Transcoded fr AVCHD to ProRes 422..and ProRes 422 files are a bit smaller size? (Using Edit Ready 2.0/ClipWrap)

[Noah Kadner]

Probably about the same bitrate- editready works fine. That said FCPX will transcode proxies automatically and also maintain a perfecr link to the original media. And you can edit while it’s transcoding, so a streamlined workflow.

Noah

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[Matt Wilson]

Noah,

Genius – you’re right that’s it! Pulled the Apple white paper on Target Data Rates for ProRes 422 @23.976 fps and it’s 117 Mb/s…and EditReady kicked out the ProRes at 110 Mb/s in line with Apple Target Data Rate. My original file was just a bit higher at 131 Mb/s. Those shots were from a hacked Panasonic GH2 with higher bitrate than standard factory standard of ~28 Mb/s.

Since I’m going from my original file at 131 Mb/s to ProRes 110 Mb/s, am I going to see a bit of a quality drop in the image quality? If so, I guess I could use EditReady to transcode to ProResHQ which comes in at ~176 Mb/s.

Thanks,
Matt

[Jeff Kirkland]

I’ll second that EditReady works really well and is a good investment. I use it daily.

I usually transcode to a higher bitrate than the original media on ingest but I’d be surprised if you can actually see any real difference between 130 and 117 given the codecs.

—-
Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer & Cinematographer
Hobart, Tasmania | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Matt Wilson]

Yeah, maybe need to run some tests with 422 vs 422 HQ and view on biggest screen I can access to see if noticeable.

Thanks.

[Noah Kadner]

Just a suggestion but making proxies outside of X and keeping those as your finishing media vs editing w internal proxies and finishing w the original h264a you might not see much difference in terms of final image quality. Whatever image quality lost in the initial capture to h264 won’t be recovered by wrapping a ProRes layer over it. And you’re adding a lot of extra workflow complexity in the process.

Noah

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[Joe Marler]

[Matt Wilson] “I have some AVCHD clips so I need to transcode to ProRes 422 to get best performance in FCPX. I got Edit Ready 2.0 software…I transcoded the files to ProRes 422, but the ProRes 422 files are actually a bit smaller than the original AVCHD files…I thought transcoding to ProRes 422 was supposed to increase the file size by about 3-4 times the original?…”

You possibly re-wrapped the files, not transcoded them. EditReady can do either, but rewrapping is normally preferred for AVCHD. It is much faster than transcoding and does not alter the true bit rate, although it’s conceivable the reported bit rate could vary based on how you’re inspecting that. Verify what you did and that you selected the rewrap (not transcode) option. That is in EditReady, top right of window, under “Preset”. It should say Rewrap.

On a decently-equipped editing machine you normally don’t need to transcode 1080p AVCHD or H264 content to optimized or proxy media to obtain good editing performance. After rewrapping the AVCHD files you can import those with “leave files in place”, which is very fast.

If the AVCHD files are “bare”, e.g, they’ve been removed from the AVCHD file bundle, you do *not* want to import those with “leave files in place”, since that can cause performance problems — unless they are first rewrapped with EditReady.

You have two main methods to handle the AVCHD content:

(1) If it’s within the AVCHD file bundle, import from FCPX. “Leave files in place” is not allowed in this case, and the media will be automatically re-wrapped and copied to the library.
(2) Rewrap with EditReady before Import. This works whether the AVCHD files are in the bundle or already removed. That makes the import much faster and enables the option of “leave files in place”, without any performance problems.

For either of the above, FCPX can optionally create proxy and/or optimized media during import or afterward. In general this isn’t necessary for 1080p content on a good machine.

[Matt Wilson]

Thanks for all the tips guys.