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DLSR: edit native or ProRes. With intent to export ProRes as final, digital master on Export?
I’ve recently made the switch to PProCS6. Love it so far. My question is, its one thing to edit native, Canon 7D footage which is fast, but what about exporting your digital master for archiving. With FCP, all our digital master are ProRes 422 or HQ depending on size, but how does the exporting fare with PP? I’ve read that transcoding on export takes longer than it would if your sequence was already ProRes. Our course time is always of the essence in the advertising world but just wondering which is the better workflow.
Should I continue to edit native DSLR footage and export my master to ProRes? Or transcode to ProRes, edit ProRes and export my ProRes sequence as such for archiving?
OS 10.6.7, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 4 gb ram and AJA IoHD
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22 Replies
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https://blogs.adobe.com/VideoRoad/2011/08/a-prores-workflow-end-to-end.html should show you how an end-to-end ProRes workflow works. ProRes is not included with Premiere so if you expand to more bays just know that you have to have some Apple Pro App installed (Motion, Compressor, etc) for it to install ProRes.
As to if it saves time, that’s debatable. I would think in the advertising world you will render quite a few client revisions and previews. I would benchmark your renders to see if the amount of time transcoding takes in the front saves you more time in the back if you have to render a dozen client review versions.
Also, with your system specs in your post, I would lean more towards ProRes.
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I can’t think of any good reason NOT to edit native in Premiere.
True at the end the final export may take a bit longer, but it might not.
In my experience using cs6 for nearly a year on everything, transcoding
anything is a waste of time and resources. -
[Angelo Lorenzo] “Also, with your system specs in your post, I would lean more towards ProRes.”
I agree with Angelo here. It may or may not save you time, but you’re going there anyway at some point it sound like (master file). ProRes tends to play very, very well on the Mac.
[Chris Borjis] “I can’t think of any good reason NOT to edit native in Premiere.”
There are several good reasons to transcode to a mezzanine codec like DNxHD or ProRes). For instance, playing well with other softwares further down the pipeline (Resolve, Smoke, etc.). Or that mezzanine codecs like the ones listed stand up better to multiple generations of recompression (i.e. graphics, compositing, color grading, etc). Or if you have to move around to other NLE’s throughout your process, Avid, FCP7/X, etc.
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost -
I sure wish we werent relying on Quicktime based codecs like Prores and DNxHD. qt32serve is a real bottleneck that slows down my Z820, which is a rocket with none QT codecs(like MXF OP1a AVC-100)
Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com -
ah, forgot about that Ryan.
That’s a very rare situation for me but a Good Point never the less.
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[Ryan Holmes] “There are several good reasons to transcode to a mezzanine codec like DNxHD or ProRes”
I don’t know about ProRes, but one consideration with DNxHD is that the H.264 Y’CbCr values get remapped during the transcode. IMO recolorization is a little easier when luma and chroma data is maintained. Source files or YUV intermediate codecs are better in this regard.
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[Tom Daigon] “I sure wish we werent relying on Quicktime based codecs like Prores and DNxHD. qt32serve is a real bottleneck that slows down my Z820, which is a rocket with none QT codecs(like MXF OP1a AVC-100)
“Interesting Tom, I never thought about that. What about us users on OSX? Would you recommend AVC-100 over quicktime too? (assuming you have a pretty high-end system w/ CUDA card) ?
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[Daniel Frome] “Interesting Tom, I never thought about that. What about us users on OSX? Would you recommend AVC-100 over quicktime too? (assuming you have a pretty high-end system w/ CUDA card) ?”
Excellent question, Daniel. I really dont know. OSX is so tied into QuickTime Im not sure if using something that isnt wrapped with QT would be faster. Logic says it would. It maybe worth a test on your Mac.
Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com -
Understood. But watched a video on PPro from Jason Levine @ Adobe and he says that Premiere auto upscales all footage to a 444 color space. So if 420 h.264 files come in to PPro, you edit native and export to ProRes 422 you should be fine. Any color correction or grading done in PPro is up scaled to 444. So even thought its only as good as camera format 420, you’ll have more head room on edit, grading and final output with 422 or 444.
And thanks everyone. I guess I’ll just run some live tests with various projects. I plan edit native dslr for an upcoming interview but with the next project being a larger one, I think I’ll try the tried and true FCP method on going ProRes all the way through. Thx again all.
OS 10.6.7, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 4 gb ram and AJA IoHD
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Keep in mind that many H264 codecs do decode as single-thread, so clock speed on your CPU helps…3 GHz should be beneficial here.
All video is decoded in Premiere Pro at 32 bit float color precision, 444 color sample, so multi-generational concerns inside Premiere Pro really don’t apply. If you are transferring data to another application, you’ll likely be exporting to something else anyway.
Transcoding takes time…and the transcode at the end of the project where you take the native media-process effects-transcode to output, does take some time vs edit mezzanine codec-process effects-output. However, you have to also consider what your ratio is. If you have a feature project, transcoding assets on the front end may involve a tremendous amount of time and additional data vs transcoding only the edit selects with the effects.
As far as your system, I’m most concerned about your 4 GB or RAM…it’s one of the most important specs and the easiest to improve. I run 16 GB of RAM on my laptop for Adobe work.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,Adobe Certified Instructor
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