• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Does converting to Pro Res 422 (LT) reduce quality?

  Posted by Ozzy Baines on March 14, 2012 at 11:30 pm

  When I tried to edit T2i footage in FCP the footage is jumpy. When I converted to Pro Res 422 (LT) it fixed the problem. I was advised that “downgrading” to Pro Res 422 (LT) would reduce the quality of the T2i footage. Does converting T2i footage to Pro Res 422 (LT) actually reduce the quality of the footage?

  Dan

  Ryan Holmes replied 14 years, 5 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Rafael Amador

  March 15, 2012 at 3:07 am

  Your footage is already compressed. To avoid any degradation the only way would be going Uncompressed.
  As most times this is not an option, try to use the less compressed codec you can afford.
  If you can work with Prores, better than ProresLT; and if you can work in ProresHQ, even better.
  rafael

  http://www.nagavideo.com
• 

  Ryan Holmes

  March 15, 2012 at 3:52 pm

  We shot on Canon 7D’s over here (big brother to the t2i). We transcode all our footage to ProRes422. Because the camera encodes the video to h.264 (highly compressed format) transcoding to Uncompressed is a waste of space, IMO. If you’re going to be doing heavy compositing or color grading I might chose ProRes HQ.

  ProRes (LT) isn’t a bad choice, but it doesn’t hold up as well as it’s bigger brothers when re-compressed several times. But if all you’re doing is editing the footage and doing a 3-way color corrector, then (LT) is more than sufficient. If you’re editing the footage then going to After Effects and then to Color or Resolve I would step up to ProRes422.

  Ryan Holmes
  http://www.ryanholmes.com
  vimeo.com/ryanholmes

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