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Editing footage from EX1: Uncompressed versus Cineform
Hello all, wondering if I could get a word of advice on this as trying to make up my own mind about what is the best option here.
I recently shot a music video on the EX1, a camera I hitherto hadn’t used. From what I understand the camera compresses all the footage shot into mp4, presumably as a space saver to fit the most footage into the 16GB of the two cards.
When I begin the edit, I have been advised that I should first convert the footage so that it is uncompressed and in the highest quality possible. This has been said to be quite taxing when it comes to playing back the footage on adobe premier pro and I don’t have the fastest PC at my service right now. A further solution suggested was that I use convert it using cineform which isn’t all the way uncompressed but maintains a noticeable improvement on the quality of the footage.
And finally it has also been suggested that either of these solutions are a waste of time and that finally the difference is not so pronounced as to be worth the effort when I could get straight to editing.
Thoughts? Opinions? I’m at a loss so any help would be much appreciated.
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10 Replies
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Depends which NLE you use. Personally I wouldn’t waste the hard drive space on fully uncompressed- that won’t undo the XDCAM EX compression already done by the camera. ProRes would be fine…
Noah
Call Box Training.
Featuring the Panasonic GH2 and GoPro HD Hero. -
Jonathan, ProRes 422 HQ is brilliant with EX material.
Michael Slowe
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Thanks very much for the quick response.
I use Adobe Premier Pro. So since the compression enforced by the camera is essentially not worth uncompressing you would suggest using ProRes to basically upres the footage?
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Thanks Michael! OK I’ll look into this ProRes malarkey and will let you know how I get on unless anyone else has any other suggestions?
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Just to be clear, you can wrap to MXF on Windows, wrap to MOV on Mac, these are just re-wraps. Some NLEs can handle the MP4 directly (current version of Premiere Pro is one of them I believe). You can upres but there’s no improvement in quality but it might hold up better to heavy fx work, compositing, color grading. You can use ProRes (easy to do on Mac, possible to do on Windows for a price) or maybe DNxHD. Keep in mind if you’re not doing heavy processing that may take more time and hard drive space than it’s worth. That’s a judgement call.
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Right, so would you suggest it might be the easier option to have a go editing in Adobe Premier and see how it handles the footage first, since there isn’t going to be an improvement in the quality of footage, rather ProRes will just make handling it easier?
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It really depends on what you’re doing and what your computer can handle. ProRes, because it’s an I Frame codec, is generally easier to handle but it’s not necessary for a lot of things, especially if you have a decent CPU.
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Unless you are making a movie that will be shown on a large screen just edit the native footage. I have used my EX-3 for everything including green screen work with no conversion and it looked fine. You will not notice a difference by converting to another codec unless you need lots of fx work or massive color grading as mentioned in earlier posts.
ronpesteshdvideo.com
Apple Certified Master Pro FCS 2
Sony EX-3
MacBook Pro
Dell M6600
New convert to Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium -
Perfect, yeah its only going on vimeo, thanks a lot for the advice.
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Oh yeah, if it is only Vimeo or Youtube don’t even think about converting it. Native works great for that. Also, for what its worth even if you use some color correction like the Color Corrector 3 Way filter you will be fine with native. I have used moderate color correction, title from Motion with filters and multi cam with no problems. In my opinion converting is not worth the trouble with no gain in picture quality.
ronpesteshdvideo.com
Apple Certified Master Pro FCS 2
Sony EX-3
MacBook Pro
Dell M6600
New convert to Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium
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