The Best Way to go about the Editing Process Now that Shooting is Complete

J

jrod81

Veteran
Okay guys,
Well I have about 7 days of shooting a ton of gigs of footage and need to know the smartest way to go about editing. Here is my plan and someone correct me or guide me to a more efficient way of going about it:
1. Watch all the footage using my ASUS O!Play on my 50inch TV. This gives me an idea of what takes are the strongest and I can start building which angles I want to use. So I will make a log of each file name that I want to use.
2. Using MPEG Streamclip I will transcode those files from the log of the 7d file format to ProRes 422.
3. Then import the ProRes clips into FCP and begin the process.
Sounds fairly in depth. I love the editing process, but just wondering if anyone has a more efficient way of going about this. I can't imagine the space it is going to take up to transcode everything. Which that just seems stupid anyway since I am obviously not going to be using everything...
Let me know (about to buy the ASUS right now with the 8% bing cashback on ebay)
jared
 
Hi Jared,

what you described is a good way to go.

A couple of things to think about. A 12 second H.264 clip directly out of the camera, what I call the camera negative is 70.1 MB's, the same clip encoded to ProRes LT, what I call source video is 109 MB's. So the difference is not as great as you might think.

This depends on what version of FCP your using, FCP 6x has ProRes and ProRes HQ, you only need to use ProRes HQ if your going to master to film, if your mastering to HD ProRes is more than sufficient. FCP 7x has ProRes 422 Proxy, ProRes 422 LT, ProRes 422 HQ and ProRes 4444.

Here's a link explaining the difference: http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/apple-prores.html

Suffice it to say, if your mastering to HD ProRes 422 LT (102Mb/s) is sufficient enough, it has a little better data rate than DVCProHD which has been an HD standard for years, its 4:2:2 and the 7D footage looks great. Using ProRes 422 HQ or ProRes 4444 would be overkill unless you had a specific reason for needing an alpha channel or effects work that required the additional data.

But MPEG StreamClip does a good job and is much faster than Compressor at creating ProRes LT files.
 
Sounds like you should be spending the money you're gonna spend on the Asus device on an external hard drive (I'd suggest eSATA or Firewire 800 - you don't mention what type of mac you're editing on.)

Personally I prefer to sit at my computer when editing clips - I have an external monitor I can output to for playing back full resolution clips. It helps when you're noting which clips you like the best, especially increases the rate if you mark good takes/clips as you go in FCP and then delete all the trash (and take the time to properly label all your clips and set in and out points.)

In terms of making it faster, there isn't really any quickfire solution to that - short of buying a few xserves to act as a compressor cluster instead of going through mpeg streamclip.
 
ChuckS said:
This depends on what version of FCP your using, FCP 6x has ProRes and ProRes HQ, you only need to use ProRes HQ if your going to master to film, if your mastering to HD ProRes is more than sufficient.

Here's a link explaining the difference: http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/apple-prores.html
Click to expand...

I know this is the conventional wisdom, but I respectfully disagree. While that link shows a difference in bit-rate, in typical Apple fashion they don't give the other half of the story.

ProResHQ is 10-bit. ProRes is 8. If you plan to do any color grading to the footage, the 10-bit codec WILL make a significant difference. This is why codecs such as Cineform are ALL 10-bit. They do a very nice comparison here:

demo10bitv8bitsmall.jpg



I am not telling you to use Cineform. FCP has a perfectly good 10-bit codec built in. It's up to you to determine if you think you'll benefit from it or not, and to weigh the pros and cons of file size versus image quality.

I color grade every project I do, and I use nothing but 10-bit codecs. And I master to 10-bit too.
 
We will be color grading so thanks for the advice on that...
As for watching the clips on my computer... well my computer can't keep up with the file size or something... it is lagging and jumping...
 
if you do get the asus, you might want to consider getting the newer model one with wifi (I think it's called the o!play air). it has a media card reader, and although you probably don't need wireless now for your project, the wireless streaming is something that might make the player useful as an everyday device (similar to an apple tv I think). I don't know when it's going to be released though (assuming it's soon because places have it already for pre-order) so if you can't wait then just go ahead with the other one I guess.
 
okay, hold up on the asus... as it turns out i found a very easy way to watch the clips using my ps3 by using the free software called "isquint"... it is not at top quality and it takes a while to convert but it is free for me since i have a ps3.

i am using a macbook pro the older generation 2.2 core 2 duo
 
doesn't the ps3 play h.264 files? I know it can also stream media files as well. quicktime pro can also change .mov files to .mp4 without re-encoding (so it's faster without quality loss) if you want another option for converting files for your ps3. I think you just need to select "pass through" in the video and audio options while exporting.
 
