[Adam Claude jones]

Thanks for the reply Gary.

Your looking at this from the top down.

the first question is ‘what is my deliverable?” if its HD or less ProResHQ / Standard would be fine for Greenscreen work. Use 4444 when you need to maintain the alpha, as with graphics.

The deliverable is 35mm filmout and digital projection for movie theaters.

While Cineform is a great codec and recommended by me and others as the ideal codec for cross platform workflows, I do not feel that it is any “better” that ProRes HQ or 4X4.

What is the advantage of Cineform for cross platform?
While editing, keying and color grading will be done on a Mac, there may be some parts of composited on the Windows platform and they returned to Mac for editing finishing.

“Then capture direct at the camera and not from tape or cards, that will be the only way to achieve the highest quality of imagery you can.”

I’m not sure I was clear on my original post but this is exactly what we are doing. Capturing the 10bit 4:2:2 1920×1080 signal straight out of the camera’s SDI to a computer. Just want to make sure I capture it at the best quality possible (codec?) short of fully uncompressed which will be unpractical for us.

Thanks.

[Adam Claude jones]

Yeah, since I use mostly H264 from 5D and 7D cameras and XDCAM EX and HDCAM HD, I think it would be a good idea converting it all to proress before editing. Do you convert XDCAM to proress too or edit natively?

[Adam Claude jones]

So you advice converting all media to proress before editing in FCP?
Will that make it RT or at least more RT?

By the way, I heard it’s better to use Media Manager to convert because Compressor introduces a gamma shift. But how do you go about using Media Manager for that?

“ProRes can also be set to the be the rendering codec of other timelines, such as XDCAM so you can edit natively in XDCAM but have all your renders in ProRes. “

But XDCAM is no longer really native right? Sine you need to convert it to QT to import it to FCP. Is it still XDCAM then?
Also would setting the render only to proress be the same quality as converting to proress before editing? And do H264 (canon 5D and 7D)have that option as well? Thanks.

[Adam Claude jones]

It’s 1080p. I thought there was no reason to use HQ 422, so I use HQ. Proress will always not

[Walter Biscardi] “Your timeline settings probably don’t match your Clip settings”.

With proress the timeline will always not match the clips as proress is not a camera or recording format, so what is the point?

[Adam Claude jones]

By the way I have my sequence set to proress HQ. I thought proress was supposed to speed things up and was exactly made to mix and match since it’s an intermediate codec.

[Adam Claude jones]

Well, haven’t used Vegas for a while, but if memory serves me well Vegas will playback anything you throw at it in real time. Do transitions, FX and everything in real time. Now I think FCP is better in many other ways but in RT it seems Vegas beats it hands down and I was running it on a older laptop. i guess i just got spoiled.

[Adam Claude jones]

Well, yeah, I have multiple formats in there. But this should be no excuse. I mean, there are other apps that mix and match and do real time.

[Adam Claude jones]

Where’s the setting? I couldn’t find under system settings or user preferences. Thanks.

[Adam Claude jones]

I rendered a preview and the movie doesn’t play. The preview was set to full render so I guess it is not working?
Maybe it is down to the range start and end settings or the movie start frame and end frame settings? I just set the frame I wanted the movie to start and to end playing on those fields.

[Adam Claude jones]

Thanks again. Now I found all the settings you mentioned.
But I can’t gt it to work. The video doesn’t play. I did all you said. I also tried setting the range start and end, then movie start frame and end frame and both together. The video doesn’t play. I’m sure I’m doing something wrong but I can#t figure what.