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Changing XDCAM footage to ProRes after editing in timeline
Hey guys,
So I’m taking on my first assistant editing internship and I’m being brought on for a documentary film. They have 20TB worth of footage and a unique problem in FCP7:
Since the doc has been in the works for 6 years, one of the editors back in the day decided to convert every project asset into XDCAM… since they shot some of the footage on EX-1s. They also shot on Canon DSLRs and he decided to convert those H.264s to XDCAM as well.
So the director wants me to convert the entire project to ProRes 422.
What steps can I take to maintain the current timeline and change the format to ProRes? Just trying to wrap my head around it.
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1 Reply
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Well, the quickest way would be to use the MEDIA MANAGER and RECOMPRESS. But then you are doing just that…recompressing. This won’t be bad for the XDCAM footage, as one conversion from native XDCAM to ProRes is a fine thing. But the DSLR…H.264 to XDCAM (bad idea), then recompress to ProRes…that’s a couple levels. And something you might notice if you look close enough.
The long hard way is to recompress ONLY the DSLR footage to ProRes, and then hope that you can reconnect to it…although because timecodes always start at 00:00:00:00, and there are no REEL numbers, this gets tricky. Not saying it won’t work, it just won’t be smooth, nor 100%, and you might have to manually replace the footage with the new ProRes footage.
But that is the life of the assistant…fixing the stuff us editors mess up.
🙂
Shane
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