Best Pro Camcorder for use with Adobe CS6

[Norman Willis]

P.S., these are the specific codecs I am curious about, if they will work in CS6 (or not).
MP4
MPEG2
XF-AVC
XF Codec
MXF

Thanks very much.

Norman B. Willis
Apostle, Nazarene Israel
The original faith of the apostles,
as found in Acts 24 and 28
http://www.nazareneisrael.org

[Todd Terry]

Hi Norman…

Unfortunately there might be a little bit of trial and error involved. I am also a CS6 user… we can’t upgrade our suites to CC because they are Matrox-based machines, and unfortunately Matrox doesn’t support Premiere past CS6.

At first blush most of those codecs should work in CS6. However, should doesn’t necessarily mean will. For example, we primarily use the Canon C300PL, which generates .MXF files. However, on occasion we also use a little XC15 as a B-camera, which also generates .MXF files. While we can import the C300 footage directly into CS6 with no problem, we cannot import the XC15 files, even though they are also .MXF files.

We have to convert those files, and run them all through Handbreak… and then the imports work just fine.

That’s a very long way of saying “It’s impossible to tell… exactly” regarding your questions about the various codecs.

What I’d suggest you doing is once you settle on a camera or two that you are definitely considering, asking people here at the COW and elsewhere on line if anyone can send you a direct-camera-raw file from that camera… that way you can test it with the “real deal.” Just make sure they are sending you the actual camera-generated file (even just a few seconds is fine), and not something that has been processed or converted in any way. I’ve had luck doing this, people are very helpful and generous….assuming they had that particular camera, of course.

Obviously you can always convert footage to make it perfectly usable (as I said, we use Handbreak which is completely free and GREAT and easy to use), but of course being able to directly use the footage is much easier.

Good luck,

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Norman Willis]

Todd, thanks for your encouraging post.
Due to a variety of other factors, I went ahead and ordered the camera. I think we are going to try to transition to Resolve, and then use Photoshop and AE to augment. And we can rent AE2020 by the month for whatever we cannot learn to hit with Resolve. And if we cannot transcode with Resolve or Handbrake, there is always VideoProc (which is not too expensive). So we should be able to hit it.
Thanks again.
Happy editing.

Norman B. Willis
Apostle, Nazarene Israel
The original faith of the apostles,
as found in Acts 24 and 28
http://www.nazareneisrael.org