-
Editing with DV
Hi,
I’m working on a project which has a hell of a lot of footage captured from Mini DV tapes. I’ve captured these using FCP 7 as it was more convenient and they’ve been captured to DVC-PAL 720×576 (1024×576). Now I’m aware that ProRes is the best format to be editing in when it comes to Premiere/Mac but we have a let of a lot of footage and not too much space at the moment. We have around 4TBs of footage we’d eventually need to convert to ProRes to cut essentially a 5 minute trailer. For the feature, it’ll ideally be done in Avid where we will work in DNxHD accordingly, but for now we really need to quickest and most convenient workflow to get a trailer out of the door in Premiere.
I guess my question is – would Premiere deal fine with DV codec for a 5 minute timeline or do you still recommend transcoding to ProRes?
We also have another 2TB of footage, half as MP4 and half as MXF. Again ideally we’d transcode this to ProRes but with time constraints do you think it is worth the risk or is it likely to cause a buggy project?
Thanks!
-
2 Replies
-
[Ben Harris] “I guess my question is – would Premiere deal fine with DV codec for a 5 minute timeline or do you still recommend transcoding to ProRes?”
it’ll deal fine. That’s an SD codec, and a lossless one (digital transfer of 1s and 0s…absolute zero quality loss)…and it’s very light. Drawback, it’s most likely interlaced, which will have to be dealt with if you are going to post online. But DV is a far lighter and easier codec to work with than ProRes or DNxHD. That being said, I would suggest converting to ProRes AFTER you are done editing…and only the footage used in the edit. If you intend on delivering an HD master, this would entail upscaling it to HD, but still maintaining the aspect ratio, so going 1440×1080…and de-interlace it when you convert.
[Ben Harris] “We also have another 2TB of footage, half as MP4 and half as MXF. Again ideally we’d transcode this to ProRes but with time constraints do you think it is worth the risk or is it likely to cause a buggy project?”
OK, MP4 is a format that can be hard to deal with, or OK. If you have time constraints, I’d say leave it as that. Now, MXF…that’s just a container. The media can be 1:1, 14:1, DNx36, DNx145, DNx220…DHxHR, XDCAM…OP1a…even ProRes (You can have ProRes MOV, or ProRes MXF)…so without knowing what codec you are talking about here…well, it should be fine. MXF format codecs are typically fine to edit with without converting. But again, depends on the specific codec.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Brilliant thank you for your answer. Exactly what I wanted to hear. Upon further inspection the MXFs are actually AVC but I think I’m going to stick with the DV, and only transcode to ProRes if required.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up