Re-ingesting EXCAM footage at ProRes 422 (HQ)

[Chris Borjis]

I’ve been doing a lot of EX XDCAM lately.

What I would suggest is editing in EX but change the render codec to ProRes in the sequence settings.

This makes it a lot less time consuming render and export wise as well as maintaining image quality.

I wouldn’t waste time transcoding everything, but thats how i work.

[Richard Cooper]

I agree with Chris, edit XDAM and set render co-dec to ProRes.

“Will it (encoding XDCAM to ProResHQ) raise the quality?”

BTW… encoding to ProRes HQ is a waste of time and hard drive space unless you are working with a 10 bit or 2K/4K project. You will see no “raise in quality” by doing this. The damage has been done at this point. If you really want to improve the quality from the XDCAM co-dec, get yourself a KiPro and record straight to ProRes 422 and bypass the XDCAM compression all together. Otherwise you are just putting 3 gallons in a 10 gallon bucket. It is still 3 gallons. And Color can render out to ProRes, so stay XDCAM, send to color and your graded final will then be ProRes with as little conversions as possible to get there.

Good Luck!!

Richard Cooper
FrostLine Productions, LLC
Anchorage, Alaska
http://www.frostlineproductions.com

[Jason Blalock]

Thanks guys. Follow-up question: Is there a guide on CreativeCow (or elsewhere) with recommended workflows from EX-1 (or HVX) to FCP? Because a few fellow Bay Area editors have told me to ingest everything at ProRes 422 (HQ), but now I’m hearing that’s a waste of drive space, and makes no difference. These six hours of XDCAM footage are the beginning of a documentary, with many hours of footage to come, and I think it would be smart to consult guidelines so I start out right. But since Sony and Panasonic and Apple are all separate companies, it’s tricky to know where to turn. Any leads?

-Jason

[Chris Borjis]

just use xdcam transfer (a separate free app from sony)to convert them for fcp and set the sequence to render in prores.

it’s that simple.