How to mix video with different formats?

[Richard Herd]

Do you have prelude and or media encoder?

I prefer to transcode mixed media (all the footage) into the exact same thing: Apple Pro Res 422 1920×1080 (1.0) 23.976.

[Dan Smith]

I had not thought of that. If I transcode the video, will it cut off edges of the frame at all, or will it squish it to fit or something? Thanks for the reply!

[Richard Herd]

Depends on how you set the settings. If you want to crop to centerpunch you can do that. If you want to squish or squeeze you can do that too. If you want it to look normal, you can do that also. You might need to experiment a bit by only transcoding one video and checking the results. When you get the results you like save it as a preset, then batch transcode.

[Dan Smith]

Thanks! May I ask, what do you like about Prelude versus the Media Encoder?

[Richard Herd]

They’re kind of the same, really. Prelude has a cool tool called the Ingest window. And inside of that you can check to transfer clips to a destination using a preset from Media Browser. It’s kind of like an interface between file management and Media Encoder. It also has some other uses like cutting a rough cut and so on, but I don’t really use that. I find that bringing the metadata from Prelude into Premiere is clunky (CS6, I don’t know about CC). I end up transcoding and file managing with Prelude, and then organizing and logging in Premiere.

[Dan Smith]

Awesome, I will give it a try. Thanks a ton, Richard. Be well!

[Jeff Pulera]

Dan,

Please share, what types of footage are you currently working with? If you right-click on a clip in the Project Bin, it will tell you frame size and frame rate. This would be a good starting point.

There is no one-size fits all fix, such as “Apple Pro Res 422 1920×1080 (1.0) 23.976.”

If your footage is 720p30 or 720p60 or SD for example, it would not make sense to go to 1080p24 – that frame rate can look choppy and may not suit the content. Plus upscaling takes a quality hit.

Mac or PC? Resolution and frame rate of clips being used? And destination – web, DVD, Blu-ray? These are all factors in deciding what workflow to use.

As an example, let’s say you have 1080p30 and 720p30 clips, and want to deliver as DVD. Does not make sense then to bump the 720p to 1080 as that will degrade the quality a bit, when delivering as SD anyway. Edit all clips in a 720p sequence, then export to MPEG-2 DVD Widescreen Progressive. Just one example.

Say you have the same 1080p and 720p clips and want to go to Blu-ray, and MOST of the clips are 1080 and just a few are 720. In that case, edit as 1080 to keep the max quality all the way to Blu-ray, the 720p clips will upscale well enough. And so forth. Case by case basis.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Richard Herd]

[Jeff Pulera] “Apple Pro Res 422 1920×1080 (1.0) 23.976”

Well said Jeff!

Just to break it down a bit more, the stuff above is: Codec Name image size (pixel aspect ratio) frame rate. For an easier formatted read…

Codec: Apple Pro Res 422
Image size: 1920×1080
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0
Frame Rate: 23.976

I choose to use APR422 because it meshes with some older workflow stuff, but DNxHD (Avid’s) is also a fine alternative.

For me, transcoding to a “mezzanine” codec (if you will) makes a lot of sense when (1) there is a lot of footage and (2) there is more than 1 difference between them.

For example, yesterday I received footage from an AG-HVX200 and an AG-AF100.

AG-HVX200: DVCPROHD 1280×1080 (1.5) 29.97
AG-AF100: AVCHD 1920×1080 (1.0) 23.976

Another consideration, previously not mentioned, is that some codecs are Long GOP and some are Intraframe, so those two cameras also differ there (DVCPROHD is intraframe; AVCHD is Long GOP).

Since my deliverable is 1080p, I went to the above mentioned specs. If I was making a DVD and had plenty of 720×480 (.9) SD material, I would have downrezzed all the HD stuff into a DV codec first, and I would have made sure the stakeholder/producer understood that some footage would be pillar boxed because it’s 1.33 aspect ratio and some is 1.78 aspect ratio.

To plug Prelude, that piece of software is brilliant at the transcode-first workflow.

🙂

[Jeff Pulera]

Dan,

To be clear, transcoding material before editing is more of a personal preference and may have benefits for some people and some workflows, but keep in mind that Premiere allows you to mix and match in the timeline, so you don’t need to convert first, that is optional. Users of Apple FCP pretty much HAD to transcode everything years ago, so that might be ingrained into their workflow.

I’ll shoot an event with 3 different cameras and end up with 3 different kinds of footage:

1080i HDV which is 1440×1080 “Long-GOP MPEG-2” from tape

1080i AVHCD, full 1920×1080 from SD card

1080i ProRes 422, full 1920×1080 from hard drive (Atomos Ninja recorder)

I can put all 3 in the same timeline sequence (1920×1080) and cut away!

In my case, they all use a common 29.97 frame rate so that makes it easy. If you have some footage 29.97 and some 23.976, that complicates things and I’d defer to Richard as I have no experience with cutting 24p or converting to/from it – it will have a different look than 30p or 60i video.

But again, without knowing what exactly you are working with, no one can say specifically what steps to use, all depends on your unique situation.

EDIT: say you have 720p and 1080p footage. The 720p clips will be small in a 1080 sequence, and 1080 clips will be blown up in a 720 sequence. In Preferences, check the box for “default scale to frame”. This does not affect clips already imported, but moving forward it would force new clips imported to size to the frame. Or right-click clips already in the timeline to manually set Scale to Frame. But remember that you need to decide first which Sequence type you want so the scaling works in your favor. It matters.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Richard Herd]

[Jeff Pulera] “cutting 24p” mixed frame rates:

You can imagine the frame counting issue, and it gets worse with Dynamic Link. The final render takes forever.

Simple example of what the computer deals with:

1 second = 00.01.02.03.04.05.06.07.08.09.10.11.12.13.14.15.16.17.18.19.20.21.22.23.
1 second = 00.01.02.03.04.05.06.07.08.09.10.11.12.13.14.15.16.17.18.19.20.21.22.23.24.25.26.27.28.29

If one of them is speed ramped then the audio is off, if the other is stretched the audio is off. The poor sad computer 🙂

Note the gray in my beard, I think they have grown gray waiting for computers.

By transcoding first (what Prelude is designed for, not because it’s old school but it’s necessary) then all the timecode lines up properly. Here’s a real example: an editor sent me his AE/PP dynamic link stuff saying something must be wrong because the render was taking an hour, for a :30 spot! THE issue was frame rate mismatches all over the place. A sequence in PP was 29.97 with plenty of 23.976 footage and the AE even had some 59.94 in a 24.0 comp. There were also precomps and so on. I duplicated everything, and then transcoded all of the footage to the same mezzanine codec using Prelude. After replacing the footage (not as straightforward a process as we’d like) the final render was 10 minutes. (2013 Mac Pro 3.7 GHz Quad-Core intel Xeon 5, 16GB , dual AMD FirePro D300), the transcode took 30 minutes. So it saved 20 minutes, but the time savings grows as critique and revisions come in and more final output is needed.

Also…in the actual old days of 2006/7 before file based acquisition was real, the 23.976 was mastered to tape and then log and captured! So Prelude is still a bit techno-advanced than that. And even before that 2003/05, we had to change the telecine settings LOL 🙂 and pay for a new film to tape transfer. We worried about field order and pull down, like 2:3:3:2 Man! things changed fast between 2003 and 2007, super fast shifts.

tl;dr things are better now with Prelude.