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Best Timeline Settings/Workflow for Sony 4k + DSLR footage
For anyone who can help:
I recently transitioned to Premiere CC (longtime FCP7 editor), so am still getting up to speed, and getting used to the ability to work with so many different formats at the same time. I am about to start a new edit that involves several different formats and I wanted to get the Creative Cow communities advice on workflow and timeline/sequence settings before I begin.
The footage will be interviews shot in:
1. Sony F5 shooting in 4K as main shot. 4K so I can punch in to vary the shot when needed.\
2. Canon 5d Mark II on an automated slider as a wide(ish) shot
3. Canon 5d Mark II as a tight profile shotThe edit is on a new Mac Pro (12 core // 32GB RAM // AMD FirePro D700). Final output will be Pro Res masters.
I am looking for advice on what settings to select for the edit timeline, which will be mixing all the footage. From what I’ve read (correct me if I’m wrong), editing directly to a pro res timeline would not be necessary.
Thanks (in advance) for your help.
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6 Replies
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You don’t really have a prores timeline as you would in FCP. You should pick your timeline according to how you’re delivering (sounds like you’re delivering at 1080p) so pick an appropriate template (DSLR 1080p sounds about right for you) and drop the viewing quality down to 1/2 or 1/4, then in timeline settings you can control the quality of your previews so if you find that you struggle with the 4K material you could put the quality down here. With your spec it sounds like you should be fine.
Put your 4k material in the 1080p timeline and then right click and ‘scale to frame size’.
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[Mark Norgate] “You don’t really have a prores timeline as you would in FCP. You should pick your timeline according to how you’re delivering (sounds like you’re delivering at 1080p) so pick an appropriate template (DSLR 1080p sounds about right for you)”
Phew! I think that is horrible advice.
Choosing the right sequence settings is not so different from FCP as Mark makes it seem, as you are essentially mastering in both apps, i.e. choosing settings which allow you create a final high-resolution sequence, preview, and output designed to generate a final master file from which you can create any other deliverable.
By choosing the DSLR preset, you would be creating MPEG preview files that are NOT at all well suited for mastering.
One should always shoot for a master that has the highest practical resolution, the highest practical highest color depth, etc. for your purposes, and those purposes tend to evolve with time. So, while today you may never imagine needing a 4K output, twenty years from now, when someone is building a retrospective of your work, or when interest in your film is suddenly revived, you’ll certainly be wishing you’d mastered in ProRes rather than MPEG. And, color grading MPEG for example is not only much more difficult than color grading Pro Res, but likely to yield results that don’t hold up nearly as well when encoding to Web videos, DVDs, etc.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss ProductionsDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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Thanks to both of you for your quick responses. I really appreciate it. David, would you then edit a project like this one in a pro res sequence/timeline? Basically look to set the sequence settings to match what I aim to export to for masters? Thanks again for your time and help.
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[Magee McIlvaine] “David, would you then edit a project like this one in a pro res sequence/timeline? Basically look to set the sequence settings to match what I aim to export to for masters?”
Absolutely Magee!!! If you create your sequence using the highest “practical” standards, every technical and creative decision you make will trickle down properly into virtually any alternative deliverable you need to create from that master. (***by practical I mean don’t go overboard – in your case, a 4K ProRes HQ master would be a terrific choice.)
Meanwhile, if you go the other route, if you ever have to deliver a file type with greater pixel dimensions, color space, etc,., you’ll have to make all kinds of adjustments to things. Elements like titles and their positioning, compositing, and possibly color grades and other FX, will all require tweaking.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss ProductionsDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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Thanks again David. I’m still retraining my brain from FCP7/Transcoding world to the Premiere world. So in this case, with a ProRes HQ timeline, would you use the raw files from the different cameras, including the h264 5d files, and not transcode?
In the past, for an FCP7 project, my workflow would be to identify what format I want for my master and final output, set up an appropriate project and timeline for those settings, and transcode the media to match those settings as well- and then begin editing.
I’m working out the similarities and differences with the FCP and Premiere workflows. Thanks for your help.
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[Magee McIlvaine] “So in this case, with a ProRes HQ timeline, would you use the raw files from the different cameras, including the h264 5d files, and not transcode?”
Yes! That’s precisely the advantage of the Adobe apps – the Adobe Mercury Playback Engine is kind of the Holy Grail of editing, because it can play virtually anything in realtime.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss ProductionsDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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