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here is a video that shows it in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zQMdhbc_ss#t=1m20s

you can skip the part about switching from .mp4 to .mov first. I don't know how long isquint takes but the method in the link takes a few seconds.

quicktime pro is $30 if you don't already have it but I think it's probably worth it in general.

there's also a program for streaming to ps3 from a mac called media link: http://www.nullriver.com/products/medialink

supposedly it can stream files that aren't even natively supported by the ps3- this is from their description:
MediaLink is now able to transcode most unsupported video and image formats into a PS3-compatible format on the fly. This means you no longer need to convert certain videos before being able to play them on your PlayStation 3. You can also now optionally transcode all videos and images, which will enable down-scaling videos and images for slower network connections.
Click to expand...

it might be a little choppy if you have 802.11g instead of n and are dealing with 1080p files. it's $20 and I can't vouch for it so I would go with the quicktime method if I had to choose.
 
good lord man, to go thru that process for every single file one by one would take me an eternity... i can just throw them all in isquint and walk away for awhile and when i come back they are all done... is there a way to do it as a batch with QT
 
jrod81 said:
good lord man, to go thru that process for every single file one by one would take me an eternity... i can just throw them all in isquint and walk away for awhile and when i come back they are all done... is there a way to do it as a batch with QT
Click to expand...

there isn't a batch convert that I know of in quicktime, but you can set up an automator script- here is a sample one you can modify: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/automator/quicktimecompressionactionsandworkflow.html

automator's actually not that hard and it came in really handy once when I had to rename a whole folder's worth of .png files to import them as an image sequence into fcp (over 200 files in all I think).

if you're happy with isquint though just use that I guess. I'm kind of surprised your macbook pro can't play back the files though- are you playing them back in quicktime or trying to play them in your fcp timeline?

edit: you might actually be able to just do it in compressor too without re-encoding. I'll try it out and see
 
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with snow leo you can just click the spacebar... it does pretty good with that usually, but if i double click the file and watch them in QT it can't keep up... not sure how to describe this but the file says it is done as in the bar is at the end, but there is still tons of video left to be played... so i have to pause it, let it load and then watch it again... does that make sense?
i squint is slow but working... the spacebar method is not the end of the world either...
 
oh whoops looks like the original link to the automator action isn't working anymore. here is a working link: http://automatorworld.com/archives/compress-quicktime-to-mpeg-4/
that just converts your files to mp4 using the most recent settings so convert one file first just to get your settings right. you have to install the action first and then it will be one of the options when you open up automator. it will be under "compress quicktime using most recent settings".

jrod81 said:
with snow leo you can just click the spacebar... it does pretty good with that usually, but if i double click the file and watch them in QT it can't keep up... not sure how to describe this but the file says it is done as in the bar is at the end, but there is still tons of video left to be played... so i have to pause it, let it load and then watch it again... does that make sense?
i squint is slow but working... the spacebar method is not the end of the world either...
Click to expand...

have you tried just re-sizing the quicktime movie window? spacebar preview seems to make the window a little smaller, not sure if it's doing something else as well. it probably won't work but maybe viewing it to fit screen or half size (command-3 or command-0 just as a shortcut to make your life easier). I don't think your macbook pro has the screen real estate to show 1080 files at their full resolution. I'm guessing it won't work but who knows, just throwing it out there.

edit: oh yeah, to use automator you basically just open it, choose and double-click "get specified finder items" from the actions list and it'll appear on the right. click "add" and find your folder and add it. then choose and double-click "compress quicktime using most recent settings" from the actions list, you can choose a new destination directory (probably should be called "video" for your ps3) and make sure "mpeg4" is clicked. then hit "run" in the upper right and you should be done. gl
compressor doesn't seem to have a video pass-through option although it has one for audio. I'd try the quicktime pro + automator option. once you have it set up it should be pretty fast and the quality will be the same as the original, so you can get a better idea of what it'll look like when you're watching it on your tv.
 
