proxy codec

[Ryan Holmes]

“Best” intermediate codec can be debated endlessly. The ones most people standardize to are:

(1) DNxHD – read/write works on Mac or PC.

(2) ProRes – read/write on Mac, read-only on PC.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Grzegorz Kwiatkowski]

Will DNxHD proxies work faster and smoother? Will they work well on older laptop?

Can I convert HD footage to SD proxies and then easely relink them to original HD footage? Will Adobe Premiere resize the footage automatically?

What codec would you use for such proxies? Would you recommend Avid DV?

[Paul Neumann]

I don’t use proxies anymore. I just lower the resolution of the program monitor.

[Grzegorz Kwiatkowski]

I dont’t use it neither on my desktop. However sometimes I would like to use my laptop during trips.

[Jorn Bergmans]

DNxHD or ProRes won’t matter much in terms of editing / scrubbing speed – they’re both all I-frame codes with a similar bitrate.
If you are on a Mac I’d suggest ProRes as it’s Apple’s own intermediate codec and the support is superb in all software. If you’re on Windows, I’d say DNxHD because there’s no ProRes encoder available for Windows.

You can convert the footage to SD and then relink them, just make sure your proxy media has the same name as the original media.
Premiere will most likely _not_ automatically resize the footage, but you can change your sequence settings from SD to HD and they will line up on the frame if sizing is set to 100%

For any proxy you’re best off using an intermediate like ProRes or DNxHD, no matter if it’s SD or HD media. In this day and age I would not recommend using DV as it does not use a square pixel aspect ratio. (and that might complicate things with frame sizes etc when you relink your footage to the online material)