Stephen Mick
Totally Usable
So, after kicking around in my head which workflow would be best for my needs, I did some quick testing with Compressor and Cineform's Neoscene. I've been using Neoscene for a while, and really wanted to see if that workflow was the best, or even necessary, for me to get the results I wanted.
All of this was done on my (probably underpowered) MacBook Pro 13" laptop, with a 2.53Ghz Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM. Your mileage may vary.
So, I ran one clip through both Compressor and Neoscene. Here are the results…
The original h.264 clip, which was a shot of a "folk-art" rooster on Miami's Calle Ocho, at 1920x1080 was 15 seconds long and 82.4MB in size.
Using Compressor to transcode to ProRes 422 took 55 seconds and resulted in a file of 209.7MB.
Using NeoScene to transcode to CineformHD took 70 seconds and resulted in a file of 207MB.
Using NeoScene to transcode to ProRes HQ took 54 seconds and resulted in a file of 341MB.
From an image quality standpoint, while I "believe" they should all look identical, or very close, it felt like the ProRes (not HQ) version retained more saturation than the other two. The difference was slight, and I could have been hallucinating after an all-night editing binge, but it was there.
I don't have the clips to upload right now, but if there's interest to see them, I certainly can at some point.
And I came across this note…
"While comparing the software-converted files I noticed a couple of interesting issues. My testing found that when the camera native codecs DVCPROHD, HDV or SxS were converted to ProRes in software they universally ran better when using the Standard version of ProRes rather than choosing the HQ version. This was most noticeable on HDV and DVCProHD originals that seem to consistently stutter or choke when playing back software-converted HQ content from compressed camera originals. The best explanation I have is ProRes HQ wants to fill in 10bits of information from the 8bit native compressed files. Due to the massive amount of processing needed to handle this conversion, it overwhelmed most systems on playback, whereas the standard version of ProRes is not trying to over-sample the 8bit data but rather it allows that data to move freely within the larger 10bit color space, easing the load on the CPU when processing the video for output."
…from this article…
http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/apple/story/prores_a_closer_look/#When:21:47:00Z
What does all of this mean? Maybe nothing to some people. But for me, Compressor to ProRes (not HQ) is the way to go. I work with large amounts of footage, and Compressor to ProRes results in great looking images at a decent file size.
Just thought I'd share.
--SM
All of this was done on my (probably underpowered) MacBook Pro 13" laptop, with a 2.53Ghz Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM. Your mileage may vary.
So, I ran one clip through both Compressor and Neoscene. Here are the results…
The original h.264 clip, which was a shot of a "folk-art" rooster on Miami's Calle Ocho, at 1920x1080 was 15 seconds long and 82.4MB in size.
Using Compressor to transcode to ProRes 422 took 55 seconds and resulted in a file of 209.7MB.
Using NeoScene to transcode to CineformHD took 70 seconds and resulted in a file of 207MB.
Using NeoScene to transcode to ProRes HQ took 54 seconds and resulted in a file of 341MB.
From an image quality standpoint, while I "believe" they should all look identical, or very close, it felt like the ProRes (not HQ) version retained more saturation than the other two. The difference was slight, and I could have been hallucinating after an all-night editing binge, but it was there.
I don't have the clips to upload right now, but if there's interest to see them, I certainly can at some point.
And I came across this note…
"While comparing the software-converted files I noticed a couple of interesting issues. My testing found that when the camera native codecs DVCPROHD, HDV or SxS were converted to ProRes in software they universally ran better when using the Standard version of ProRes rather than choosing the HQ version. This was most noticeable on HDV and DVCProHD originals that seem to consistently stutter or choke when playing back software-converted HQ content from compressed camera originals. The best explanation I have is ProRes HQ wants to fill in 10bits of information from the 8bit native compressed files. Due to the massive amount of processing needed to handle this conversion, it overwhelmed most systems on playback, whereas the standard version of ProRes is not trying to over-sample the 8bit data but rather it allows that data to move freely within the larger 10bit color space, easing the load on the CPU when processing the video for output."
…from this article…
http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/apple/story/prores_a_closer_look/#When:21:47:00Z
What does all of this mean? Maybe nothing to some people. But for me, Compressor to ProRes (not HQ) is the way to go. I work with large amounts of footage, and Compressor to ProRes results in great looking images at a decent file size.
Just thought I'd share.
--SM
