[Gary Huff]

[Paul Neumann] “I have it on two machines and hardly ever use it.”

I have it on two machines as well, but I use it about 50% of the time.

[Gary Huff]

[Craig Seeman] “Unless you’re doing multicam.”

A fast RAID storage is going to make the biggest difference here.

[Gary Huff]

[Nayeli Garci-Crespo] “What I meant is how worth it it is to edit them natively in FCP X, not FCP 7!”

You should have no problem working in FCPX with them.

[Gary Huff]

[Nayeli Garci-Crespo] “and are trying to determine how worth it it is to be able to edit the GH4 files natively to avoid having to transcode everything to ProRes.”

You won’t be able to. FCP7 cannot muster the power to do it, no matter what you shoot at. If it’s not DVCPRO HD, XDCam, DV, or ProRes, you simply cannot work with the footage on the timeline without doing a lot of rendering of that timeline.

[Gary Huff]

[Craig Seeman] “that’s a step one doesn’t have to do from BMD.”

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

And even if you do, at the end of the day you’re only backing up 100Mbps clips and not 350Mbps and higher.

[Gary Huff]

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

That’s true, but not at 4K.

[Gary Huff]

[Craig Seeman] “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.”

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.

The GH4 with a Shogun may (if rumors hold true) give you cDNG recording, in addition to ProRes, in addition to 4K AVCHD (which is essentially what it is) so that you can adjust the amount of record space with the requirements of the job at hand.

You also get removable internal batteries, longer battery life, a higher quality and articulating LCD screen, better low-light performance, slow-motion at 1080, ability to format media in camera/in the Shogun, picture profiles (limited though they may be), less FPN, and media that is not blazing hot when you remove it from the camera/recorder.

On the flip side, the Blackmagic 4K is available now, doesn’t require the use of an external recorder for ProRes/cDNG (though its built-in display leaves a lot to be desired, so I’ve always paired the Blackmagics with an external monitor), and has a Super 35-sized sensor EF-mount with global shutter (the GH4 does suffer from rolling shutter artifacting if you enjoy doing whip pans).

[Gary Huff]

[Nayeli Garci-Crespo] “Thanks! What about 1080… any difference between the all-intra H264 and the lower bit rate options?”

The highest quality will be the IPB 1080 modes (the 100Mbps ones). IPB is a more efficient encode of H.264 over Intra, and yet, surprisingly, the bitrate is roughly the same at 24/25/30p between the two. Only 60p starts to hit that upper limit.

So Intra will be easier on your system, but IPB will be better visual quality.

Whether or not you can actually notice any difference between the two really requires some testing on your end. It’s not quite a slam dunk, admittedly.

[Gary Huff]

[David Mathis] “From there export out as same resolution as original media in ProRes codec, usually 422 HQ”

Is this REDCODE, Arri Raw, Canon Raw, or CinemaDNG?

How often do you use secondaries and power windows?

[Gary Huff]

[Steve Connor] ”
Surely it’s just good manners?”

Emily Post put something in the mail for you.