Premiere to FCP7: Which export format?

[Tom Daigon]

If he is savvy with Premiere Pro 5.5 he can select to export a Prores 422 file. This can be configured in the Media Encoder interface that pops up when Export is chosen in Premiere. You should be able to play that in FCP just fine. If he doesnt know how, some quick Google research will reveal the answer.

Tom Daigon
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[Lawrence Marshall]

Thanks for the response–do you know if the pro res 422 option also exists for CS5? I will look into it more!

[Lawrence Marshall]

Should I note that he’s using the Windows version of Premiere? So Media Encoder doesn’t need anything extra installed to export as a ProRes 422?

[Jon Barrie]

Unfortunately there is no Apple ProRes export support on the PC.

Your best bet might be to go out to Avid’s Free codec DNxHD, which would manually need to be downloaded and installed across both of your systems.

https://avid.custkb.com/avid/app/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=372311

– JB

Jon Barrie
Adobe Video Solutions Consultant ANZ
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[Walter Soyka]

Other options might include Uncompressed, CineForm, and any of the XDCAM variants.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
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[Keith Moreau]

I agree with Walter, have him export in something that FCP can natively use. However, with XDCAM EX, though FCP can actually edit those files well, you’ll need to either transcode them or use a plugin by Calibrated to fool the Quicktime system into playing the EX files natively. Depending on your final output, or if you are the final producer of the final output will determine the codec he and you use. You could try Animation Codec or DVCPro HD as well. It’s really too bad there isn’t a Prores Exporter in Premiere Pro PC.

Another solution is for him to export a FCP 7 XML sequence from his Premiere Pro, and provide you with the XML and the original 7D files. The 7D files will actually edit barely in FCP, if you set the 7D files as the sequence codec type. If you do anything that requires rendering it will bog down.

If you need speed, you could take his files, in your timeline, and use FCP media manager to transcode them to prorees and create a new sequence. Then use that sequence to edit, as you would normally do.

[Ryan Patch]

Don’t export to h.264 – as you said, this is unmanageable for FCP to edit. You’ll also put your footage through another round of compression, which will degrade quality.

As suggested before use Avid’s DNxHD formats. They are virtually identical in form and function to ProRes, and both mac and windows, Premiere and FCP can use, decode, and encode with a free download. I strongly believe that DNxHD should become a rallying point for Premiere editors.

[Lawrence Marshall]

How large do those dnxhd files get? These are 1min videos.

[Ryan Patch]

Almost exactly the size of ProRes files.

If you used DNxHD 115 (a 24p bitrate), the equivalent of ProRes 422, that is 115 mbps, so 60 seconds of that is 6900 megabits, or 862 MB. It sounds like a lot, but it’s the same as ProRes would be, and is worth it to keep quality.

Ryan