• Adobe Premiere Pro

  h 264 – Quality editing?

  Posted by Bryan Campbell on July 27, 2011 at 12:28 am

  So. I’m about to begin work on a project shot on a Canon t2i. I’ll be using Premiere CS5 to edit, and have heard lots of people bragging about how CS5 can handle the h264 codec, etc.

  My question is, is h264 a viable codec for producing quality work? I know that it’s a compressed codec, and therefore am leery to start editing in it – when we used Final Cut, we’d take the footage and convert it to ProRes…

  So, will it produce quality results? Are there better options out there?

  Jeff Greenberg replied 15 years, 1 month ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Todd Kopriva

  July 29, 2011 at 12:41 am

  Yes, it’s a lossy compressed codec. But in your previous workflow of converting to ProRes, you weren’t somehow re-creating the lost information that was thrown out by the time the data was recorded by the camera. Working on such files natively in Premiere Pro doesn’t lose any additional data beyond what you already lost.

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• 

  Jeff Greenberg

  August 2, 2011 at 4:27 pm

  I’m just going to add a little here.

  In FCP7 you were forced to transcode to prores – so FCP could edit well.
  Transcode to ProRes
  Put in ProRes Sequence
  Output in whatever format you like.

  Premiere Pro isn’t timeline/codec based in FCP was. If you want to work the prior way you could – with two encodes of your data – once to an editorial codec (such as Cineform, ProRes or DNxHD), once to your final output codec.
  Transcode everything to ProRes.
  Set Premiere Pro to create Previews (renders) in ProRes
  Output in whatever format you like.

  BUT Premiere Pro can edit with the native files; for any previews, it’ll use the MPEG format – but when you output, it’ll ignore those preview files (unless you tell it otherwise) and output without any inbetween quality loss (by transcoding) to your output format.
  Transcode nothing.
  Edit in Premiere Pro – the previews (renders) will be ignored.
  Output in whatever format you like.

  Only one encode of your data – meaning that elements like stills, generators and titles (which are handled uncompressed) only go out at maximum quality.

  Best,

  Jeff G

  Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
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