[Ryan Holmes]

[Greg Jones] ” I just had to tell MacOSX to treat monitor 3 as a 1080p video monitor. “

So your one graphics card is driving 3 monitors? What’s your playback performance like in Premiere? Or in Resolve (if you use it)?

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

Evan – what’s the data rate of your h.264 file? “High quality” doesn’t really get too specific. The higher the data rate the better the picture for h.264, generally speaking. Now keep in mind that h.264 is a good delivery codec but it is highly compressed.

Also, what are you viewing your exported footage on? Projector? Computer screen? Broadcast monitor? What is your original ingested material (size, codec, frame rate, etc). I’m asking because many things to into making your final product. Just wondering if something got over looked somewhere.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

Nothing really special about it (it’s awesome camera, I mean the codec it shoots). It’s a h.264 .mov file and Premiere 5.5 or 6 will handle it natively.

If you’re doing basic editing staying native is fine. If you plan on going out to other apps like Resolve, Smoke, Avid, etc. then transcoding the footage to a mezzanine codec is recommended so the other apps play nicely. Using either DNxHD or ProRes are the most commonly utilized intermediate codecs on the market today.

Enjoy the new gear!

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

Uncompressed is an option or Motion JPEG. You could also use a DNxHD codec in Quicktime format. The Mac user will need to download the Avid codecs (free) and install them.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

[Angelo Lorenzo] “Also, with your system specs in your post, I would lean more towards ProRes.”

I agree with Angelo here. It may or may not save you time, but you’re going there anyway at some point it sound like (master file). ProRes tends to play very, very well on the Mac.

[Chris Borjis] “I can’t think of any good reason NOT to edit native in Premiere.”

There are several good reasons to transcode to a mezzanine codec like DNxHD or ProRes). For instance, playing well with other softwares further down the pipeline (Resolve, Smoke, etc.). Or that mezzanine codecs like the ones listed stand up better to multiple generations of recompression (i.e. graphics, compositing, color grading, etc). Or if you have to move around to other NLE’s throughout your process, Avid, FCP7/X, etc.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

[jesse mendelson] “On a May 2012 IMAC, editing off a thunderbolt drive, FCP 7.”

[jesse mendelson] “Also – in addition to transcoding the 5D and 7D, should I transcode the other footage so I am editing everything in one format…?”

Editing in FCP7, I would most definitely conform all footage to one resolution, one codec, and one frame rate. This will help in FCP as well as when you hand it off for color grading in Resolve.

Given your editing platform, ProRes would be a natural fit for you (either (LT) or standard ProRes depending on space limitations).

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

I’m sure this is going to open up a huge discussion, but suffice it to say that either of the monitors you’re viewing your footage on are not reliable gauges of color or luminance. Each are calibrated differently, have different response curves, etc. The only way to know for sure is to use a properly calibrated broadcast monitor with scopes.

Did you have any scopes running during your shoot? Trusting the LCD of a camera is a pretty dangerous way to live! 😉 The LCD’s on most (if not all cameras) tend to be pretty cheap and a poor representation of what the sensor is actually getting (especially if you dialed up the brightness setting on your LCD). If you have a histogram, vectorscope, or waveform it would show you what is actually happening.

Have you looked at the footage in anything else besides FCP?

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

Shoot only the shots you need as slow-mo at 720p60. Use whichever software your comfortable with to conform or interpret that to 24p. Shoot your standard footage as 1080p24. Upscale the 720p60 footage to 1080 and edit away.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

Where do you store your media files? External drive? How is it connected (Firewire, USB, eSata)? How full is it?

If you’re storing media on your internal boot drive, that’s a pretty big no-no. Your boot drive should be just that – a boot drive for the OS and your apps. Media, cache files, preview files, etc should live on a separate drive (preferably a RAID).

Keep in mind that you are using a AVCHD based codec with NX5. Provided you havne’t transcoded the footage to something else (DNxHD, ProRes, etc.) then the computer is having to do a lot of decoding and processing to show you that image in realtime. If you start stacking multiple layers on there and effects it’s asking quite a bit from your CPU and GPU all in realtime.

So you have a few routes:
(1) Add a storage array designed to deliver good speeds for video editing (you can look at companies like G-Tech, Lacie, Promise, etc.)
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/newsLetter/Understanding-RAID.jsp
(2) Reduce playback quality in Premiere. Instead of playing back at full-quality, drop it to half or 1/4 while editing. For export, obviously use full-quality. But for just cutting and doing FX you can drop the quality so as to maintain realtime playback
(3) Move away from AVCHD as your codec, instead move towards a Mezzaine codec that works well – DNxHD (since you’re on a PC is probably the best choice). Motion JPEG is also an option.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

I agree with Sean. RAM and a CUDA enabled GPU will really help in terms of speed, rendering, and exporting. The more you can afford the better. Adobe programs love RAM. An Nvidia card would release the power of the Adobe code in terms of playback and rendering/exporting. If you’re going to upgrade to CS Next it might be worth waiting to see if they support your current card better in that release. If you plan on staying on CS6 then definitely RAM and GPU.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost