HMC150 and ProRes 422

R

ronin99

Active member
We shot a project using the HMC in 720p and transcoded the footage into the Apple ProRes 422 codec. The editor and I are swapping files back and forth for effects work.

I'm unfamiliar with this codec but I would like to retain the highest quality, so should we be exporting the files as 10bit instead of 8bit? Should we be exporting with a lossless codec like Animation instead of lossy prores? Furthemore, once we finish the edit, do we export as 10bit?

Thanks
 
ProRes 422 is a 10 bit codec, but to preserve the most quality in rendering you might want to choose ProRes HQ. The higher bandwidth will give you slightly better renders.

When importing those renders back in to final cut, you'll want to change the setting for the sequence to ProRes HQ. Non HQ material should play back fine in an HQ timeline.

There's no reason to use the Animation codec unless you need to preserve an alpha channel.
 
More on ProRes vs ProRes HQ

(from one of the experts who tested it all to the nth degree)

Bottom line - NO NEED FOR HQ UNLESS YOU ARE WORKING WITH RED CAMERA OR OVER 2K FRAME SIZE:



OK here you go. Gary's rules for ProRes

1) Use it- it is by far the best codec FCP has ever had, it blows DVCPROHD out of the water in post.
it wants a new machine if you are not on intel- it's about time.

2) ProRes HQ should only used when Captured Via Hardware when creating it from any camera except RED and the PHANTOM. Those are ONLY 2 Tapeless cameras that can actually use the advantages that ProRes HQ offers when working in a tapeless system since they actually record more than 10 bits as data.

3) Software Conversions from previously captured materials or data transfered formats do not need anything more than the Standard Version on ProRes. The reason for this is that camera formats are 8bit, ProRes is 10bit. With the HQ version the CPU is actively interpreting all 256 levels of grey on encode but passing that back out re-interpreted with all 1024 levels on output, that is one HUGE Mathematical Processing task.

4) With the Standard version of ProRes, that data is not re-interpreted on output until the process actually asks the CPU to handle the content in 10bit by adding filters, efx, or color correction. So normal playback of your timeline is unaffected until you do something to it.

5) Every thin raster camera (both HDV & DVCPROHD) will deliver better results when they content is played out via the camera mfg's hardware- because the video has to be SMPTE compliant, the process using specifically customized decompression tools will ALWAYS beat a software conversion of the same content.

On a suitably powered intel machine I have had no issues with ProRes, I have ingested over 100TB (NOT a typo) in my testing of ProRes and I can gladly say it is the best thing Apple has done for Post Production since buying Key Grip from Macromedia....

FYI
all of these test are not just me making moral judgments I do not trust what my eyes tell me, I trust what the scopes tell me, that kind of hardware is less biased than I can be. So all of the tests were carried out with scopes and analytical tools to calibrate, process and monitor the images.


gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
 
jchristie said:
There's no reason to use the Animation codec unless you need to preserve an alpha channel.
Click to expand...

Or if you're on Windows... *sniff* :(

Boy, I sure wish I could encode to ProRes. Y'all are making me jealous here, I send video between Premiere and After Effects all the time (didn't buy them in a collection so Dynamic Link is disabled) and Animation is the best thing I can use.
 
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