Workflow: AVCHD to Prores Proxy (then back to full quality)

b-rose

Member
I thought I'd share this. I just got the Panasonic HMC150 a little over a week ago, and I've been looking for a good workflow so that I could edit on my 1.5 year old MacBook Pro, using FinalCutPro 7. The idea was to minimize the amount of storage the project would need (at least initially), and allow me to edit HD footage in realtime on this (relatively slower) system.

I came up with a seemingly functional workflow the other day, but I'm wondering if there may be a simpler way to achieve the same thing.

My workflow:

1. Copy the entire directory structure of my SD card to my harddrive.

2. Open FCP and go into Long and Transfer. Select my files (from my newly created directory on the harddrive), and convert transfer/encode them as Prores 422 Proxy.

3. Edit my project (using the proxy files).

4. When done, go into Finder and delete the proxy files I created (moving them into another directory would probably work just as well). All clips in your timeline will now show as disconnected.

5. Go back into Log and Transfer, and using the same original (AVCHD, in my case) files, transfer/transcode them again, BUT this time, transcode them into Prores 422 Standard.

6. In FCP, right-click on one of the disconnected files in your files window, and select Reconnect. It didn't find mine through searching, so you have to manually locate the file. Go into the scratch directory you set, where your new Prores 422 files have just been created, and select the file that matches the clip. **NOTE: you will have to UNcheck "Matched Name and Reel Only" or you won't be able to select it. Hit Reconnect. You'll probably get an error message saying that the settings of the clip don't match. Just ignore that (at least, that's what I did, and it worked perfectly).

7. Your clips should now be reconnected, but with the full Prores 422 (standard) files. You'll have to rerender your sequence, but then you should be done.

That's what worked for me. Anybody else out there have something that works better/faster/easier to accomplish the same thing?

Notes:

In theory, this means that you could delete all of the uncompressed (ProRes) files once you're done editing/exporting your project and just save the much smaller AVCHD files. If you ever need to go back into it, you could just log and transfer from the AVCHD files and reconnect them. Personally, if you have the hard drive space, I'd say you should keep them because it's good to have backups, BUT if hard drive space is at a major premium, you could delete those transcoded ProRes files if you wanted to.

Now, I'm not sure about this yet (I haven't had time to test it thoroughly), but you MIGHT have to change the settings of your sequence to match the new files. I was just reading something about that in an older article. I don't THINK that'll be necessary, because if you're going from one ProRes format to another ProRes format you should have the same frame size and frame rate.

Thoughts?

-BR
http://50in50.wordpress.com
 
You would have to to go your timeline settings and change the quicktime-compressor setting from Pro Res LT to Pro Res 422, otherwise you won't benefit from using the better Pro Res files. It should allow you to change since the frame rate & size is the same.

I was going down the route of just archiving the original SD card files after finishing the edit, but actually had problems re-capturing a few clips when I had to go back into one edit in particular. Luckily, I had the transcoded files on an external hard drive I had forgotten about, otherwise I would have been in serious trouble. Could have been a one off case, or maybe some computer/software issue, but it frightened me enough to not proceed with that idea for the now.

Scott
 
Scott- Thanks for that.

David S.- The first transcode is to put the files into ProRes 422 Proxy, because they're smaller and easier to edit (my laptop doesn't have a ton of processing power), and because I can't work with the AVCHD files that my camera creates. The second transcode (from the original AVCHD files), is to put it into ProRes 422 Standard, which is high quality and so that what I would want to use for my export. ProRes 422 Standard is a much higher quality file, but my computer is too slow to work with them very well. I want to be editing in realtime.

Was that what you were asking?
 
You don't actually need to leave FCP to do this.

Here are some simple steps that work for me every time. Note that I DO archive the original card images and I DO take the time to set the reel numbers. This way if the reel (card image) is offline then it will prompt me for the reel archive media.

The following sample project shows that the sequence and clips are all ProRes Proxy.

001_ProResProxy.png


Here are the steps to convert this to ProRes 422 (as an example) once the sequence is fully edited:

1. Make the media for this sequence OFFLINE. To do this right click on the sequence and choose 'Make Offline'.

002_MakeOffline.png


2. A dialog appears asking what you want to do with the files. I've found that selecting the first option takes them offline every time for me, whereas the second two seem to be hit and miss. If any one knows why this may be - let me know ;)

003_LeaveThemOnTheDisk.png


The media will now appear to be OFFLINE (this is what we want).

004_MediaNowOffline.png


3. Right click the sequence again and change the render settings.

005_ChangeSequenceSettings.png


e.g. ProRes 422

006_SetToProRes422.png


4. Go to the Log & Transfer dialog

007_LogAndTransfer.png


and (from the gear menu) go in to preferences and set to the codec that matches your new sequence settings:

009_SetToProRes422.png


It's important to do this BEFORE the next step, because you won't get the option to change this during the next step. Having changed the setting you can exit this dialog if you want but you really don't need to, provided you can click back on the sequence file again.

5. Right click the Sequence and select Batch Capture from the popup-menu.

010_BatchCapture.png


If you closed the Log & Transfer dialog it will reopen with an option pane for the files to re-capture.

011_AllOfflineMedia.png


Choose All Offline Items then click OK.

If your reel is not available it will prompt you. If it's all where it was when you first captured it the FCP will go ahead and re-transcode the footage using ProRes 422 (or what ever you selected), update the project with the new files and you are good to go.

012_NowProRes422.png
 
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I prefer to have my edit sequence with the Proxy files readily available with online media.

I initially Log and Transfer my footage transcoding to Pro Res Proxy. When the the edit is complete - I dupe the sequence and change it's compressor to Pro Res 422. I then transcode new Pro Res 422 copies of my clips. Lastly I reconnect the clips in the new 422 sequence to the 422 transcodes.

Now I have two sequences with online Proxy and 422 clips.

Of course the tradeoff is is this method requires additional storage space.

-paul.
 
b-rose - Thanks for posting this. It's exactly the situation I'm in now.

Exact (or anyone else who knows) - When you reconnect the offline media and transcode the footage to bring it in at a higher quality, will the entirety of every clip be transcoded? Or will it only bring in those parts of clips that are actually used in sequences?

If it's the former, it sounds like a lot of storage space will be used, which is why I was editing in ProRes proxy in the first place. How can I transcode only the parts of clips in my sequences to ProRes HQ?

Any help is most appreciated. Thanks!
 
noslouch - it helps if you pay attention to the footage during the ingest phase. I generally don't bring in entire clips to begin with, and edit out the 'crap' footage by setting in and out to appropriate places (even taking multiple chunks from the same source clip) prior to ingest/transcode. So, with this in mind it only brings in the useful stuff anyway.

When you take media offline - then bring it back online again via a new transcode - it's going to bring in exactly what you brought in the first time - but transcoded with the new settings.
 
Why not using file -> media manager to make an offline project with only the clips used in timeline (can save space)

Ulisses
 
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Why go through this? Why not just edit in ProRes HQ? (Sorry for the dumb question but I'm relatively new to FCP.
 
Why go through this? Why not just edit in ProRes HQ? (Sorry for the dumb question but I'm relatively new to FCP.

Well, as an example, one of my Mac computers can't handle ProRes HQ but can handle LT or Proxy very well. The data rate is significant for HQ and tiny for Proxy, so your hard disk doesn't need to work as hard. MacBooks in particular are better suited to Proxy than HQ!
 
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