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Can someone point me to some tutorials?
Hello all,
I have been using Adobe’s CC apps since CS6, for small video projects. I have been gaining confidence using AE, PP, and now even C4D. So far, most of my projects end up as retirement party videos, wedding videos, and portfolio-building music videos. While I can make my way around all these programs via endless youtube and creative cow videos, I still feel like my work is disjointed, mostly when it comes to rendering out projects. I feel like my render times are crazy-long, and I am overwhelmed by the numerous choices when encoding, (despite my aerospace engineering degree). The more tutorials I watch, the more conflicting info I feel I get. Some of my recurring questions are:
1) Should I be transcoding raw video from my 5D Mk iii and gopro cameras prior to editing, and what happens if I do/don’t? I usually like to add some color correction and/or do some compositing in AE / C4D.
2a) What (quicktime?) format should I render to as a “master,” and should I then use this master to make distributable versions?
2b) What is a good choice of codec to export a logo in AE or C4D, when adding it to a PP project? (I’m thinking something OTHER than H.264?)
3) Is there an advantage / disadvantage to rendering through after effects as opposed to AME?
4) I don’t understand the concept of a “wrapper” when encoding- what is the difference if I choose QUICKTIME with an H.264 codec, or choose H.264 as THE codec?!! And why does AE renderer not give that as a choice anymore??
My system is a mid 2012 3.33Ghz 6-core, 32GB RAM Mac Pro with:
– apps on a dedicated SSD,
– a dedicated MEDIA HD,
– dedicated OUTPUT HD,
– dedicated SSD scratch disk
GTX 680 for Mac video card.I am not sure how to judge some of my render times, but where does this system stand? What improvements can I make? I am tired of cutting projects too close to a deadline, only to find out that I haven’t accounted for lengthy render times!!!
I’m hoping someone can recommend a good set of comprehensive tutorials( paid or free), in addition to possibly answering some of these outright.
Thanks for any replies. Sorry for so many questions fired off. I’ve had quite a bit of coffee 😉
-Frank
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3 Replies
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[Frank Lombardi] “1) Should I be transcoding raw video from my 5D Mk iii and gopro cameras prior to editing, and what happens if I do/don’t? I usually like to add some color correction and/or do some compositing in AE / C4D.”
If your computer can run the files without problems then no.
[Frank Lombardi] “2a) What (quicktime?) format should I render to as a “master,” and should I then use this master to make distributable versions? “
DNxHD on windows and Prores on mac are the usual suspects.
[Frank Lombardi] “2b) What is a good choice of codec to export a logo in AE or C4D, when adding it to a PP project? (I’m thinking something OTHER
than H.264?)”Quicktime PNG or a PNG sequence would be a good choice in space/quality.
[Frank Lombardi] “3) Is there an advantage / disadvantage to rendering through after effects as opposed to AME?”
Some compressed formats might freak out if you’re putting an AE project through AME. I would render a master file out and do uncompressed stuff from that.
[Frank Lombardi] “4) I don’t understand the concept of a “wrapper” when encoding- what is the difference if I choose QUICKTIME with an H.264 codec, or choose H.264 as THE codec?!! And why does AE renderer not give that as a choice anymore??”
In Quicktime the .mov file is the wrapper. It can have all kinds of codecs in it. The Quicktime H.264 is pretty lousy compared to the H.264 (which has an mp4 wrapper) format. A bunch of formats and codecs (wmv, h264, flash) have been deprecated from the software.
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Yes, viewing tutorials can seem endless, especially since they don’t have indexes. There are some good ones at lynda.com and larryjordan.biz if you’re willing to pay. These have tables of contents. Larry Jordan explains things like wrappers in some of his articles.
Robert Withers
Independent/personal/avant-garde cinema, New York City
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Thank you. I notice that if I transcode, I can scrub through the video much more smoothly than if I scrub through straight H.264. It also obviously “unzips” the raw footage into larger transcoded files. BUT… Does transcoding speed up final render times? Especially if rendering to a more lossless / higher quality master? (as opposed to working with original compressed footage)
If I understand, then best practice would be to render an AE project in AE, as a higher quality master, and then use AME to render a distributable lower quality?
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