Best (worst) offline edit codec

[Shane Ross]

ProRes Proxy would be the lowest I’d go for offline/online. Same dimensions, so that will ease things. BUT, what is tricky is managing this offline/online workflow with tapeless media. It isn’t all that easy, especially with Canon DSLR and GoPro footage. It would work with the Canon camera, as you can Log and Transfer from that…but the GoPro…can’t do that. Unless you convert everything to Full res, then recompress to Proxy…then keep the full resolution aside on another drive to relink to…this will be a pain in the patoot!

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Craig Ricker]

Hmmm the proxy quality setting in mpeg stream clip does nothing. They always come out at 19.7mbps. So there is no way to get anything even lower? I thought 3mbps would be awesome, as then nothing under the sun would bog the comp down and I can just simply relink at the end?

So nothing that keeps 1080 size but can go even lower in bit rate?

(the relinking thing with go pro is not really that bad – just make two copies, 1 at full res, 1 at “crap”, once you edit with the crap from its location, it shouldnt ever try link to the full cause it can find the crap in the exact location it was in last)

Also is it fine to just relink to the orginal h.264’s or is it better to relink to a pro res lt? Just thinking whats faster
1. link to original h.264’s with a slow final online render out to pro res lt ready for compression for web
or
2. convert h.264’s to pro res lt upfront and then just link to them, with a therefore quicker render to pro res lt on export

[Shane Ross]

[Craig Ricker] “Hmmm the proxy quality setting in mpeg stream clip does nothing.”

DO NOT use MPEG STREAMCLIP if you intend to do the offline/online workflow. No no no no no no no. The needed metadata will be tossed out the window, there will be no way to bring footage in full res. No. As I said, unless you can use LOG AND TRANSFER to bring in all of your footage…or bring in all of your footage full res, then use the Media Manager to recompress that to ProRes Proxy…keeping the full res on a drive somewhere, DO NOT attempt to do the offline/online workflow.

This isn’t a simple thing Craig. If you do offline/online, you really need to know your stuff. And no offense, but you don’t quite have a grasp of everything you need to know on this topic. So it is best if you avoid this workflow. Seriously. Don’t mean to be harsh, just trying to save you a lot of pain down the road.

[Craig Ricker] “So nothing that keeps 1080 size but can go even lower in bit rate?”

NOt if you want to edit it with FCP in real time without rendering, and having everything go smoothly. Any other codec will bog down the system. Offline RT HD is good and small, but not full sized. So it is either full sized, or very small data rate. Pick one. BUT AGAIN…only if you have a FIRM grasp on the workflow’s ins and outs…ups and downs.

[Craig Ricker] “Also is it fine to just relink to the orginal h.264’s or is it better to relink to a pro res lt?”

Never refer back to the originals, unless you need to convert again. They are NOT good for editing at all, even online. Convert to ProRes 422…THAT is your high quality mastering format.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Jeremy Garchow]

Check out Grinder which can make proxy and online files at he same helping to ensure a smoother reconnect for the DSLR stuff at least.

https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/magic-bullet-grinder/

Also, is your rt set to dynamic and playback quality and frame rate set to dynamic?

What filters are you using? Some are more intense than others.

Jeremy

[Craig Ricker]

Whats the needed metadata that gets tossed? The timecode? I.e can fcp not reference to the new media cause it cant read its time code or something?

Does compressor keep the meta data, cause to be honest thats the one i’m gonna use. get all 16 cores working on the convert will chug it out in no time. (my work mac pro)

So proxy it is for the low res. And just standard 422 for the high rez, maybe even 422 lt, cause really that handles up to 100mbps and as much as I care about color correction, I dont care that much as my finals will hit youtube and vimeo and they cut the hell out of the quality anyhows.

