• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Best workflow for multiple video formats

  Posted by Brick Blair on December 5, 2009 at 3:26 am

  Hey everyone,

  I’m sure this is a basic question for most of you, but I wanted to get some advice on the best workflow to use for a project that has footage from the following sources:

  1. HDV from a Canon HV20
  2. Video from a VHoldr ContourHD Helmet Camera. It creates .mov files with the following specs:
  – Ambarella AVC encoder
  -1280×720
  -29.97 FPS
  -AAC Mono 48 kHz audio

  3. Video from a GoPro Helmet Camera. It creates .avi files with the following specs:
  – Apple OpenDML JPG
  -512×384
  -28.57 FPS
  -μ-Law 2:1, Mono, 8.000 kHz audio

  I need to cut all this footage together. It will be viewed primarily online, but I want to end up with as high a resolution final as possible in case I want to use it in other forums.

  I am on FCP 6 on a MacBook Pro with a G-RAID Mini attached via FireWire 800.

  I’m new to ProRes, and I wonder if it would make sense to transcode everythign to that first, but I just have enough knowledge about it to be dangerous, so I’m sure there is a better way.

  There will be little in terms of graphics, effects etc. in the project. Mostly just basic cuts and transitions.

  Thanks for any insight you can offer.

  Michael Sacci replied 16 years, 5 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Pasi Koivisto

  December 5, 2009 at 11:49 am

  Depending on how much material there is I would probably use the codec of which I have the most material and then convert the rest of the material to the same codec (if it’s a good enough codec). Probably using compressor to scale the smaller clips since it does a better job than FCP and can batch process all the files. It also makes it easier if you’re going to do any online work on it.
• 

  Michael Sacci

  December 6, 2009 at 5:32 am

  2 and 3 are not editing codecs so they have to be transcoded to something else.

  The question is how much of each type of footage do you have and will you be using. #4 is a below SD size so upRezing that to HD and then down rezing it to a web size doesn’t make much sense.

  If it was me and you are using a good bit of each I would downconvert 1 and 2 and upconvert 3 to ProRes SD at 29.97and then edit away. Doing this at the start will make it a much smoother project.

  The thing to watch for is field order with the downconverted material. HDV is upper first and SD is lower first. So it might be a good idea to make everything progressive when you do the conversion to ProRes. Using Frame Control set to best can give you great results but it adds a lot of time to the encoding. ALways do testing before doing a long piece of video.

  my 2 cents.

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