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Transcoding to ProRes 422 LT for Optimised Media
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[Bill Davis] “Not the way the world works. Ask any retailer about “efficient assortment” – one path to failure has always been to offer too many choices.”
Tell that to Jerry’s Deli…
🙂
[Bill Davis] “Next time I’m in LA I’ll buy you lunch.”
At Jerry’s Deli! The menu will keep you involved for hours. Like reading WAR AND PEACE. And that place is DOOMED to fail.
[Bill Davis] “Maybe I can get you drunk enough so that I can get you thinking about (seriously) trying X for yourself beyond the tire kicking stage.”
HA! This is an Avid town, and I’ll be on that. Premiere is doing all the other stuff I need, and offers workflows I’m familiar with, and native editing. BUT, if you are buying all those drinks, I’ll be on board. Unless you slip me a mickey, and I wake up in front of FCX…
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Pro Res LT comes in at about 70% of the file size of full 422.
From Apple’s white paper on ProRes (2009):
“(ProRes LT) balances incredible image quality with small file sizes, and is perfect for digital broadcast environments where storage capacity and bandwidth are often at a premium. Apple ProRes 422 (LT) is ideal for live multi-camera and on-location productions where large amounts of footage are acquired to disk. The low data rate of Apple ProRes 422 (LT) also makes it an excellent choice for transcoding complex camera codecs like AVCHD.”
“Apple ProRes 422 (Proxy) is intended for draft-mode or preview uses where low data rates are required, yet full-resolution video is desired. It is the ideal format for use in offline editing workflows with Final Cut Server. The traditional offline-to-online workflow with Final Cut Pro has relied on the Offline RT codec, but today’s HD workflows demand offline video formats that support native frame size and aspect ratio. Apple ProRes 422 (Proxy) supports full 1920 x 1080 and 1280 x 720 resolutions, enabling full HD resolution while editing, and accurate representation of FCP motion effects from the creative stages through finishing.“
Sounds like Apple made a judgement call: HD capacity is going up and getting cheaper (not SSD), Proxy is good enough for multicam, so the reasons for LT are fewer and fewer.
I understand the feeling at its loss (I lament the passing of DV, in all its 8-bit glory) but I like the ProRes/ProRes Proxy workflow for multicam, plain Prores for anything complex, and AVCHD for simple cuts-only edits.
I have come around to Larry Jordan’s way of thinking (published 12 November 2013):
“Rather than buy a large, internal SSD drive, I plan to spend a small fortune on a high-speed, fully-loaded Thunderbolt RAID 5 with a minimum of 8 drives. THAT provides all the storage and performance I need — even for editing 2K multicam clips containing up to 30 angles!”All I need is a small fortune. I’ve heard the best way to get that is to start with a large fortune, open a post-production house…
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[Shane Ross] “BUT, if you are buying all those drinks, I’ll be on board. Unless you slip me a mickey, and I wake up in front of FCX…”
Sure, but in my brain, that’s the rough equivalent of being drugged at your grandmothers house – and waking up front row center at a production of Carmina Burana with the NewYork Philharmonic, and a choir of 1000 – all set in the ruins of the Parthenon – in a production staged by Danny Boyle working with an unlimited budget.
It might be disorienting at first. But the smart folk figure out fast just to settle back and enjoy the ride.
BTW, I’ve actually eaten at Jerrys quite a few times – and while the menu is totally cool, I nearly always just end up ordering the brisket on a roll with mayo and tomato. (Gentile special?)
Go figure.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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Bad reason to move away from Avid seeing as you can transcode to Prores LT or Dnx100 in the background whilst making selects and editing. Not saying you should cut in Avid, but wouldn’t want anyone to think there was an advantage there with FCP X since this feature just became available in MC 7. I am in the same boat wanting the whole pipeline to go through Prores LT which is how my client is currently doing it in FCP 7.
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In this discussion It is good too go back the the ProRes white paper:
– “While the ability to produce high-quality output is a key attribute of image and video codecs, it is quality preservation—or fidelity—that is the actual goal of a codec. … If an image sequence has visible artifacts to begin with, Apple ProRes will perfectly preserve these artifacts … The goal of every Apple ProRes family member is to perfectly preserve the quality of the original image source, be it good or bad.”FIDELITY on the first generation and mostly through multi “reencoding” (renders) is key to understand this choice.
I have been doing many test on ProRes, DnxHD codecs and many others , just to conclude that that ProRes is slightly superior to DnxHD as far as Fidelity is concerned…but let us stay in the ProRes arena, looking at the “PSNR Comparison – Apple ProRes 422 Family” graphic it is quite obvious that the minimum bitrate to correctly preserve quality should not be under that of the ProRes 422 ( typically 147mbs )
I believe this is the RIGHT choice that was made as far as preserving QUALITY in FCPX (this also applies in avid :it is not a good idea to go under Dnx145 ). LT can be a correct choice for output but certainly not for editing-rendering, HQ is pretty good and about perfect , but 4444 is just fabulous for the big screen (DCP).
just my understanding
ZAP
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[Zachary Potter] “it is quite obvious that in the minimum bitrate to correctly preserve quality should not be under 422.”
Did you leave something out of this sentence? 4:2:2 is not a bitrate…unless you meant 422Mbps.
Not even HQ hits that.
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Previous post updated to your request … I whish I could write in my own language but that would make things worst for you all.
Cheers
ZAP
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In playing with a few things to add a comment to this thread, I went and flipped the proxy switch, which usually knocks everything off line. Instead, nothing happened. I don’t have any proxy material, so I said, well maybe x got smarter. So made a proxy clip of some of my media on my timeline. I checked and it is transcoded in the proxy folder. The one little clip. Then I switched to proxy playback again. Nothing. Everything still online. Revealing what clip is being used for that one proxy clip, shows that the original is still being used. Even though playback settings are proxy. So I quit X and start it up again. It magically switched itself to regular playback, not proxy. I switched again and quit again and it set itself back. It refused to go to proxy mode. Anyone else seeing this in mavericks? Is it just my machine that’s broke?
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I just did many hours of proxy for a multicam and it was working normally under Mavericks.
Dajen Productions, Santa Barbara, CA
MacPro 3.2GHz Quad Core – AJA Kona LHe+
FCS 3 OS X 10.7.4
FCP X, Logic Pro, Squeeze, Filemaker 10.8.3 -
[Martin Curtis] “All I need is a small fortune. I’ve heard the best way to get that is to start with a large fortune, open a post-production house…
“Quote of the week!
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