Important 7D Media Management Question

J

jsauce

Active member
So I'm actually starting to edit quite a bit of stuff from my new 7d (2 gigs this week!)
and I've run into a problem.

when I import the files they're h264, I immediately convert to apple pro res hq so i can begin editing them in final cut (which sucks incidentally because i dont have compressor and have to do each one individually in quicktime)

I now have 2 files. The raw h264 and the converted pro res.
For posterity, should i be keeping both??? is there any good reason to hang on to the non converted one??? is pro res any worse than h264? would i ever need the h264 version, say for a film print or something??
 
you can convert batches with mpeg streamclip

memory (HD space) is cheap - keep it all becasue you dont know what the future holds

S
 
I agree with Mr. Moore. Keep the originals as your "negative;" never alter it, edit it, or trim it. ProRes is your DI (digital intermediate) format, which you should edit with.
 
thanks. so, if i were outputting for a final for tv/commercial/film/etc I would want to recconect to the h264s??? I thought pro res handled color correction better and was basically a better codec even for output?

atomick said:
I agree with Mr. Moore. Keep the originals as your "negative;" never alter it, edit it, or trim it. ProRes is your DI (digital intermediate) format, which you should edit with.
Click to expand...
 
jsauce said:
thanks. so, if i were outputting for a final for tv/commercial/film/etc I would want to recconect to the h264s??? I thought pro res handled color correction better and was basically a better codec even for output?
Click to expand...

This is a question I'm curious to have answered as well. I've understood that moving to ProRes HQ (4:2:2) creates almost 0% lost in image quality. Is this untrue?
 
When i edit footage from my 5D MK2 I just set a batch in compressor trans-coding to Pro Res. I don't use Pro Res HQ as I read that there is not much difference between the Pro Res and Pro Res HQ when trans-coding footage from a camera like a 5d that shoots in the h.264 codec. Am I wrong about that?
And to stay on topic, I usually keep both the original h.264 files and the HUGE Pro Res files on my project backup. I have learned that so many times a client will want their project sent to a different output, or will want a small piece for a teaser or sample. Having both the H.264 and the ProRes files makes for a quick turnaround with little hassle when this occurs.

And yes, if you have Final Cut Studio you should have Compressor.
 
I'd think that if you're serious about archiving, you could ditch the h.264 originals and just keep the ProRes DI's, provided you treat them like negs and never mess with them in a destructive way, processing-wise.

However, I've had so many projects where the codecs I prefer to use for DI's aren't available on someone else's machine, or a crash edit needs to be done on a non-FCP-equipped laptop, and in those cases having an H.264 original for bashing, crashing, viewing, or even posting via FTP for approval or questions (VFX supe, client, etc.) is reason enough to keep the true out-of-camera files around for posterity.

Thank goodness for multi-TB RAIDs, eh? :) (And for coffee, which resulted in those horrid runon sentences. :-p)
 
thanks atomick. i think going with the h264s as my back ups is a good call. i actually need to invest in some type of new storage system. my office is filling up with 1tb graids
 
I dont use fcp...but keep the original files from camera...I find that if the intermediate codec changes with new revisions/versions you can get instability issues(in my experience).
 
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