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SD compression for edit in Final Cut Pro 7
Hi forum; I’ve recently been shooting SD footage on a Panasonic SDR-S50 which hands me .MOD files. To work with these in Final Cut Pro 7 I have been converting them to .MOVs encoded with Apple ProRes 422, which obviously produces very big file sizes compared their original format.
I tried instead using DV in an attempt to produce smaller files, but the image quality was seriously reduced.
Could anyone recommend an SD editing format for these .MODs that will not reduce their already sketchy quality?
Thanks.
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4 Replies
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If ProRes makes too large of data files, and DV is too low quality…the only other option is DV50 (DVCPRO 50)
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
DVCPRO 50 seems to make even larger files than ProRes 422 but looks identical to the DV encode (I guess its extra oomph is wasted on SD material). Are those three really my only decent options for editing SD material in FCP7?
Also, one question regarding resolution: the files that the SDR-S50 produces are 720 x 576, and I output the ProRes encodes likewise at 720 x 576, however when previewing the files in VLC or otherwise, the originals appear shorter and wider than the re-encodes. Can anyone explain this?
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[Oliver Benton] ” Are those three really my only decent options for editing SD material in FCP7?”
You have 4 editing codecs for SD video in FCP 7.
1) DV
2) DV50
3) ProRes NTSC (or ProRes PAL)
4) Uncompressed.
Well…there’s a 5th, but it’s an offline (low res) version…Offline RT. Not meant for finishingAnything else and FCP won’t deal with it in real time, and you will have issues exporting or keeping sync. Hard drives are cheap…get larger ones.
[Oliver Benton] “when previewing the files in VLC or otherwise, the originals appear shorter and wider than the re-encodes. Can anyone explain this?”
The camera no doubt shoots ANAMORPHIC, meaning squeezed. This is how it saves on space, by compressing the image. Quite normal. Converting to ProRes makes it full frame (square pixels)…one of the reasons that it’s also larger. From a highly compressed, squeezed format to a full res editing codec, unsqueezed.
If you want to work with this footage natively, without converting at all…look at Adobe Premiere Pro.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Thanks Shane – much appreciated.
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