Angelo Lorenzo
Forum Replies Created
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Lets take a step back, because you’re getting information from a bunch of places and it sounds like you don’t have a basic foundation of what’s going on.
Read this, I wrote it and I think it’ll help you understand a lot https://www.fallenempiredigital.com/blog/2013/02/08/a-guide-to-common-video-formats-containers-compression-and-codecs/
First, you have Sony XDCAM footage. So what the heck is XDCAM? Is it a container, is it a video format, orrrrr? XDCAM is just branding for Sony’s cameras. The footage you are dealing with is the MPEG4 Container, MPEG2 video, and uncompressed audio. This combination of settings is part of the XDCAM “system”.
When you bring it over to Mac and use it in Final Cut, Final Cut is taking the audio and video out of the MPEG4 container and sticking it in a MOV (Quicktime container). It’s like slicing the hard cover off a book and gluing on a soft cover: the contents are exactly the same. Final Cut does this because it’s built on Quicktime and only likes Quicktime based media. It’s not that it’s adding any special sauce, it’s just making the footage easier to work with a program that is old.
Now we have MPEG2 video and uncompressed audio in an MOV container. The codec (what reads and writes) for MPEG2 isn’t, by default, installed with Quicktime Pro so you need https://www.calibratedsoftware.com/QXD.asp if you decided to keep using the MOV files.
MPEG2 as a camera format is usually intraframe, meaning that each frame stands alone and doesn’t need information from surrounding frames to be read. This makes it suitable for editing even on machines a few good years old.
If you’re using Premiere Pro on both Mac and PC with no expectations to go back to Final Cut for anything, just edit the camera originals. My original advice about rewrapping the footage from MOV back to MPEG4 was based on the fact that camera originals may not have been available to you.
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Angelo LorenzoNeed to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
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[Andi Wand] I tried, but unfortunately it doesn’t work. On the computer where I started the project the interpetation stays the same, even when I rename/delete the RMD. On any other computer it displays the footage as shot (without any interpretation). This suggests that the interpretation rules are not stored in the project file.
It does. If you reinterpret RAW settings in After Effects, it forces you to save your project. A byte-by-byte compare also shows changes from this single action like editing the exposure. My educated guess is that it’s sensitive to be overwritten when moved to other systems.
Regardless, I would just edit the RAW settings within AE. It uses RED’s interface and you don’t have to deal with renaming metadata.
[Andi Wand] “No offence, but I doubt this. Even when you work without masks. If you have time I can send you a project with a single take and the corresponding r3d-file. You send me the project back, with the same result, without stacking. Maybe I can learn something.. or you..”
No. You may like the contrast response some level of this stacking does, but you aren’t creating detail out of nothing; Your’re brightening or darkening existing pixel detail.
The only RED footage that has a ton of data you can’t see is HDRx, and only if you export the video as an OpenEXR sequence.
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Angelo LorenzoNeed to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks
Can your post production question fit in a tweet? Follow me on Twitter -
f you have the camera originals, there is no need to use FFMPEG. The reason I suggested it was to revert the MOV files you have to something close as to what they should come originally.
In regards to “MOV being easier to edit” in this situation it’s a no. Both approaches are still using the original MPEG2 compression. It doesn’t sound like there was any conversion to something like ProRes. Even still, on modern computers the computing power needed between MPEG2 and ProRes probably won’t make the case for having an extra copy of footage in ProRes.
Yes, you will have to live with conforming audio. This is how Premiere mixes audio efficiently.
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Angelo LorenzoNeed to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks
Can your post production question fit in a tweet? Follow me on Twitter -
1. Menu > Edit > Keyboard shortcuts. Next/Prev clip is up and down, you can change this to your liking and even search within keyboard shortcuts to find other things to customize.
2. This is called add edit Ctrl+K by default (option+K on the Mac I suppose), you can customize this. It will only cut active lanes on the timeline.
3. The razorblade will cut on the playhead if your cursor is within reasonable distance (3-4 millimeters, so if you get it on the playhead position roughly, Premiere knows what you want). There will be no physical snapping of your cursor.
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Angelo LorenzoNeed to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks
Can your post production question fit in a tweet? Follow me on Twitter -
How was the footage shot? 5600K or 3200/3400K? A good technique for 3400K is to shoot with a blue filter, this reduces noise generated from having to white balance color channels.
I would also learn how to pull an inside key and an outside key. This works a lot better than trying to slam the footage with one hard keying setting… it lets you dial in edges more gently. Really poor shots benefit from garbage masking as well.
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Angelo LorenzoNeed to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks
Can your post production question fit in a tweet? Follow me on Twitter -
Grab ffmpeg and use it in the commandline, something to the effect of
ffmpeg.exe -i input.mov -vcodec copy -acodec copy output.mp4
This tells FFMPEG to copy the video and audio into a new wrapper. Premiere Pro on Mac should read these files just fine. XDCAM, in half of the cameras, comes out natively as an MP4 file, it’s Final Cut that is forcing the weirdness in this setup.
As it stands now, Quicktime on Windows doesn’t have the video codec so that’s why you’re only hearing audio in Premiere.
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Angelo LorenzoNeed to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks
Can your post production question fit in a tweet? Follow me on Twitter -
Correction: “putting physical tracking dots on the phone”
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Angelo LorenzoNeed to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks
Can your post production question fit in a tweet? Follow me on Twitter -
Xdvb is just the 4FourCC code for XDCAM footage wrapped in an MOV container. XDCAM is, usually, MPEG2 video and Quicktime doesn’t come with that codec out of the box; It’s an additional purchase on Windows if I recall correctly.
Just get something like MPEG Streamclip to rewrap the file into the MP4 container and you should be all set. Stupid but true. https://www.squared5.com/
Rewrapping is just changing the container, so the process should be quick. You don’t have to recompress the footage in any way.
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Angelo LorenzoNeed to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks
Can your post production question fit in a tweet? Follow me on Twitter -
A lot of people are noting CUDA and OpenCL issues with 10.8.3 for Resolve and Assimilate Scratch. NVidia released some new drivers but doesn’t entirely fix the issue. I’ve had one person complain to me that After Effects wasn’t working as well as it could. I might hold off on this update for a few weeks; The Assimilate Scratch team suggests not updating for the time being as well.
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Angelo LorenzoNeed to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks
Can your post production question fit in a tweet? Follow me on Twitter -
From my experience full length programs are delivered on HDCam SR for HD delivery. I haven’t worked with anyone who delivers to a cable or broadcast network file-based.
Commercials are a bit all over the place. Averaging all of them, I usually see requests around 30mbps to 50mbps since many broadcasters or cable networks that interject local commercials will take file based media.
HDCAM SR tapes allow programs up to 2 hours. I’ve never worked at a station but I assume you can do tape switching during commercial breaks so a deliver may be split.
As far as 2K and 4K films, these are delivered to cinemas as DCP files on hard drives. JPEG2000 based compression, very large files.
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Angelo LorenzoNeed to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks
Can your post production question fit in a tweet? Follow me on Twitter