MP4 vs AVCHD

[David Roth weiss]

MP4, like all of the MPEG variants including h.264, is no bargain where realtime performance is concerned, because all of those codecs, like AVCHD, are extremely processor intensive. In addition, MP4 will not hold up well in color correction, with intensive use of filters, or beyond a couple of generations.

ProRes on the other hand is a high performance codec, specifically designed for easy playback. And, it holds up well with lots of processing and through many generations.

So, until you get a more modern camera, keep your current workflow.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Bryce Douglass]

Thanks.

People on the Adobe Forums say that AVCHD is not processor intensive and that there is nothing different than that vs pro res. But I know that’s wrong

Bryce

[Bret Williams]

It’s not as intensive with your iMac as with say a Mac Pro. You have h264 acceleration on that iMac processor where the xeons do not. Pro res is still a little smoother to edit with but not noticeably if you’re doing simpler stuff. It’s a double edged sword because ProRes might also require 10x as much data throughput and you can easily have a bottleneck if you don’t have a fast raid or SSD. Especially 4K. 4K proxy is just 1080p ProRes. Still pretty big files.

But geez buy some RAM already! 8gb? How does Premiere even launch?

[David Roth weiss]

Bryce,

The reason Sony moved from AVCHD to XAVC is because AVCHD was hard to work with on many levels, including being processor intensive. Unfortunately, XAVC is also no bargain yet, because optimization in most editing software is not great.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Jeff Pulera]

You could possibly get smoother editing with AVCHD in Premiere if you follow these steps for import, if not already doing so. Copy entire contents of SD card to hard drive, keep all folder structure intact. Then in Premiere, import using Media Browser, not File > Import.

There is metadata in the folders that helps Premiere properly interpret the footage, including handling of spanned clips, audio, etc.

But I agree, bump that RAM to 16GB if you can!

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Bryce Douglass]

So I don’t need to Transcode? What about color? Pro Res is better with color right? Also like said above AVCHD is processor intensive

Bryce

[Tero Ahlfors]

Transcoding footage to a better quality format doesn’t make the original footage any better. AVCHD is a terrible unoptimized shit format that I wouldn’t personally use for anything for the reasons already stated in this thread.

[David Roth weiss]

Yes! (Echo… Echo… Echo…)

Didn’t I already say that?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

Transcoding MP4 to ProRes doesn’t make the video better, but it will hold up to color correction, etc. a lot better and through more generations.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Bryce Douglass]

So is it worth it to spend the extra time to transcode or not?

Bryce