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Definitive AVCHD codec choice
I’m working with footage from two small sony hdr-sr12 cameras which use the AVCHD format, and I have FCP 6.0.4. The footage I am dealing with is tests by engineers that span 24 hours and of course it’s excruciatingly slow to transfer and (of course) the bosses want it right away. I’ve read something on the cow about which codec is better (smaller, faster) but I can’t seem to find it now when I need it. Using the log & transfer window I have two choices for transfer codecs, which are Apple Intermediate Codec and Prores 422. Is the P2 plugin Prores 422 (HQ) smaller or larger than that without the HQ (I assume HQ means high quality and is actually lower quality than that without the HQ)? Is there any other option for processing this video that might be faster (for example what if I don’t need the audio)?
My next question is what is the best way to compress the video once I’ve gotten it into final cut? I am just going to speed the video up so that every hour of the test I’ve filmed is about thirty seconds long, so I don’t need the video to look super crisp or IMAX or anything, and disk space for storage is something of an issue. Right now I have Compressor changing the footage to HDV 1080i, but possibly Media Manager would be faster?
Thanks for thoughts,
andrea -
1 Reply
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Do you need it to be HD? If you can capture it as SD that will be much faster/easier to work with than HD.
ProRes HQ is higher quality than Pro Res. (10bit vs. 8bit) and HQ is a larger file.
I think Compressor does a better job of taking advantage of multi-core machines than FCP does, so I would recommend that.
Does that help?
2 x3Ghz Quad MacPro
9 GB RAM
Mac OS X 10.5.5
QT 7.5.5
FCP 6.0.5
AJA Kona 3 (6.0.1 drivers)
G-Speed XL 12 RAID
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