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dude you have been so helpful... i am heading to bed now while some stuff does its thing with isquint but tomorrow i plan to undertake the whole automator ordeal
 
Mate if you're just wanting to watch them on your PS3 and you don't want to faff around converting multiple times use a program called PS3 Media Server. It'll automatically transcode videos into a playable format on your PS3, then serve them over your network to it. Your Macbook should be able to handle it. Mine gets a little toasty when doing full 1080p transcoding but the results on my PS3 are more than adequate. (2.4ghz Late 08 model)

However, I still stick with my idea of just watching them all in Final Cut Pro and marking them as you go. It'll save you a lot of time in the long run.
 
Calomile said:
Mate if you're just wanting to watch them on your PS3 and you don't want to faff around converting multiple times use a program called PS3 Media Server. It'll automatically transcode videos into a playable format on your PS3, then serve them over your network to it. Your Macbook should be able to handle it. Mine gets a little toasty when doing full 1080p transcoding but the results on my PS3 are more than adequate. (2.4ghz Late 08 model)

However, I still stick with my idea of just watching them all in Final Cut Pro and marking them as you go. It'll save you a lot of time in the long run.
Click to expand...

hm that sounds a lot better than the media link one I had mentioned earlier and on top of that it's free so wouldn't hurt to try. http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/
here's a review: http://www.tuaw.com/2009/07/06/ps3-media-server-transcodes-and-remuxes-in-real-time/
can your macbook play 1080 files normally though? I don't think his can for whatever reason.

yeah not sure about how efficient any of this is, but it's probably worth watching your clips on a big screen tv anyway.
 
PerroneFord said:
I know this is the conventional wisdom, but I respectfully disagree. While that link shows a difference in bit-rate, in typical Apple fashion they don't give the other half of the story.

ProResHQ is 10-bit. ProRes is 8. If you plan to do any color grading to the footage, the 10-bit codec WILL make a significant difference. This is why codecs such as Cineform are ALL 10-bit. They do a very nice comparison here:
Click to expand...

All ProRes is 10 bit.

•Apple ProRes 422 (LT): Like Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) and Apple ProRes 422, the new Apple ProRes 422(LT) codec supports full-width 10-bit video..

That is from the link on the page I recommended to read.

ProRes is indistinguishable from Cineform.
 
ChuckS said:
All ProRes is 10 bit.

•Apple ProRes 422 (LT): Like Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) and Apple ProRes 422, the new Apple ProRes 422(LT) codec supports full-width 10-bit video..

That is from the link on the page I recommended to read.

ProRes is indistinguishable from Cineform.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your post. I decided to do some digging as well at independent sites. ProRes is 10 bit. That is excellent, and refutes my previous understanding.

However, ProRes is DCT (like DNxHD) and not Wavelet like Cineform, so that does give it some differences. Cineform should be able to outperform ProRes and DNxHD at less bandwidth. My testing confirms this which is why I master to MJpeg2000 in most cases. However, since ProRes is 10-bit and DNxHD give the option, they are both excellent codecs, and can certainly support the work of nearly anyone outside of dedicated visual effects users.
 
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killacam said:
can your macbook play 1080 files normally though? I don't think his can for whatever reason.

yeah not sure about how efficient any of this is, but it's probably worth watching your clips on a big screen tv anyway.
Click to expand...

When playing back through something without hardware acceleration it can sometimes struggle (it depends on the bitrate we're talking about, as well.) but in Quicktime X (which utilises the nvidia graphics) it'll play full 1080p HD with minimal fuss. The CPU barely jumps above 15% use.

I'll agree it's always good to watch your footage over, you'd be a bit silly to go into an edit with absolutely no idea of how good your shots are. I just think there are opportunities throughout the process to speed things up, and getting rid of stuff you know you wont use (bad takes, bad focus, bad whatever) and marking clips is only ever gonna speed up the process.
 
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