Panasonic GH4 4k video – Apple ProRes or ProRes HQ?

[Bill Bruner]

I am not a Final Cut guy, but I am a GH4 shooter and if you’re shooting C4K .mov you should be able to import it directly to your timeline and edit without the need to transcode: https://www.fcp.co/forum/13-made-with-final-cut-pro/20189-gh4-mov-files-work-great-with-fcpx

Whatever you do, don’t record to AVCHD 😉

Hope this is helpful!

Bill
Hybrid Camera Revolution

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Yes, for FCP7 you will need to convert to ProRes.

It depends on your data rate though. You won’t “gain” quality shooting at 100mbps and transcoding to HQ as ProRes 422 is already higher than the acquisition format. If shooting at the 200mbps modes, you should use HQ.

If you are trying to build a standard workflow HQ would be more of a “catch all” I suppose but depending on what you are shooting, you may have larger files being stored than necessary.

Co-President at fourB Productions, Inc.
Blackmagic Cinema Camera, RED Scarlet-X
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 16GB RAM
2008 Mac Pro 2.6 Ghz 8 Core, 10GB RAM
AJA IoXT, Blackmagic Intensity Pro, Blackmagic Mini Monitor
Adobe Production Premium CC, Avid Media Composer 7, Final Cut Pro Studio 3

[Ryan Wirick]

I am shooting at 4K, 100M, 24P, MOV. If all my footage is shot in this format, I don’t need to transcode to HQ, correct? 422 will cover retain full quality of the image, right?

Also, is there a way to edit in PROXY, and export in 422, without transcoding all the footage twice into PROXY and 422, in order to save disc space? For example, could I edit in PROXY, and then at the end, reconnect all the footage to the original files (H.264). Then change the sequence settings to match the original footage, re-render, and export as 422? Would that work?

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

That’s correct. All parts being equal with the codec as the only difference, you won’t actually gain quality by using HQ.

If you will be doing heavy grading, you might want to consider it. But at that point I would seriously take a look at a codec like Cineform.

Co-President at fourB Productions, Inc.
Blackmagic Cinema Camera, RED Scarlet-X
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 16GB RAM
2008 Mac Pro 2.6 Ghz 8 Core, 10GB RAM
AJA IoXT, Blackmagic Intensity Pro, Blackmagic Mini Monitor
Adobe Production Premium CC, Avid Media Composer 7, Final Cut Pro Studio 3

[Ryan Wirick]

What are the advantages of Cineform compared to ProRes HQ?

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

CineForm has a comparable bit rate to ProRes though it is a different type of compression. It is a “wavelet” codec similar to REDCODE and JPEG2000.

Compression times are VERY fast and playback is super smooth. It also holds up very well in grading due to its compression type.

As a mastering codec, CineForm is available on both Mac and PC so you would have a master that is capable of being encoded and decoded on both platforms.

Co-President at fourB Productions, Inc.
Blackmagic Cinema Camera, RED Scarlet-X
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 16GB RAM
2008 Mac Pro 2.6 Ghz 8 Core, 10GB RAM
AJA IoXT, Blackmagic Intensity Pro, Blackmagic Mini Monitor
Adobe Production Premium CC, Avid Media Composer 7, Final Cut Pro Studio 3

[Noah Kadner]

Another alternative- use Compressor to do this work. Or even better- try FCPX. (Yes I know you hate it but anyways) it can cut through GH4 4K footage natively like butter with or without a transcode step. And there’s a free trial- https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/trial/

Noah

FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
Call Box Training

[Jean Mathis]

Hi Nath I am using a I7 macbook pro end 2011 with 16GB memory and can’t read in a fluid way the GH4 4 K footage (it’s jittery) in final cut pro X, what am I doing wrong? Maybe I need to use the proxies transcoding?
Thanks
Jean

[Jane Kong]

About prores codec , I would like to say it may be the most suitalbe codec if you want to import them into FCP for editing. And I suggest you to convert them into Prores 422. It would be better for the renderring or converting. You know after the conversion the converted files would be much larger than the original one.

[Eli Cat]

As far as I know, Apple ProRes is compatible with almost all version of FCP including FCP or older version.If you wanna work GH4 4K videos with FCP 7, then I think Apple ProRes HQ is better. Hope the information can be helpful to you. Good luck!