Advantages of Pro Res?

[Sean Oneil]

It is a higher quality codec. Higher bitrate and more advanced compression techniques.

You won’t see some kind of major improvement on your DV footage (if any improvement at all). The advantage is that each generation loss will take less damage. By the time your video is broadcast, on the web, or on a DVD, it will look better. This is especially important if you are doing a round-trip to Color, After Effects, etc. Each time you re-render it, it takes a hit. The damage is less when using ProRes (and there’s no damage at all using uncompressed).

[Gerard Tay]

Nice answer. Digitally (even in the world of audio), you only lose quality if you export at a lower resolution, or the signal goes through analogue/digital conversion (via composite/component transfers). The beauty of digital is lossless transfers. But of course, it’s impossible to gain quality via increasing the resolution once you have compressed it somewhere along the line..

hmm… rendering compromises quality? That’s a thought to ponder…

[Sean Oneil]

[strypes] “hmm… rendering compromises quality? That’s a thought to ponder… “

Uhh, yeah. You’ve got a lot to learn my son :).

Any lossy codec is just what it says. ProRes is slightly lossy. DVCProHD is more lossy. DV and HDV are extremely lossy.

Like Dave said, only Uncompressed and lossless are “lossless”.

Rip a CD to MP3 using iTunes. Then burn it to a CD. Now rip that new one. Repeat one more time. It will sound like absolute like garbage.

[Gerard Tay]

[Sean Oneil]

[strypes] “But, my question here is… if you import a clip at dvpal (via dv stream), because it’s recorded on mini dv, which is dvpal… you add some effects in final cut, and render, does it go through a 2nd dvpal compression?”

Yes.