-
FCPX Proxy Conform from Original Media
I’m trying to figure out how I can do the following:
1) Shoot Footage to CF cards and clone them to edit drive (eg 5d cards cloned to disk).
2) Ingest footage to FCP X as Pro-Res Proxy resolution
3) Edit show in Proxy and lock cut
4) Re-ingest from CF card clones and conform just the footage I need in the cut as Pro Res 422.This process was something that was common for Log and Transfer (or Log and Capture) in FCP7 and meant I was able to edit from the full range of my footage without having to transcode all of my footage to high-res ProRes files before editorial.
The current FCPX workflow implies that you should transcode everything to both 422 and Proxy at ingest; then edit with Proxy and then click over to 422 for render/output. This seems to waste a lot of disk space on 422 media I would rather not transcode and deal with.
Am I missing an obvious way to avoid having to transcode everything?
-
7 Replies
-
Why bother with proxy at all? Just go with original media and start cutting. At any rate- there’s no reason to re-ingest. Switching from Proxy back to original or optimized just switches the proxies off- you wouldn’t need to reingest original media again. this happens regardless of whether you edit with proxies or not.
-
Hi James
I’ve never had a halfway decent result using the H264 media to cut with, and despite Apple’s contention that you can edit with it, there’s a reason why they don’t consider it “optimized”. I find H264 sluggish and problematic on even the fastest machines.My preference is to cut with Proxy out in the field with my laptop and then re-conform with 422 when I get back and have more space. But I still don’t see the need to fill my portable drives with 422 material I won’t need, when I can live with Proxy and then re-ingest the edit’s footage in 422 to render final and not hours and hours of out-take “chaff”.
So I’m still looking for a way to auto-conform from the original source media like old skool….
-
I like converting to proxy only on ingest to save time while I edit. I throw away 60% of my footage before I even edit but after I sync it and watch it once, so I agree that converting everything to prores is just a waste of space. Since FCPX knows where my original footage is and knows what my edits are, I wish I could just click a project and select convert only used footage to optimized.
The way I do it now is identify the clips that I know I’ll be using after I’ve done some work on the proxy and transcode those to optimized, but it’s still not as efficient as it could be. Disk space is huge for me. I’m on my 5th 2TB drive of just raw files, if all that was also stored as optimized I’d be in trouble.
-
I’m with you Loren. Apple seems to be taking the tack that “disk space is cheap”, so they’ve sort of assumed that the only reason to use Proxy footage is for performance purposes instead of disk space storage. If you shoot hours and hours of footage, it seems silly to transcode all of it unless space is of no consequence to you.
-
Well, FCPX doesn’t trim media to cuts only like FCP7’s Media Manager. But if you don’t have massively long clips here’s what I’d do:
Injest H264 video with Optimize media off, and Proxy media on. Edit with Proxy media. When finished, duplicate project with the Used Media feature. This will copy entire clips, but only clips that are used in the project. Then Select all the clips in the new event and transcode to optimized for your online media.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
-
FCP X does all of this for you.
1. Import media and create proxy media.
2. Set playback preferences: CHECK USE PROXY MEDIA
3. Edit
4. WHen you are done go into playback settings and CHECK USE ORIGINAL HIGH QUALITY MEDIA
5. Set your Sequence to PRORES 4:2:2 HQ
6. Final Cut Pro X now renders out your edit with the original media to the Prores Codec giving you the best quality.
It’s so simple most people don’t want to believe it is true, but it really is that easy.
David
______________________________
The shortest answer is doing.
Lord Herbert
https://vimeo.com/battistella -
It’s true that FCP will do that, but I believe that it will transcode everything in your Event to HQ media, not just the footage in your project, so you will still end up with lots of “extra” HQ footage. Am I wrong?
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up