[Mohammed Naseer]

thanks once again, and if I may ask a dum question : if a camera shoots footage in h.264 or MPEG2 format then is that what we are referring to as the cameras ‘RAW footage’. Or is the raw footage, the footage that is extracted before it is encoded/compressed to h.264 or MPEG2 by the camera, i.e. uncompressed SDI, HDMI or component output directly from the camera’s optics and imager, before compression, captured by hardware such as MOTU HDX-SDI-EXPRESS or the Multibridge Eclipse by BlackMagic.

[Mohammed Naseer]

thank you for clarifying some of the confusion I had, just one point you mentioned above I didn’t quite fully understand :

As far as what’s the best RAW format for a camera to shoot in, I personally think that as long as it’s a pro RAW codec, then it’s OK by me

If possible could you illustrate by way of example please. Do you now the difference between the various ProRes types that are available and also is there any ADVANTAGE in converting the cameras raw file into ProRes for editing in FCPX when it is possible to edit the cameras native format without transcoding it to an intermediate FCPX friendly format.

[Mohammed Naseer]

I want to make a start in the world of video editing and have so far found this thread extremely useful in clarifying various terms which were confusing to me before. Please correct me if I am wrong but so far what I have understood is that h.264 is a delivery format which is convenient for the web/mobile devices etc. And that raw footage in AVCHD h.264 format is the best answer for very high quality sharp HD footage and it occupies less storage space (please fell free to jump in and correct me any time…) and FCPX can handle it natively but I am slightly confused if it should be transcoded to the intermediate ProRes codec for editing purposes – not sure what the pros and cons are for this. Once edited, according to my limited understanding, you can then encode it to h.264 format for delivery for web and devices but not sure if this is best route for producing High quality sharp footage for the web. Again what is the best delivery format for excellent quality HD footage for DVD type media.

If I am completely wrong in my assumptions can you please elaborate on what is the best raw format for a camera to shoot in, what should be the best intermediate format for FCPX for editing, and finally the best delivery formats for the web/mobile devices and for super sharp quality HD footage on DVD medium. I would be extremely grateful if you could kindly take the time to clarify these points for me please.

.

[Mohammed Naseer]

Yes, I forgot that you mentioned upscaling is done automatically in FCPX but the conversion should be done using ProRes in FCPX, but can you also do conversion in Motion5

[Mohammed Naseer]

Thanks so much, that actually made me understand the various different terms being used with some help from wikipedia 🙂

[Jeff Greenberg] If you place an SD clip in a motion template, you may have to scale the clip up to fit the HD size it was originally intended for.

→ can the scaling up be done by Motion5 or do you use some other software.

[Jeff Greenberg] So, don’t convert what you have (or let FCPX convert it.) If I were going to convert some Youtube Video manually, I’d either go uncompressed (HUGE FILE) or Compressed in ProRes (Apple’s Professional Resolution Codec, optimized for minimal quality loss).

→ When you say ‘go uncompressed’ you would I presume be meaning the original source file, which would be difficult to obtain that is if you are down loading from youtube . And when you mention ‘Compressed in ProRes’ this comes with both Motion5 and FCPX and then you would upscale it using ProRes from within FCPX or Motion5.

P.S: I am planning to purchase some training videos for both Motion5 and FCPX, but before I do that I am trying to get an idea if this is possible and are there any training videos/resources that you would recommend to me.

.

[Mohammed Naseer]

thank you for your reply, when you say scale it up to HD – do you mean for instance convert your SD footage to HD ( meaning H.264 ) format and then apply the 3rd party (1920 x 1080 ) HD template effects to your converted HD clip.

Secondly I am some what confused about different formats and codecs out there. For example I have a utility from iSkysoft which converts SD to an MP4 ( codecs : H.264, AAC, and resolution of 1280 x 720 ), but the third party templates are in 1920 x 1080 resolution and from my research on wikipedia h.264 means MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC yet iSkysoft utility converts it to h.264/AAC instead of h.264/AVC. Does all this matter or can FCPX convert it for me to the right format so that I can apply the 1920 x 1080 templates to it