Noob question for an editor

E

ectdog

Member
I am about to start a project cutting a music video shot on 1 AF100 and 2 7d's. What is the best codec to convert the AVCHD footage and 7d footage to? ProRes HQ?
I'll be cutting on Premiere Pro CS6. Thanks!
 
ectdog said:
I am about to start a project cutting a music video shot on 1 AF100 and 2 7d's. What is the best codec to convert the AVCHD footage and 7d footage to? ProRes HQ?
I'll be cutting on Premiere Pro CS6. Thanks!
Click to expand...

PPro CS6 handles AVCHD just fine without transcoding. I routinely do two camera multi-cam shoots, both cameras capturing in AVCHD at 1080p30, editing in PPro and the rest of the Production Premium suite, without transcoding. So, try this before you transcode. Could save you a lot of time and hassle.
 
Thanks for such a quick reply. I thought there might have been some problems working with two separate codecs.
 
ectdog said:
Thanks for such a quick reply. I thought there might have been some problems working with two separate codecs.
Click to expand...

It will in the end be limited by the horsepower PPro can bring to bear. The more camera feeds, the more processing horsepower needed of course. At least during multi-cam editing.

My understand, such as it is, is that PPro conforms the video to an interal format. This may be why it doesn't seem to care much what your capture CODEC is. IDK. But that's why I'm suggesting that you try it before you make a decision that could cost you a fair amount of time, disk space, and perhaps even some visual quality (unless you transcode to a lossless CODEC like the lossless AVI that Adobe supports, but that's going to cost you close to 100x in disk space coming from AVCHD). If it doesn't work, you always have the option of transcoding.
 
If you use Magic Bullet Colorista with CS6 the keyer doesn't work with AVCHD clips. Prores no problem. Prores HQ is over kill for AVCHD footage. ProRes 422 is just fine.
 
Thanks for the help guys. I did a few test exports with the 7d H.264 and AVCHD clips together in the sequence, one at ProRes HQ and H.264 Vimeo, worked great. When the time comes to export the final cut and send to the colorist, what should I transcode to? ProRes HQ?
 
ectdog said:
Thanks for the help guys. I did a few test exports with the 7d H.264 and AVCHD clips together in the sequence, one at ProRes HQ and H.264 Vimeo, worked great. When the time comes to export the final cut and send to the colorist, what should I transcode to? ProRes HQ?
Click to expand...
Nope. ProRes HQ is overkill unless your source is uncompressed or HDcam. Transcode to ProRes 422.
 
Although modern edit systems do support these camera formats natively you may find better performance by transcoding to ProRes (no need for HQ - this would only be necessary if the source was from a 10 bit camera like the Alexa, RED or film scans).

The computer will be more responsive if it has less work to do and it will be able to play back more streams without rendering. Do yourself a favour as an editor - spend a little time transcoding and you will be rewarded for it later on.
 
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