Pro Res Plays Over Firewire?

[Chris Babbitt]

I don’t think ProRes works with SD. It probably just defaulted to the DV codec for rendering. Try checking your file size. I tried the same thing and then made a self-contained movie. The file size of the movie confirmed that it was rendered in DV and not ProRes.

[Andy Mees]

its been a basic feature since FCP 6, Kevin

just as the timeline can play back formats that are not native to the timeline’s settings in real time (aka the all singing all dancing mixed format playback support), so FCP can output a non-native format in realtime using the same principle

[Andy Mees]

>I don’t think ProRes works with SD

it does, Chris. in Kevin’s case, as he noted, he used a DV Easy Setup … which sets the External Video to Apple Firewire, then he used a XDCAM sequence w/ ProRes rendering. FCP then did a realtime down conversion to DV over firewire using RT Extreme or whatever they call it ….

take a look at page 8 of the New Features document found under the FCP > Help menu

[Jeremy Garchow]

SInce the inception of FCP6, you can play almost anything through firewire. It gets transcoded to dv on the fly.

Jeremy

OOPS. Sorry, should have refreshed before responding.

[Chris Babbitt]

Hmmm…

I thought Kevin said that he edited the sequence in a XDCAM timeline, then pasted the whole thing into a DV-NTSC timeline before rendering with ProRes. I tried the same thing and the resulting Self-Contained QT movie was no bigger than if I had rendered in DV. Wouldn’t the file have been much larger if it was rendered in ProRes?

ProRes is supposed to work with HDV or XDCAM only. Does that apply to sequences or just clips?

[Andy Mees]

Yup, I can see where you’re coming from Chris … just our different interpretations of the post I think. Not to worry.

Best
Andy

[Chris Babbitt]

So Andy, does ProRes work in a DV sequence or not?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Chris Babbitt] “So Andy, does ProRes work in a DV sequence or not?”

ProRes is a codec all it’s own. It is NOT only for HDV based material.

You can put ProRes clips in any timeline, but they will get transcoded to whatever the timeline is with a caveat. With HDV based material (XDCam or whatever), you can set the timeline to render all effects to ProRes and at that point, your media will be ProRes. Confused yet?

Jeremy

[Chris Babbitt]

OK, I think I got it, but once again, if you used ProRes for rendering woudn’t the resulting file be much larger than if you rendered with the DV codec? For instance, if I edit a 10 minute long XDCAM sequence and then drop that into a DV-NTSC sequence, render with ProRes and export that to a Self Contained QT file, shouldn’t the file size be much larger than 2 gigs?

[Andy Mees]

exactly … clear as mud 🙂

>does ProRes work in a DV sequence

ProRes is a quality intermediate codec that can be used to encode both HD and SD media, though most commonly and famously its being used for compressing HD sources to data files that retain the image quality yet at manageable file sizes … can it be used in a DV sequence? of course, but as Jeremy points out, when rendered it would be rendered to DV.

If you’re looking for some means to leverage the new codec with a DV workflow ythen ou might instead choose a ProRes SD Easy Setup, editing your DV native files in a ProRes timeline. Similarly you might instead take advantage of the Open Format Timeline to work with your DV clips in a DV50 or IMX50 timeline, both better codecs native vanilla DV.

Hope it helps
Andy