[John Heagy]

Hi Craig,

There is another way. You could do on a small scale what we do. We don’t rely on FCP’s L&T to link anything. We convert all file based media to ProRes outside of FCP. If the files have TC we maintain it – if not – we assign TC. The key is to ensure every card or drive, or however you want to group a set of files, has a unique “reel” assigned to the ProRes conversions. We link everything based on TC and “reel”. We have a custom linking app but there is FcpReconnect from VideoToolshed that does that same thing.

https://www.videotoolshed.com/product/41/fcpreconnect/3

We use old Avids and FCP but this system works with any offline/online system/s that supports TC/reel metadata. We had planned on going FCP for offline using anamorphic SD in ProRes proxy (18Mb/sec). I tested the frame size for accuracy to HD online and it all works fine.

The key to all this is an app that can assign TC and reel to the GoPro and 5D media of the world. This app is CatDV. Let’s take worst case… GroPro. Drop a “reels” worth of GroPro files in a CatDV catalog. If there are any “chunked” files you need to join use the merge tool in CatDV. Once you’re happy with the list of files you can assign continuous TC and “Reel/Tape” across them all. Rename them as you like and export them as reference movies and let Compressor convert them to ProRes and Proxy.

Edit with the proxy and when your done export an xml of your seq. Load the xml into FcpReconnect and then point it to all the HD ProRes files. It will create a new xml that is linked to the HD ProRes based on TC and reel.

It takes a bit of work up front but once done you’re free to manage and move the media anywhere. We even chop up the HD prior to LTO archive so restoring shots is faster.

I said earlier we had planned on going to FCP for offline. Of course FCPX threw a monkey wrench into that. FCPX doesn’t read QT “reel” believe or not! Thankfully AVFoundation can write it so there is hope.

John

[Craig Ricker]

Ok I officially just tested the go pro offline online idea. It worked completely fine as I thought it would.

I edited some in a pro res proxy, and then deleted that pro res proxy off the computer. I then reopened the sequence and it said these files are missing. I reconnected to the original h.264 and baam, all is good.

Now looking at go pro h264’s, they dont have a continuous time code. So each time a new clip is made it has a new time code from 0. This may be different on the Canon 60d i’m not sure. And if that is the case, then yes maybe i’d have to use another program other than mpeg stream clip.

I think though that compressor keeps meta data so I may not even need another program.

Seems pretty straight forward to me?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Craig Ricker] “Seems pretty straight forward to me?”

Fcp, ideally, needs reel and tc. With DSLR video, there is quite literally no tc track.

In addition to the worflow posted by John Heagy, it reminded me of another app called QTChange from videotoolshed.

It will add TOD tc from canon material from THM files. You can then assign tc/reel to GoPro stuff, too.

That data will then travel with all files you make using Compressor.

A little word of warning, QTChange will bork the h264 files to use in log and transfer, if you ever need to do that.

Work off dupes for testing if need be. I’ve never tried it with GoPro footage.

[Craig Ricker]

When you say FCP ideally needs TC/Reel info, why did the relink of the go pro files work for me? Am I just getting lucky? Or are you saying the more complicated the edit, the more chance there is FCP will screw up on a relink?
As far as I can tell, Go pro files have a TC its just one that is set back to 00:00 per clip. Thats no problem for me as I dont work of time code.

Even in my current editing job, we dont work of time code, just clapper, so it wouldnt matter there either if each clip had a time code starting at 00:00, unless of course we were doing multiple cameras at once.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Craig Ricker] “When you say FCP ideally needs TC/Reel info, why did the relink of the go pro files work for me? Am I just getting lucky? Or are you saying the more complicated the edit, the more chance there is FCP will screw up on a relink?
As far as I can tell, Go pro files have a TC its just one that is set back to 00:00 per clip. Thats no problem for me as I dont work of time code.”

I’ve never worked with GoPro footage, so I’m not 100% sure, but DSLR footage has no timecode so fcp starts every clip at 00:00 as well.

You can open it in QT7 and check the properties for a tc track. DSLR footage doesn’t have one, and my hunch is that GoPro won’t either.

Yes, in my experience, it’s best to have reel and tc (even if the tc is arbitrary, as long as it’s there) for proper media handling in FCP.

Jeremy