Editing h.264 natively in Premiere CS5

[Torrey Meeks]

Hi,

I've been reading some of the threads from earlier in the year about the necessity of converting h.264 to ProRes.

I have no problem doing this, but haven't on any of my T2i projects yet. Premiere CS5 is editing the h.264 files great (on my MacPro), and when I flip them over to AE for CC and final processing, I don't notice any degrading in the image quality.

Is conversion to ProRes still the recommended and preferred method with the updated CS5 iteration of Premiere?

I've noticed that Final Cut Pro is still awful at handling the files natively. I'm going for best visual quality on all my projects. Here are two of them that I've filmed within the last couple months.

Anyone else with experience / thoughts on this issue, or notice image quality degrading where there might not have been any had I converted to ProRes?

The American Way

Back to One

 

[KeithAndrews.TV]

Converting to ProRes when you are getting satisfactory results using native files and CS5, won't do you much good. That workflow is really intended for people who are either a. using final cut pro, b. needing to perform some heafty CC, or c. read too much on these forums.

I use CS4 daily for commercial and independent work, edit my H.264 footage natively with no problems, and perform some pretty average CC on my footage most of the time, and yeah, there really is no loss in quality.

You'll get all sorts of responses here, but I think you basically answered your own question. You have to ask yourself this, what are you working on that would require the extra step to convert the footage that you can't get away with editing it natively?

 

[ryanhargrave]

Converting to ProRes when you are getting satisfactory results using native files and CS5, won't do you much good. That workflow is really intended for people who are either a. using final cut pro, b. needing to perform some heafty CC, or c. read too much on these forums.

I use CS4 daily for commercial and independent work, edit my H.264 footage natively with no problems, and perform some pretty average CC on my footage most of the time, and yeah, there really is no loss in quality.

You'll get all sorts of responses here, but I think you basically answered your own question. You have to ask yourself this, what are you working on that would require the extra step to convert the footage that you can't get away with editing it natively?

CS5 supports native H.264 editing and will upconvert each frame to a 4:4:4 colorspace when needed. So no.. you don't need pro-res.

 

[Scalar]

Doesn't CS5 transcode to 4:4:4 on importing footage? Thought this was one of the big benefits... (edit: above post answered before I finished the next paragraph...)

Aside from that, the amount of processing you do will determine how much you care about transcoding up from the native 4:2:0 that Canon & etc use right now for h.264. Overmanipulating h.264 will lead to blocky garbage/mud and increase problem areas where spatial detail disingegrated into color garbage. However if you're barely doing any processing and aren't watching it upscaled to 2k/4k on the indie film circuit it may not matter.

 

[Torrey Meeks]

You have to ask yourself this, what are you working on that would require the extra step to convert the footage that you can't get away with editing it natively?

So far I haven't had to! Yesterday I was shooting some footage though, and when I imported I noticed a lot of noise in the blacks and grays. After reading through the forum a bit I wanted to double check to make sure it wasn't my compression - sure enough, I just had poor exposure.

CS5 supports native H.264 editing and will upconvert each frame to a 4:4:4 colorspace when needed. So no.. you don't need pro-res.

Thanks Ryan! Wasn't aware of that but if it's converting to 4:4:4 then I'm money.

Doesn't CS5 transcode to 4:4:4 on importing footage?

Ahh, makes sense why I'm not noticing a reduction in visual quality. Thanks!