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To ProRes or not to ProRes?
Hi all,
I’m editing a very low budget feature film project.
I currently have 1 TB of footage (direct from the camera 5D .mov and AVCHD from a Panasonic AF 101 and clipwrapped to .mov).
I have read that I should encode to ProRes to ease the load on my machine, but there’s no way I can afford the space at the moment.
1 possibility is doing the edit and then copying the project to another location along with only the used footage (in adobe project manager) and then converting only the used footage to ProRes.
Do you think that would work?
Does the ProRes only really aid the running of my machine (i.e. by the time I’ve done the edit I’ll be over the worst of it) or will it even make a difference if I were to just finish and grade the project from the camera .movs?
I guess I’m rambling a little here, but what does everybody think about the benefits of using ProRes files to edit and grade vs the native camera files.
Thanks in advance!!
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11 Replies
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You will get a better performance for colorgrading and effects with ProRes.
Also there could be an issue with sync if you need to export EDL from AVCHD footage…– No Parking Production –
2 x Finalcut Studio3, 2 x Prod. bundle CS6, 2 x MacPro, 2 x ioHD, Ethernet File Server w. X-Raid…. and FCPX on trial
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Dont know what your system specs are but FWIW I’ve had no issues cutting with raw AVCHD footage from start to finish (including FX and grading) in PrP. You don’t even need to rewrap.
Cameron Clendaniel
Film Editor, NYC
718-254-8027
cam@camclendaniel.com
http://www.camclendaniel.com -
Don’t know about PC, but the new Pr CC seems to be much more responsive with AVCHD material on Mac.
– No Parking Production –
2 x Finalcut Studio3, 2 x Prod. bundle CS6, 2 x MacPro, 2 x ioHD, Ethernet File Server w. X-Raid…. and FCPX on trial
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Thanks for that. I rewraped the AVCHD because I couldn’t rename the files. I’m collaborating on the edit and need the files to all have unique names. Even renaming files in Prelude CC leaves the files names called 0001/0002/0003 etc.
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The new Prelude CC lets you rename files with your own names, and sequential numbering. Also checkout the easy way to make sub clips and append notes.
– No Parking Production –
2 x Finalcut Studio3, 2 x Prod. bundle CS6, 2 x MacPro, 2 x ioHD, Ethernet File Server w. X-Raid…. and FCPX on trial
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Thanks Morten. I eagerly awaited that function but it didn’t rename the actual AVCHD files. They were renamed within the Prelude CC project, but the actual files in the folders were still called the native camera filenames (in my case every card started at 0001). I’ll avoid using AVCHD again because it’s been a bit of a headache.
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If you ask Prelude to copy your files to another location, it will rename with your settings. Also you can use this step to trim your files if you choose to Transcode.
– No Parking Production –
2 x Finalcut Studio3, 2 x Prod. bundle CS6, 2 x MacPro, 2 x ioHD, Ethernet File Server w. X-Raid…. and FCPX on trial
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Thanks, I copied everything to another location during the rename process.
Prelude copied and renamed the .movs from the 5D exactly as you suggested, but copied the AVCHD and kept the old indistinct names, despite me selecting the appropriate renaming options. You’re right, transcoding would have done it, but I didn’t want to make ProRes at that stage or potentially lose quality by transcoding my master files to another format.
Running the AVCHD files through clipwrap (making them .movs) and then renaming with Prelude CC and copying to another folder was the only way I could get it to work.
A peculiarity of AVCHD I’m guessing. Something to do with the folder structure. Before Prelude CC came out I tired renaming in bridge but that lost all association to the metadata within the AVCHD folder structure. I thought that Prelude would have a clever way of renaming and copying the files whilst keeping the timecode/metadata, but I think i’ve lost it all anyway. It’s not a big deal to me, but it’s certainly frustrating to loose those options straight away. -
By the way, have you tried actually editing the Clip-wrapped AVCHD .MOV files in Premiere Pro yet? When I did this (at least with 5.5) it was very sluggish and basically unusable for editing. I only did the wrapping so I could export the XML to use for Pluraleyes (I did find a better way later – render and replace audio). I think this has to do with how Premiere used a Apple quicktime engine to decode the AVCHD (which it does badly).
Anyway, just a FYI for you. I also have tons of footage with AVCHD but organize them by a unique parent directory and put the whole AVCHD structure in there. I would suggest you do that if your collaboration is with another Premiere Pro editor. Premiere Pro CC works well with AVCHD so far for me. So did 5.5 – 6 had a bug with spanned files so I skipped that version.
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Thanks for that Keith,
I did do a little bit of poo when I first read your response, but I have done some basic editing with the clipwrapped footage and it handles okay in PPCC. The native AVCHD never performed brilliantly in CS6 anyway. There was always a moment of no audio and panicking thinking I’d not recorded audio when it was redrawn and audible some time later.
I fear it may be too late to go back to the original AVCHD files anyway.
Do you know if they are still AVCHD underneath the .mov? (I have a very limited knowledge of how they actually work underneath the various file names etc. I know there are codecs and container files, but beyond that, not so much).
If the clipwrapped files are not performing well I guess my only option is to buy a huge hard drive and prores them all. (sigh)
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