[Craig Seeman]

I imagine the profit margins and sales were low compared to Noiseindustry’s FXFactory. I suspect they though FXCentral would generate ongoing revenue. With the release of RedGiant Universe, I don’t doubt Genarts saw no way to make it a go in this market.

Tangential but I’ve heard BorisFX is not particularly happy with Boris Continuum Complete for FCPX as well.

I honestly can’t imagine full Sapphire being released for FCPX unless Genarts is implying a major price drop.

[Craig Seeman]

MediaInfo is good and free.
https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Screenshots

BitRate Viewer (Windows Only) is interesting although seems to have been abandoned.
https://www.winhoros.de/docs/bitrate-viewer/

[Craig Seeman]

[Gary Huff] “You don’t have to do that from the 100Mbps footage either, at least not in my experience with it.”

Unless you’re doing multicam.
Modern NLEs handle H.264 GOP reasonably well with reasonable hardware if you’re just editing. ProRes will hold up better if you’re pushing a grade though.

[Craig Seeman]

[Nayeli Garci-Crespo] “What I meant is how worth it it is to edit them natively in FCP X,”

In FCPX you import native and can tell it to transcode to ProRes in the background (or not). You can have it transcode only clips used in multi cam or all clips.

[Craig Seeman]

If you use H.264 GOP, FCPX can transcode to ProRes in the background while you edit. Both PremierePro and FCPX handle it miles better than FCP7 though. My bias is that FCPX has the edge in multcam and background transcode but certainly some would argue PPro has an easier learning curve coming from FCP7.
Both handle H.264 GOP (and you know FCP7 really can’t) and, with GOP multicam, the systems’s “muscle” is going to be important. Interesting feature in FCPX is that you can transcode for multicam specifically whereas clips that are just being cut into a timeline and remain GOP.

[Craig Seeman]

[Gary Huff] “That’s true, but not at 4K.”

ProRes LT at 4k 24fps is 350Mbps I believe

Of course one might wonder to what extent one is going to work at 4K H.264 GOP and if you’re going to transcode to ProRes (even though FCPX does that while editing) that’s a step one doesn’t have to do from BMD.

[Craig Seeman]

[Gary Huff] “Except you don’t always need the power of ProRes or cDNG, and in those instances 100Mbps is a helluva lot nicer to move around than 800Mbps.”

I’d note that BMD cameras have ProRes Proxy through ProRes HQ. ProRes LT at 1080p23.98 is about 82Mbps at 10bit 422.

[Craig Seeman]

Yes, from what I understand only 1080 is Intra.

BTW I use Blackmagic (BMPCC) and considering the 4K. This is one of the reasons I’d choose the BMP4K because its cDNG or ProRes flavors at 4K and not 8 bit H.264 GOP. Of course the GH4 does have a lot of nice features going for it and the outputs can get you 10bit 422.

[Craig Seeman]

ProRes 4444 is YCbCrA or RGBA
ProRes 422 is YUV YCbCr

Apple ProRes White Paper
https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/Apple_ProRes_White_Paper.pdf

[Craig Seeman]

It’s possible to have all I Frame (no IBP GOP) H.264. Panasonic AVC Intra is an example. I believe that’s one of the options for recording in the GH4.