Ideal AVCHD intermediate format: ProRess VS Cineform VS Premiere's native support?

Retrospective

Retrospective

Well-known member
With Apple's new release of their Final Cut Studio it's unfortunate there's no native AVCHD support but they've introduced ProRes 4444 and other sub flavours.

As for AVCHD, we have a couple of options for native editing from Adobe and maybe other NLE's I don't know about?

As for AVCHD to an intermediate codec, we have ProRes and Cineform.

So regardless of the platform and NLE, which would be the ideal workflow? Considering real time playback performance, converted file size issues, etc... Native or to be converted into an intermediate codec?

Which ones do you use and why?

Thanks!
 
normally I just render my AVC footage into quicktime .mov set at "animation" with no compression.

File sizes are huge but as far as i can tell there is virtually no loss. (that probably isnt the most common codec to use as intermediate but its worked great for me so far)
 
JordyF said:
normally I just render my AVC footage into quicktime .mov set at "animation" with no compression.

File sizes are huge but as far as i can tell there is virtually no loss. (that probably isnt the most common codec to use as intermediate but its worked great for me so far)
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you must have some seriously huge scratch disk or keep it pretty empty!
 
If you're on a Mac and running FCP, ProRes is the way to go. I'm blown away at how much I can push ProRes in colour correction and it doesn't fall apart.

Working uncompressed is overkill, TV and video has been compressed since the 50's.

Cheers

John Christie
 
I use Sony Vegas, and have found the MXF format to be better than anything else. Plays back in real time when previewing, file size only slightly larger than the MTS original, and no visible degradation for the 3rd generation.(that I can see)

ingvarai
 
If the NLE can handle native AVCHD then there is no need for intermediate codec. Read Steve Mullen's article in the latest issue of Broadcast Engineering on long-GOP editing.
 
averan said:
you must have some seriously huge scratch disk or keep it pretty empty!
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my working local raid is 2TB raid 0+1 and my server is 5tb raid 5. once im entirely done with a project i offload it and its elements to the server.

normally 2TB local is plenty of space because i export only the avchd shots i need to animation quicktimes. :)
 
there seems to be plenty of reason to transcode, despite what some say, given that AVCHD is not a great editing codec, depending on your needs. (I have read numerous articles on why to transcode from AVCHD, I would suggest roaming Google and finding them yourselves, one article does not a movement make). But I will read Steve's article to see what he said about it back in 2009.

If you are doing simple jobs, a quick and dirty documentary, yes, I sometimes dump my AVCHD into Sony and just edit. BUT I would never consider that for a longer project that requires more subtlety of color balance, and mixing a variety of formats. Additionally, if you are going to render your output over and over again in various formats (i.e. DVD, BluRay, MOV, etc.) then I have read enough to know that you will render far faster in ProRes or AVI than AVCHD to those codecs. And I have seen that myself in some of my footage. I've not tried transcoding to AVC-Intra, maybe I'll give that a shot.

So when I use Sony's Vegas Pro I TC to AVI (Cineform) and when using FCP I transcode (usually using Compressor, it's easier to just transcode the whole footage first, then establish clips). Yes, I have two TBs of RAID for footage, plus two more non raided, and I offload my projects to removeable drives when I'm done with them, but disks are cheap and easy.

My biggest complaint with all this is that Apple's media management is abysmal for smaller shops. I'm sure Hollywood people love the enforced discipline of Media Manager but it is just an outright waste of my time on any given month.
 
Hello - I can across this thread today searching for similar info, however, I noticed that this mainly pertains to the Mac environment, and well, I use a PC and Adobe Premiere CS4 - anyone out there in the PC world that has some info to share ? Also for archiving purposes (final, not for re-editing, storage), I've been going the mpeg2 1440x1080i high quality (or 1920x1080i), but being new to AVCHD, not sure what format is best...

And yes, one can edit the AVCHD direct in Premiere as I just recently did, however, indeed I did experience various crashes here and there (and yes render/export time is LONG), but heck, I assumed that me trying to superimpose about 8 video tracks with various effects, color correction, etc. (plus intermixing this HD with DV (both PAL & NTSC) + VJ compressed ligos indeo 5.2 files), well, with all that, I'm surprised it didn't crash more! ;-) If interested, you can see the video here: http://www.vimeo.com/20885526

Sidenote: In the past *sometimes* I too used the animation codec for DV archival purposes *if* the video was short (stored on backup DVDs), it's a decent lossless codec still.
 
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+1 to 8string. Native for quick and dirty and no CC. Otherwise Cineform AVI for the 10-bit 4:2:2.
 
i've been pretty happy with mjpeg quicktime on at least the 'medium' setting. smaller files than animation, faster to transcode, looks great and can be passed off to an FCP editor without issue.
 
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