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Export Workflow – Avoiding Quality Loss
I have graded Alexa footage (native pro res 4444, 10 bit) in my Resolve project. I need to export and am wondering if I export as ProRes 444 will there be any quality loss?
My plan is to export, then add titles and final audio mix in Avid MC 6.5. Do you know if exporting at native compression will degrade quality?
Thank you
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6 Replies
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By-the-math there will be some loss as you are generating another codec cycle. Wether anyone could see it is another story. Most of the broadcast content I work on goes through the additional 2 codec cycles for the workflow you are using…. remember there will be another encode when you output your versions.
Most “people” involved don’t notice anything. Some who are very sensitive notice some softness. I sometimes notice a little aliasing. The entire thing will get horribly crushed by the MPEG transport encoding that will occur further on down the line anyhow. That’s when we get complaints about blacks and S/NR.
For content destined for digital cinema I go uncompressed. Depending on your workflow you may want to go with a 422 type codec or RGB image sequence… really a matter of what your delivery target is.
– Jonathon
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Thanks for your reply. Delivery will be digital cinema. My Avid system won’t handle DPX playback and I still need to sync up final audio mix, add text, and slide around a handful of shots. My initial thought was to export the graded timeline from Resolve as ProRes 444, than reimport into Media Composer, do my final work, then export a master from Avid. Would you say this sounds like a logical work flow? I just want to be sure I won’t be degrading the image quality beyond what is unavoidable.
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Jason,
When rendering back to Avid, you should go with a MXF workflow!
DNxHD 185x (x = 10bit) is ok for the most of us.
You can even render DNxHD 444 350x.Stig
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.. and then there will be no need to import the regular way or AMA for transcoding – as you simply drop the files into the avid media folder.
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You can also add audio track and titles in resolve and save the trip to avid.
Editor/Colorist, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
http://www.pepijnklijs.nl -
I may need to try an MXF export. On particularly dark shots, I see additional noise added to the Resolve exported Pro Res 4444 files. This must be due to the “double” encoding of Pro Res?
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