In Search Of … A Better H.264 to ProRes Workflow

[Kris Merkel]

I can’t speak to this directly since it is not my workflow and not something that I do, but my guess is that it would have to do with time savings outputting directly to a unit that records native ProRes in real time vs. encoding through AME.

Walter outlines his workflow here and has more details in other post on his blog https://www.biscardicreative.com/blog/

“Think of everything in terms of building capacity.”

Kris Merkel
twitter: @kris_merkel
Product Manager, Flanders Scientific Inc.
http://www.shopfsi.com
Co-Founder, Atlanta Cutters Post Production User Group
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[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Going on what Dennis said about editing in ProRes also, could you not ingest/convert in Prelude and then you could still use the “takes” that you want without converting the entire clip?

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[Jon Hiseman]

This is my workflow to take care of the same issues. I only work in Prores for all the advantages you mentioned. If I have a lot of footage I open up a PPro project and import all the native cam media.
I then throw what I might want onto the timeline to the nearest minute.
The worlds roughest cut.
Then, Menu/Project/Project Manager
Check:
Create new trimmed project
Exclude unused clips
Include handles up to 100 frames if you wish
Rename Media Files to Match Clip Names – if you have put some descriptive info on the clip names
Choose the location and create a new folder
You can even calculate the folder size in advance.
Then, when your new project and clip have been created, batch throw them at Media Encoder to convert to the Prores flavor of your choice.
Media encoder seems very fast on my 12-core Mac Pro but you can always leave it overnight.
I hope this helps

I used to be Jon Hiseman but I’m feeling better now.

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Jon, can you not do all of this is Prelude and skip having to do the Media Manager? It just sounds like a big circle to me when you could do the rough cut and conversion in Prelude and then send that to any disk you want and begin cutting with your rough cut from Prelude in Premiere Pro.

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2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 16GB RAM
AJA IoXT
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The College of William and Mary

[Angelo Lorenzo]

I think most of the suggestions negate the fact that the OP here wants handles.

There are a myriad of solutions to take a timeline out to ProRes and into resolve if you just want to use an EDL as a cut list.

I think you’re writing off After Effects a little too soon.

I propose the OP fashion a script as follows:
1. Open layered project into After Effects
2. Script breaks down layers into comps (comps should start with the timecode of the clip naturally)
3. Script adds handles by increasing the length of the comp and the length of the footage, taking care to make sure timecode stays aligned from comp to source.
4. Adds to render queue.
5. Export a set of trimmed media in ProRes

Resolve should be able to reconform the timeline to the new media based on clip timecode. I’m not a resolve master but it seems like a safe assumption.

——————–
Angelo Lorenzo

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[Jon Hiseman]

“Jon, can you not do all of this is Prelude and skip having to do the Media Manager?”

Yes you can and , as you point out, do the transcode in one go, but because I do lots of alternate takes I like to see the footage up close and personal – I hate scrubbing about in Prelude’s ingest manager.- I just can’t move my trackball slow enough to see all the detail on a long clip. Also I only archive the original footage I have selected and copied via PPros Project manager. Cuts down on archive space and preserves the original cam format – probably stupid on my part but….

I’ll have to investigate whether there is a shortcut in Prelude to place any selected media preview window fullscreen on a second display. That’s where I have my PPro source or program windows depending on what I’m doing.

I used to be Jon Hiseman but I’m feeling better now.

[Alex Udell]

This has been a really interesting thread.

There is a pre-edit trim.

It’s Prelude….and it’s really the equivalent of log and transfer.

When used in combo with AME it’s easy to get rough selects transcoded for final edits in PPro…

Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX

[Dennis Radeke]

[Matthew Sonnenfeld] “Going on what Dennis said about editing in ProRes also, could you not ingest/convert in Prelude and then you could still use the “takes” that you want without converting the entire clip?”

yes, exactly. If you use Prelude as a ‘log and transfer’ type tool and are choosing transcoding as part of your ingest, you can do a partial ingest.

[Jason Jones]

My only issue with this workflow, which I tried initially after moving to PO, is that you’re making trim and content decisions based on only what you can view in the Ingest thumbnail, right? Log and Transfer at least had that decently sized viewer to determine in/out points, etc.

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

You can change the thumbnail size to make it more like Log and Transfer. Would be nice if it had a larger viewer, I agree. But I do find this workflow to be more than useable especially considering the alternatives.

RED Scarlet-X, Panasonic HPX170, Canon 7D
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 16GB RAM
AJA IoXT
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