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Premiere Pro CS4 > CS6 – Raw Footage Codec Suggestions?
I’m about to start editing some footage on my Windows 7 machine at home using Premiere Pro CS6 (Creative Cloud) in the next few weeks, and in the meantime plan to prep my raw footage at the office with PP CS4. I don’t want to pull the trigger on a subscription to Creative Cloud until I’m ready to start cutting. This being the case, I want to make sure I’m converting the approximately 30 minutes of uncompressed AVIs (1920×1080 @ 24p) to a format that will ensure good quality & compatibility while not requiring the bandwidth associated with full uncompressed footage.
My initial thought was to convert everything to h264 at around 32Mbps, but I’m wondering if something like Lagarith AVI or Avid DNxHD would be worth looking into. Also, is there any advantage of converting to AVCHD instead of regular h264 (although I can’t find a way to do this in CS4 Media Encoder). My storage will be a plain vanilla 7200rpm SATA drive, but I’m not too worried about slightly less than real time performance since I won’t be doing any kind of audio other than a music overlay track.
Thanks in advance for any input.
Mitch -
18 Replies
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You can edit uncompressed in CS6 with no problem.
I would not convert to H.264 or some other heavily compressed format.
With Premiere you cannot convert to AVCDH.
Workaround is make the files into an BD folder with Encore and rip the m2ts.
Lagarith or DNxHD or Cineform are much better choises.———————————————–
Adobe Certified Expert Premiere Pro
Adobe Community Professional -
Ann,
Thanks for the reply. In regards to choosing between Lagarith, DNxHD or Cineform do you have any thoughts about which ones would be most compatible and easy to manage with PP CS6? Also, will any of these codecs work in CS4?
-Mitch
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Which codec you want to use is up to you, all codec are easy to use. The first two are free.
I use Cineform as intermediare codec and love it.
All mentioned codec/format work perfectly with CS6.———————————————–
Adobe Certified Expert Premiere Pro
Adobe Community Professional -
I just installed the Cineform Studio converter and it looks like you cannot import uncompressed AVI for export (only mp4 and jpg). My source is currently uncompressed film scans, so in order to use Cineform I’d need to FIRST make a mp4 THEN export as Cineform file. Not really ideal since the goal was to avoid h264 compression in the first place 🙂
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Ok, after reading the feature list on GoPro site it looks like I would need to buy the Cineform Studio Premium to convert Tiff or DPX to Cineform files. $299 is more than I want to spend for a codec, so off to test Lagarith and DNxHD.
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No, don’t use Cineform Studio. In Premiere/Media Encoder you should see Cineform as a codec under both AVI and MOV. Installing the Studio program also installs the system codec which can be accessed from numerous programs. The free version limits your resolution to 1920×1080.
Avoid Lagarith. It’s not an industry standard codec so taking your videos out-of-house or handing them off becomes a nightmare in some situations. It’s an interesting codec but I would avoid it unless you’re a one-man-band.
Angelo Lorenzo
Fallen Empire – Digital Production Services -
Angelo,
Thanks for the info. Yes, I just discovered that myself here and was testing doing my intermediate transcoding in PP and AE (CS4). Seems to work fine. One thing I’m wondering if the exact specs on the different quality levels in the codec options (low, med, high, higher). Here are the data rates I’m getting for 1080p footage with no audio…
Low: ~64mbps
Med: ~83mbps
High: ~106mbps
Higher: ~108mbpsWondering if there are any other difference besides bit rate (color space, etc)?
-Mitch
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You know, I’m not super familiar with Cineform. I have it on my system since I’ve had to use it as a delivery format for a few film festivals so you’re probably better off looking around the Cineform site for that. If all else fails, I would consider it an 8 bit codec in 4:2:2 YCbCr color which is middle of the road for an intermediate.
Angelo Lorenzo
Fallen Empire – Digital Production Services -
Using Cineform and really liking it so far. Nice codec…especially for free 🙂
-M
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Have you tried transcoding to DNxHD? If yes, what program did you use?
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