper Deck Studio Pro doesn’t initially telegraph to me that quality is their top concern. They might just be recording a multicamera show off a vision mixer or trying to squeeze some life out of an older camera.
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Angelo LorenzoNeed to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks -
[Angelo Lorenzo] “The use of the BlackMagic Hyper Deck Studio Pro doesn’t initially telegraph to me that quality is their top concern.”
Actually, to me it does. It means that they want to record to a high end, 10-bit format, rather than to whatever compression the camera it is connected to might offer…be it H.264, AVCHD, HDV…or some other lower end format.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def
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