FS7: Which software do you use for conversion ?

I have to transcode in ProRes because the editor works on Final Cut Pro 7, not on Final cut X or Premiere Pro.

The question is how to transcode UHD in a UHD ProRes format ? With Catalyst Browse it's not possible... And will it work with final cut 7 ?
 
Thanks BeeHop

EditReady seems to be cool and fast !

Another software to convert in ProRes UHD ?
 
I'm a PPCC user and i don't use FCPX but i do have it on my computer. i just used it to convert to ProRezHQ (optimized media) and it was fast and effortless.

david
 
I work in a production studio with 2 other editors. We shoot in 4k and output in 1920x1080 usually. In my opinion Premiere does not like XAVC-I at all. It might be fine for small projects but our last 15 min documentary with 5 days of shooting was a horrible experience in Premiere. Premiere crashed around 10-15 times a day, which cost us A LOT of time. After that we established the following workflow:
Convert 4K XAVC-I to Prores Proxy 1920x1080. For people who want to try this here is a mini tutorial for Premiere:

- We use media encoder to create the proxies but I'm sure it's just as easy with Catalyst or Davinci.
- When your edit is locked you have to replace the proxies with the 4k footage (onlining)
- Move the proxy folders out of the project folder so Premiere can't find them.
- Reattach the missing files to the mxf files by disabling the option to match file extension.
- Select all clips in your timeline and right click -> scale to frame size.

While this is pretty straight forward, you lose any resizing that has been done with the proxies.
All in all I don't think it's perfect but editing with prores proxies is a blast. No more crashes and I love skipping through footage and get a very smooth editing experience. We were thinking about just converting to Prores 422 4K and be done with it, but file sizes are a bit too large and the editing is not as smooth as with good ol' 1080.
 
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Yes, I agree, gpu is very important. I just recently swapped out my 2 gtx 780 ti classys and bought 2 Titan x's, With the 780 ti's though I was dropping frames in adobe premiere with Xavc-L codec. I have not yet tested the Titan X in Adobe premiere but I am sure the 12gb of ram on the Titan X and the 32gb of system memory will help a great deal. My entire system is under water as you can see from my pic. My system consists of i7 4930k 6 core overclocked to 4.8ghz , 32gb of ram, Titan X in sli (because I also game) :) and Samsung 850 pro ssd's. I also ordered 32gb of ram that I will be installing tomorrow when it gets delivered. Right now my machine only has 16gb. I cannot wait to shoot some footage and test out the system over the weekend.
 
32Gb is realistically what you should be looking at with a desktop 4k system.The difference for me going from 16Gb was like night and day.

FYI Premiere can only make use of a single GPU but the full version of Resolve supports multi GPU.
 
I just edited an entire feature on Premiere CC on a 2013 Imac with 16gb memory and the graphics upgrade. Playback in 4k wasn't always stellar but very few crashes.
 
Ben Scott said:
32Gb is realistically what you should be looking at with a desktop 4k system.The difference for me going from 16Gb was like night and day.

FYI Premiere can only make use of a single GPU but the full version of Resolve supports multi GPU.
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thanks for the info, I was aware of premiere only utilizing 1 gpu, but I always run sli because I also game. But of course you only utilize the memory on the one card, you don't get double the memory like some people think. I have been building pc's for a long time, I started out with a Commodore 64 back in the day. Lol.. It's been a hobby of mine for quite a while. Computers I know like the back of my hand, but shooting video is another story. It's another hobby of mine but I do not know enough about it to comment to often in the forums. I try and learn as much as I can from following you guys here in the forums..
 
Ben Scott said:
Fellow C64 owner here too :)
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Nice. :). I also used to run a bbs on it back in the day. Ran cnet bbs and had 3 phone lines with 2400 baud modems and a 20 meg LT kernal that cost me $1,000 back then. It was so much fun, ahhhh the memories. :)
 
Bulletin board (maximus software) running on IBM OS/2, multi-tasking before windows could. With three modems, wish I spend the time and money in google stocks instead of fiddling with this stuff.
 
If I have a penny for every line of code I copied out of a magazine to programme a game which never ever worked I'd be a rich man.
 
BeeHop said:
Guys do yourselves a favour and try EditReady > straight to ProRes or DNxHD:

http://www.divergentmedia.com/editready#overview
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If only there was something just as seamless for windows.

starcentral said:
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Davinci Resolve is FREE and in my opinion will transcode footage without really any chance of screwing any of it up. Main thing you need to know about transcoding footage is that your timecode does not get changed, and sometimes paying attention to "levels" (data and video). Other 3rd party programs may totally screw either of these up, so I tend to trust Davinci most because it just works. It is slower I find, probably because of Davinci's insane floating point math behind the scenes. On a MAC you will have access to ProRes codec. All of them from 422 LQ to 4444. On a PC you are limited to a "good" codec unless you want DPX which will eat up serious space and not have any sound.
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As of July 2017, Davinci Resolve (12.5.6) still doesn't support AVCHD mts containers, or the AC3 audio within so they have to be transcoded to DNxHD or ProRes. (though for whatever reason seems to handle 59.97 progressive MTS files, but still won't support the audio within if it's AC3 anyways, though if I'm recording something of higher importance I'm already recording a copy of the audio onto the tascam). To my knowledge the studio version (which is now 300$ instead of 995$) doesn't add any support or improved support for either. So far I've found the best results on windows is to transcode to Avid DNxHD then import those into Davinci.

Right now, being somewhat unfamiliar with the under the hood details of the video formats I wonder if the converter I use is dropping frames, or if it's correctly utilizing the 3:2 pulldown going from 29.97 interlaced (from a 24p sensor output) to a 24p transcoded file. So would be nice to find something better on the windows side.

Once transcoded, Resolve seems like one of the best software you can get on the free side.
 
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Duol said:
Hi,

I would like to know which software do you use for videos in XAVC from FS7 to convert them for editing ?





I use "Catalyst Browse" and wonder what "Catalyst Prepare" gives more ?

Is it worth the price?

What software do you use for batch conversions?

Thanks
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I have both, catalyst prepare has some light grading features and you can convert xavd to some other codecs. But when you have Davinci resolve you can do the same better and faster esp. version 14, be sure to save your work every 3 minutes, beta version lacks some stability.

I used it, but Catalyst Prepare is not worth the money compared to Davinci
 
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I use Footage Studio 4k for DI transcodes on PC. Supports Prores, DNXHD/HR, and Cineform. Reads Quicktime timecode in .MOV files and converts to SMPTE for DI exports. Used multi-threaded CPU process for trancodes, not GPU. But it is asn efficient well engineered and optimized front end for FFMPEG/FFMBC. Personally I prefer Cineform DI's working on PC's.

http://www.acrovid.com/
 
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