Mastering Question

[Dave Mccarthy]

I think your use of “Mastering” is confusing us. If you want to archive the project, including its original source media, use the Collect Files feature in the Files menu. There is no need to export anything.

There was a bug in the audio export options that was fixed in v1.7.1

[Doug Calhoun]

Thanks Dave for your reply. I’ve done a collect files and archived two language versions which spans 26 BluRay’s for 680GB each. I’m trying to output a final version to a format that is more accessible both for drive space and ensure another backup.

I guess most people collect files and archive as a final but to bring it online with other projects dedicates nearly 1400GB of drive space should I simply need to simply encode to another format for streaming etc.

Maybe others just do that?

[Floh Peters]

Why don´t you simply buy an (cheap & large) USB Harddisc and copy / Collect or export the needed footage and the master version to this drive? You could even buy 2 drives for the price of your Blu-Ray discs and keep them in separate places…

[Doug Calhoun]

Thanks for the feedback Floh, I agree it can be put on USB drives no problem. Is the output option- ProRes the best bang for the buck? It’s not recompressed should I output to that option is it?

[Dave Mccarthy]

Any export to QuickTime is going to incur a decompress/compress action. Most modern codecs can handle this without significant generational loss.

[Doug Calhoun]

Thanks Dave, I assume ProRes is as good an option as any then. I’m unsure what encoders, other than Compressor, which isn’t great for low bit rate QT codecs can handle a REF movie from M100. So an output to encode is likely needed. Is ProRes ideal in this regard or H264?

[Doug Calhoun]

To be clear, if I export as a “Self Contained” from a program with ProRes 422 footage, it will export what versus as a Quicktime with ProRes 422 selected? This was discussed before and it wasn’t ever stated what the difference was.

Thanks again for any input.

[Dave Mccarthy]

Self-contained will export without a decompression step, so you will get the frame data as it is stored in the media (or rendered media). So this is the best way to avoid any generation loss. But if you have mixed codecs in your program, so will the export. It also can’t do the options available with QuickTime, such as changing the color space or adding timecode burnin.

h.264 is a great codec for network delivery but it’s not so good as a backup medium unless it’s your last resort. It takes a long time to encode, and it’s pretty lossy. And of course Media 100 Suite would have to transcode it back into an edit codec if you need to use that backup.

Just in case you haven’t thought of this, using an export as backup will compress all the video layers in your program to a single video track. That makes it impossible to edit transitions, alpha titles, color keys, or just about anything else an editor does.

[Doug Calhoun]

Thanks Dave, so considering it’s ProRes422 (not HQ), self contained would be identical ProRes 422 codec? Similarly, if I export a QT ProRes422, there would be no difference other than what QT does to it? I’m not sure what the difference is still unless Self Contained outputs Animation codec or a M100 flavor of uncompressed.

Any insights?

[Dave Mccarthy]

If you have a program in ProRes, a self-contained export will be very close to a QuickTime export, and arguably better quality because we avoid a decompress/compress step. Color clips (or empty sections of the program) don’t exist in ProRes, so self-contained export has to create a placeholder, and for that we use a 2×2 frame in the Animation codec. (Some older applications have trouble understanding those clips, which is sometimes a reason to use the QuickTime export.) So I can’t say the files will be identical, but they should be indistinguishable when played.