FCPX or Premiere for GH4 4K

[Nayeli Garci-crespo]

What I meant is how worth it it is to edit them natively in FCP X, not FCP 7! We transcode to ProRes before editing for FCP 7.

-Nayeli

[Craig Seeman]

[Nayeli Garci-Crespo] “What I meant is how worth it it is to edit them natively in FCP X,”

In FCPX you import native and can tell it to transcode to ProRes in the background (or not). You can have it transcode only clips used in multi cam or all clips.

[Gary Huff]

[Nayeli Garci-Crespo] “What I meant is how worth it it is to edit them natively in FCP X, not FCP 7!”

You should have no problem working in FCPX with them.

[Craig Seeman]

[Gary Huff] “You don’t have to do that from the 100Mbps footage either, at least not in my experience with it.”

Unless you’re doing multicam.
Modern NLEs handle H.264 GOP reasonably well with reasonable hardware if you’re just editing. ProRes will hold up better if you’re pushing a grade though.

[Gary Huff]

[Craig Seeman] “Unless you’re doing multicam.”

A fast RAID storage is going to make the biggest difference here.

[Noah Kadner]

Whether transcoding is even necessary in FCPX depends on your system specs. If it’s an older system with slower drives, you’ll want to switch to proxy for editing or even go ahead and transcode to ProRes. The good news is that this is done very easily and you can start cutting the native while the transcodes happen in the background.

It’s a breeze compared to what this workflow was like 7. Of course you do have the learning curve of going from 7 to X but lots of resources are out there to help you make the leap.

Noah

FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
Call Box Training

[Bill Davis]

Nayell,

Understand that the system in X is different.

It essentially sequesters “reference pools” of footage down deep. A “native res” pool from the camera in whatever camera format. If X can “see” that pool, it can call on it. When it transcodes, it creates a separate pool of ProRes. And when you ask it to make proxies, it creates a pool of those.

Then the way X functions, it really doesn’t matter which pool you’re pointed at when you do the actual editing. It’s just a reference. The metadata editing instructions can be applied to ANY of the content pools. So you pick the source pool that makes the editing easiest when you’re making your decisions. And then switch to the content pool you need to use for mastering your final when you go do to that.

It’s all just metadata pointers.

So you have to evolve away from thinking that you “edit” in a particular resolution.

As I understand it, that’s just not how X actually works.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Ty Vann]

I cut GH4 4K natively, no transcoding, with top of the line 2013 rMPB or iMac with Pegasus Promise RAID.

[Bret Williams]

And actually proRes would need faster drives than h264 just due to the larger data sizes being pushed. But h264 is more taxing in the decompression end of things. I think that’s where the bottleneck would be.

I just finished a 9 way multicam edit from a c300 on a 2012 iMac i7. It wasn’t enough of an issue to warrant transcoding anything. I can’t remember the last time I edited proRes. I think people do it out of habit or misguided info. For sure, those working on the older MacPros are at a disadvantage to the i7 iMacs. I’ve done my own tests and couldn’t tell the difference in 1080p. FCP gets laggy either way. Nothing ProRes can do to fix that.

[Dennis Radeke]

[Nayeli Garci-Crespo] “I guess I’ll have to do some tests to see what kinds of issues crop up from using those settings instead of all-intra.”

I think that’s the best course of action both in terms of what type of editing you do (native or transcoding) and edit platform (Premiere Pro, FCP X or other).

Generally speaking (at least for Premiere Pro), editing natively is a question of scrubbing vs the system you’re putting it on and what kind of performance expectations you want to see. If you want blazingly fast timeline scrubbing of longGOP material on an old MBP with 8GB of RAM and a non-SSD drive, well then you might want to rethink that. If however, you have a reasonably current system, adequate RAM, GPU, drives, etc. then the experience is for many editors terrific – again depending on what success looks like to you.

So, I’d give both NLE platforms a try and see how they work for you in this situation and make a decision based on that. Creative Cloud is free for 30 days which should give you time enough to form an opinion.

One last thing – if you’re looking at a transcoded workflow, then remember that Adobe Media Encoder has a watch folder capability which would allow you to transcode your material in the background.

Good luck!
Dennis – Adobe guy