D800 Workflow : editing and final export (questions).

[kede]

Hi everyone,

I use to work with "real" video & film camera. And I just bought my first DSLR for video the Nikon D800.
I'm not familiar with DSLR workflow.

Home, where I'll be editing my D800 clips, I run Adobe Premiere PRO CS5.5 (probably upgrade it to CS6 soon) and Avid Media Composer 6 for some bigger work. Everything on PC Computer.

As the compression from the camera is H264 Long Gop, I transcode my D800 clips to a Blackmagic codec and edit it this way.
Is my workflow correct? How can I improve it?

Other question : I can't compress to H264 my final export well. Always, using the same bitrate, 2 passes, the result looks bad.
When I compare the H264 straight from the camera and the export (even without adding any effects) I lose lots of detail. The IQ is a ton lower. (I use Adobe Media Encoder)

Is there a way to have almost the same quality with my final H264 export?

If you have some tips! It would be perfect!

Thanks a lot. (Sorry if my english is not perfect)

[kede]

In other words. How can I obtain a final H264 export of my edit, with the same IQ, details, gamma (no gamma shift), file size, etc that the clips created by the camera?

[Samuel H]

* CS5 and later doesn't need transcoding. You'll actually get slightly better IQ if you work with the original clips. When you import them to Premiere or AE, the're put on a 4:4:4 high-bit-depth world. (no idea if Avid can do that too, probably not)

* To avoid the gamma shift, you can export to H.264 files with very high bitrate (or maybe even to uncompressed), then recompress using handbrake, which is a free little program that creates some very nice MKV+H.264 files that play very nice almost everywhere. I haven't tried this workflow with unaltered footage, to see if I'm losing IQ. I certainly should...

[ripupthehwy]

CS5 and later doesn't need transcoding. You'll actually get slightly better IQ if you work with the original clips. When you import them to Premiere or AE, the're put on a 4:4:4 high-bit-depth world. (no idea if Avid can do that too, probably not)

I hear people saying this but I have found not true in every case. I work at a tv station that has a 1yr old mac pro tower (128gig ram, xeon quad core processor, cuda enabled quadro 4000 video card) and it does NOT play back my .mov files in Premiere 5.5 (captured from my Nikon D800) without lots of sputtering and freezing. Not editable at all. I also have FCP 7 on the computer. It plays smoothly but once you add effects to the clip same issue. SO i must convert files to something else to edit.

Across the hall is a PC (brand new) with i7 quad core processor and exact same issue in Premiere 5.5.

I see some are having success and I haven't tried the new CS6 preimiere (i really hope it is smoother that 5.5) But so far no cigar here.

[AdvanTech]

I hear people saying this but I have found not true in every case. I work at a tv station that has a 1yr old mac pro tower (128gig ram, xeon quad core processor, cuda enabled quadro 4000 video card) and it does NOT play back my .mov files in Premiere 5.5 (captured from my Nikon D800) without lots of sputtering and freezing. Not editable at all. I also have FCP 7 on the computer. It plays smoothly but once you add effects to the clip same issue. SO i must convert files to something else to edit.

Across the hall is a PC (brand new) with i7 quad core processor and exact same issue in Premiere 5.5.

I see some are having success and I haven't tried the new CS6 preimiere (i really hope it is smoother that 5.5) But so far no cigar here.

I had this problem as well until I googled it and found out Adobe is aware of this issue, and it's just a Nikon hdslr-related problem where Adobe uses the wrong decoder. To fix this, Adobe says just batch rename all your D7000/D800 files to the .mpg extension and it will use the proper decoder and will be super fast and responsive once again.

[hadi-dimachkieh]

im using cs6 and it edits d800 footage natively without a single hickup on my macbook pro .

[ripupthehwy]

im using cs6 and it edits d800 footage natively without a single hickup on my macbook pro .

NICE! Hope I have same results. Although Edius is looking pretty tempting with it's ability to edit 8bit footage (such as DSLR footage) in a 10bit color space, which gives less banding/posterization artifacts. Dunno which software would be more "real time" though.

[kede]

I had this problem as well until I googled it and found out Adobe is aware of this issue, and it's just a Nikon hdslr-related problem where Adobe uses the wrong decoder. To fix this, Adobe says just batch rename all your D7000/D800 files to the .mpg extension and it will use the proper decoder and will be super fast and responsive once again.

Exactly this is the solution. Change the .MOV to .MPG and it will works like a charm.
You doesn't need to do it with CS6.

Now, the export...and it's another problem.

[ripupthehwy]

Adobe is aware of this issue, and it's just a Nikon hdslr-related problem where Adobe uses the wrong decoder. To fix this, Adobe says just batch rename all your D7000/D800 files to the .mpg extension and it will use the proper decoder and will be super fast and responsive once again.

Son of a Gun !!! You're right! I tried it and it works!! Thanks so much for this. :-)

I have Premiere and Edius. I like the features of Premiere better, but honestly the color correcting in Edius is much easier in my opinion with the color curves feature. I just don't get Premiere's CC. I was hoping that the new Color Grade in CS6 would be the ticket, but I hear it's not integrated fully, which I assume means you got to render and then import the CC clips back into Premiere.