.264 Vs. Apple Pro res 422 HQ

[Collinbl]

I'm in the process of editing a film shot on Canon 5D, H.264, 1920 X 1080.

I made the mistake of not compressing the footage to Apple ProRes 422, instead I brought the footage straight in and edited on the timeline, which was set for Apple ProRes 422. I know, I'm new to this.

My questions are...

A) Is there a quality different between .264 and Apple ProRes 422? As the film is now edited.

B) I've noticed that there is a border around the image in the Apple ProRes timeline. Is that due to the codec being on the wrong setting?

Is there a simple way to resolve this problem, or do I need to compress the files and start back at square one?

Any guidance on the matter would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[grimrebes]

Apple's ProRes 422 is a variable bit rate codec with 10 bit color space which is visually indistinguishable from lossless codecs. H264 is not any of those things. When you transcode (aka re-compress) from h.264 to ProRes, there is no quality difference. ProRes is a superior codec in terms of detail, color space, and bit rate, etc... but transcoding from h.264 to ProRes does not add any additional information to the frame. It makes it easier to edit, as h.264 tends to be extremely heavily compressed, where as ProRes is less so (hence the larger file sizes).

I can't speak to why there would be a border around the image in a ProRes timeline.