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file transcode suggestions for lo res editing
Hi all,
After many years, I have decided to abandon FCP 6 (never got 7 for personal use) as my primary editor and make a switch to PP (or maybe Avid if I really don’t like PP – but I know AE reasonably well and I feel like staying in the Adobe family might help).
I am still learning the ins and outs of the PP (although I was proficient in FCP), and I was wondering what file format is generally used and/or preferred for offline work. My primary goal is space efficiency as I am doing the majority of my work on the newest Macbook Pro (2.8, 16 g ram, current Yosemite).
For context:
90% of my source footage is H.264 at 1080 (Canon 5D). I have several TB of footage (some is SD).
On my former laptop, I was using FCP 6 (I was really behind the times) so I would generally transcode to Apple Intermediate Codec at 50% (960×540) and this worked ok.
I’ll probably transcode to, and edit with two or three small portable drives.
Also, I always did my transcodes though Apple Compressor. I’m assuming Media Encoder is the main transcoder for Premiere?
Thanks!
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6 Replies
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Your machine should be good to go without any transcoding. Premiere has native support for pretty much every format.
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Thanks for responding. Yes, I’m impressed how well PP deals with file formats – editing an H.264 in FCP was pretty much impossible, for example.
In my case, though, I don’t want to edit with the original high rez files; I’d rather compress everything down for economy of space because I have a huge – around 18TB of footage! – amount of material.
I’m ok with it looking a bit crappy. I’m doing mainly story work. So I was just wondering what the general “go to” file was – if there is one. Is there anything equivalent to FCP’s Apple Proxy codec (FCP7) or Apple Intermediate codecs (FCP6) that PP editors work with when they have a large amount of footage?
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You can still run your footage through Media Encoder and knock it down to ProRes Proxy. If you don’t see the ProRes options in the Codec list you can download them from Adobe.
https://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5744
Joe
Living the SuiteLife!
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So PP people are using ProRes Proxy, even though it’s an Apple codec? That’s good to know – I thought there might be a pref\erred non-Apple codec that the Premiere community uses. Outside of FCP and the general Apple codecs (various prores, proxy, the older intermediate codecs), I am pretty ignorant. That does make things a bit easier, and I can go back and forth between FCP if necessary.
Would Apple Compressor do the same job?
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Yeah, Premiere is pretty flexible when it comes to media formats. A great deal of the people I know using it are still using all their beloved ProRes codecs. And I can fortunately say, I’ve never had any issue running H.264 in Premiere. In fact, in several instances, I’ve used H.264 as my proxy files when pulling from higher cameras. But if you’re wanting to work offline so you can temporarily downres images, I imagine ProRes Proxy would be a superb choice. As good as any really.
Nathan Walters
Halo Union Productions
https://www.HaloUnion.com -
If you want to do a big batch of files, download the free Resolve and use their media transcoder. Does really large batches of media better than Adobe Media Encoder in my opinion.
From there you can choose any codec you want to edit with. As others have mentioned, PPro cuts with those formats you’re shooting really well so we just leave everything in full resolution on our end. We have a 96TB NAS here so we don’t have any issues keeping everything full res.
But you can go with a light flavor of ProRes, DNxHD, or whatever you want to use.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
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