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ProRes LT for television
Hey everyone,
We shoot a lot of footage on the Panasonic HMC-150 at 720p60. We then transcode the AVCHD files to Pro Res 422 for post. Since AVCHD is a pretty compressed format, does anyone have any strong opinions about whether or not we would be okay just transcoding to 422 (LT) versus the 422? Smaller file sizes are helpful for us, but I don’t want to sacrifice any serious quality.
Thoughts?
Tucker Lucas
Production Manager
Heartland Poker Tour
tu****@****************ur.com -
4 Replies
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It comes down to how much movement is in the footage. Lots of fast action or a lot of fast camera movement will look better in the higher data rates of ProRes land… but if it’s not full of that, LT is a broadcast quality format and suitable for a lot of jobs as long as there isn’t a lot of fast movement, nor are you planning a lot of keying, green screen stuff etc.
I’d look at both side by side on the same clip which has the most movement in it, and see if you can see a difference.
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer, Producer, Writer, Director Editor, Gun for Hire and other things. I ski. My Blog: https://blogs.creativecow.net/Jerry-Hofmann
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Disk drives are cheap these days so I see no reason to use a lossy codec like LT when ProRes422 is virtually lossless and not that big.
An alternate would be an offline/ online workflow where you can use ProRes proxy to really make a space difference. Be wary about file based offline/ online workflows with L&T. I can recommend you watch both of Shane Ross’s tutorials on tapeless workflow.
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I am working in a TV series, we are shoting with the ag af100 with pl mount and converting it to Prores LT. It’s mainly people talking and from time to time we use a dolly for travelings and so far I haven’t seen anything wrong with the convertion. We made tests before we begin and could not find diferences betwen LT, 422 Prores and HQ. Maybe for a lot of action and keying you need HQ but if not stick to LT and save money on hard drives.
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While probably not a common workflow, we use LT to capture all of our direct feed video game footage which is used for both broadcast and web productions. For our needs LT holds up as well as regular ProRes in A/B tests and for the volume of footage we create (avg. 1-2TB a week) the smaller file size of LT is very beneficial.
But, to echo what others have said, if you are going to be doing a lot of manipulation in post (keying, heavy color correction, etc.,) then ProRes will give you more latitude. Assuming your source footage is high enough quality to begin with of course.
-Andrew
3.2GHz 8-core, FCP 6.0.4, 10.5.5
Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse (6.8.1)
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