• Adobe Premiere Pro

  MPEG I-frame vs ProRes 422

  Posted by Daniel Stone on June 23, 2013 at 7:43 pm

  Hey guys,

  We just switched all of our seats to Premiere Pro from FCP 7. I’m working on a project straight from R3D files and see that Premiere transcodes them to MPEG I-frame. I’m used to transcoding them to ProRes 422 (HQ if we’re doing massive color grading or compositing).

  I’m a little nervous to send the project through the pipeline with MPEG because I really don’t know a lot about it. Can anyone give me some insight on how Premiere’s MPEG I-frame holds up to FCP’s ProRes from experience?

  Thanks!

  Daniel Stone replied 12 years, 10 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Ivan Myles

  June 23, 2013 at 8:27 pm

  ProRes is a better production codec than MPEG. However, this may or may not be important depending on whether you use smart rendering.

  MPEG I-frame is the default choice to generate preview files while editing. These files lessen the load on system resources by alleviating the need to construct frames on-the-fly when playing a sequence. Other preview codecs may also be chosen. Regardless of which preview codec is selected Premiere Pro processes the source files internally with full 4:4:4 chroma sampling and uncompressed bitmaps at a depth up to 32 bpc.

  The selection of a preview codec will not impact the quality of NLE output files unless you choose to export the preview files. Adobe calls this Smart Rendering, and it allows the system to process the preview files for export rather than rendering the entire project. The new release of Premiere Pro CC supports smart rendering with ProRes, DNxHD, AVC-Intra, and other codecs.
• 

  Jeff Pulera

  June 24, 2013 at 3:36 pm

  Premiere is not actually “transcoding” anything. It will edit most formats natively. If you render portions of the timeline, the “preview” codec used may be MPEG-2, but then when you do the final export to whatever format using Adobe Media Encoder, just make sure the box that says “Use Previews” is UNchecked. The final export will be rendered from the original files and not the MPEG-2 temp files.

  Thanks

  Jeff Pulera
  Safe Harbor Computers
• 

  Daniel Stone

  June 27, 2013 at 4:09 pm

  This is exactly the information I was looking for and it all makes perfect sense.

  Thank you so much!

  Dan

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