FCP user thinking of switching … ProRes? or straight from Camera?

[Declan Smith]

Hi

Premiere Pro is one package that can seem to work with almost any video files and doesn’t in itself require you to transcode. You can have avchd, h264, prores etc etc all on the same timeline.

However, if you want to work with say Davinci Resolve or Apple Color, these programs only support a smaller subset of formats. I have gone down the road of not transcoding and to be honest, I have switched back, even when working in Premiere. i.e. I ensure EVERYTHING is in prores. I use the Samurai to record direct to prores most of the time, and for H.264 / AVCHD, I transcode prior to working as this provides much better close system support. In addition, software doesn’t have the overhead of doing the decompression.

I can now go between premiere, final cut pro, davinci resolve, apple color etc, without any source file issues.

In terms of PP & AE workflow, for simple stuff having embedded AE files looks on the surface as a good thing, however, for complex projects you will lose realtime playback which normal means you’ll render out from AE anyway and import the render back into PP. Also, if you export a timeline with embedded AE compositions as XML for other programs, this will fail (or rather not be recognised).

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Dallas Kruse]

What a great response.

Thank you!

I thought maybe I’d try and save some time with no having to dump my footage into compressor and transcode to ProRes 422. And seeing how much I work in AE, I thought it would make more sense.

Apple Compressor has been giving me issues and since I’m not willing or ready to fully switch to FCPX, Premiere looks so similar to AE that it seemed to make sense. But, if there’s gonna be bottlenecks…I might as well just stick with the workflow I have now.

Great post

Music Producer dabbling in Video.
FCP 7. Adobe CS6.
Canon T3i.

[Declan Smith]

Hi

Perhaps I should qualify a little more my response.

If you are literally going to stay within Premiere Pro and After Effects then it does save you having to transcode as it does understand and work with most formats (unlike FCP 7). For the large part, the timeline will play in real time and you can start editing straight from camera. There are just a few potential issues that I have highlighted, particularly if you plan to interwork with other software (i.e. non Adobe). I have found that processor intensive effects do benefit from not having additional decoding, but it really does depend on what you are trying to achieve.

Premiere Pro / After effects are the two programs I do most of my work in and the transcoding step really is more useful if you want to interwork with Final Cut Pro or Color or Davinci Resolve.

It’s a balancing act as well because transcoding does add time to the beginning of a workflow and uses more disk space! You should also look at Adobe Media Encoder (part of the Adobe Suite) which I tend to use over and above compressor. It’s also worth noting that my comments relate to CS6 ant not necessarily CC (as I don’t have that version to compare against).

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Dallas Kruse]

I don’t do a lot of post coloring … as I’m not that learned yet on the process. This is still a hobby for me but I’m loving it so far.

I use AE to do small animations and effects and keying.

As of now, I’m fairly knowledgable in FCP7, not a pro, but I know my way around. It’s just the transcoding that gets tiresome and HOGS up space with all the ProRes. It’s not a HUGE deal…I just know I’m on FCP7 which is virtually unsupported in terms of being updated and I have no plans to go to X.

While i’ve got you here … you have any pointers on RAID or Thunderbolt setups?

Right now I’m just running my videos off of an internal SATA drive. It works great for 1 camera stuff. But I’m doing Music Videos and often creating MultiClips in FCP and running 4 streams at once gets too heavy for my current setup.

Been doing some research but wanted to hear from the pros.

Music Producer dabbling in Video.
FCP 7. Adobe CS6.
Canon T3i.

[Declan Smith]

Hi,

For what you are trying to do, then you could easily go native with Premiere Pro and I think you will be impressed with the way it just handles formats. I know this may seem to be opposite to my first post, but it does really depend on your workflow. The thing is, you can always just work with native files and if, and only if, you have issues, you can transcode. Like I said, the main issue I have is compatibility between different systems. As this isn’t going to be an issue for you, just go with the native premiere workflow.

As for RAID setups / mulitstream clips, I think you’ll find that Premiere Pro will work better on that front also (like you’ve said, FCP 7 is old software). There are many many ways of setting up disks, but what I have found generally is firstly ensure your disks are modern, they tend to be faster. Next I create Raid 0 arrays which contain two disks (you can have more) BUT you must also have a backup solution as if any one disk in a RAID 0 fails, you lose all your data. So I have an external eSATA connected array and manually mirror it using Carbon Copy when I significant changes. My machine is a 2009 MacPro but newer machines Thunderbolt connectivity is probably better. The reason I have gone down this route is that i have found that RAID rebuilding can take a while. I also back up my main disks this way so I can always boot off the external disk if needed,

RAID 0 is simple and fast. Just ensure you have a backup strategy.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Mike Jackson]

One thing I’d add – If you’re talking Canon DSLR footage, in my experience NOTHING does a better job of interpreting Canon footage than the Canon EOS plug-in for FCP7. Premiere (and After Effects) tend to leave artifacting and banding in the Canon H264s, (as does Compressor and MPEG Streamclip), but the EOS plug-in, transcoding to ProRes, gives much smoother gradients, and images that will color-correct much better.

It also gives the closest match to the color/gamma you see on your camera’s viewfinder.

So that’s another advantage of transcoding.

[Tero Ahlfors]

[Mike Jackson] “Canon EOS plug-in for FCP7. Premiere (and After Effects) tend to leave artifacting and banding in the Canon H264s, (as does Compressor and MPEG Streamclip), but the EOS plug-in, transcoding to ProRes, gives much smoother gradients, and images that will color-correct much better.”

The what now? Transcoding does not add detail that isn’t in the original file.

[Declan Smith]

I understand what you are saying, ‘Transcoding doesn’t add detail that isn’t in the original fie’, but Mike Jackson’s comment refers to the fact that a lot of transcoding software (which are all based on different algorithms) end up leaving (or rather PUTTING) banding in to the transcoded version due to the way they treat the data and the decisions made as to how to interpret colours. In other words, the native file (H.264) version of the clip does not have visible banding and therefore when transcoded, the end result also shouldn’t have banding, but some transcoding software will exhibit it.

To some extent, the picture profile used can make a difference, particularly if shooting flat subjects (such as a grey sky).

If you do get banding, then adding a low level of dithering or noise in post can sometimes help.

I agree that the EOS plugin does a very good job at converting H.264 canon files to ProRes (as does 5DtoRGB) .

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Mike Jackson]

What Declan says ; )

As best I can tell, Canon’s software does something that smooths out the macro-blocking, without losing fine detail. Their ‘secret sauce’ for how they INTERPRET the H264 data is better than anyone else’s. Which makes sense, since they built the cameras and know EXACTLY what’s going on under the hood when the files are encoded.

[Dallas Kruse]

I have looked everywhere for the E-1 plugin from Canon. Every link I’ve found online sends me to a page that must’ve been updated as the descriptions on how to download are different than what’s on the website that’s linked.

Anyone have a link for the E-1 Plugin for FCP7?

Music Producer dabbling in Video.
FCP 7. Adobe CS6.
Canon T3i.