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Editing with H.264 footage?

Hi Guys,

I have been using my 600D for the past few months and editing in premiere Pro CS5.5, now I know CS5.5 can edit H.264 DSLR footage natively but i have been told to convert that footage to Apple Pro Res first before i start editing...

Would this be the actual correct workflow? Whats the advantages of converting to Apple ProRes first as opposed to editing straight in H.264?
 
You have been told wrong. ProRes is for Apple people. If anything, you might want to transcode with Cineform Neoscene, depending on how robust your computer is and how it's handling the footage.
 
I have an old 2009 duo core mac with 8gb ram... its starting to get a bit slow especially with large projects and the H.264 footage is hard to scrub through in the viewer due to lag etc

Hope that helps?

I have mpeg stream clip does that support cineform?

And as is ay what are the advantages in transcoding?
 
Oh, and I meant to say that ProRes is for people editing in Final Cut, not Apple people editing in Premiere.

The advantage in transcoding is that the software handles the footage better. You'll notice at least a decrease in lag, if it doesn't disappear entirely. http://cineform.com/products/neoscene

The only disadvantage is that it requires about twice as much storage space.
 
I wish I'd known that. I've been using Prores, and I edit in Premiere Pro.

To the best of my knowledge, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I found a nice blog that explains the subject much better than I can.

It doesn't sound like editing in ProRes makes things easier upfront, during the edit. In fact, on a couple different forums I've read people describe Premiere handling native DSLR footage easier than it does ProRes. The advantage of ProRes, so far as I understand, is that it's a good format for final output. So, if you're on a Mac, and you've already been using ProRes, and you like your workflow, sounds like you might as well keep it.

On the flip-side, it wouldn't really make sense for somebody on a PC to edit in ProRes. Too many hoops to jump through, doesn't make editing easier, and Neoscene does not cost too much more than Quicktime (which I've purchased, and still have difficulty encoding to ProRes). And the benefit of Neoscene is that it too is a great format for final output, and in editing, it's like butter, and that's true for both Mac-heads and PC-folk!

Most of my projects are edited in native formats, be that DSLR or AVCHD. My computer handles both just fine for the most part, but on larger projects, it starts to get jumpy. Neoscene, however, edits smooth as a babies bottom. If it's in your budget, I highly recommend it.
 
In my case, PP doesn't handle native DSLR footage well at all. I've edited with it a few times, only when I had a small amount of footage for shorts that didn't last long at all. It still had trouble previewing, and crashing unexpectedly.... And when I try to export it... if I even accidentally select H.264, I'm screwed. The thing will crash, but it'll freeze for ten minutes before doing so.
 
In my case, PP doesn't handle native DSLR footage well at all. I've edited with it a few times, only when I had a small amount of footage for shorts that didn't last long at all. It still had trouble previewing, and crashing unexpectedly.... And when I try to export it... if I even accidentally select H.264, I'm screwed. The thing will crash, but it'll freeze for ten minutes before doing so.

So it's been handling ProRes better though? (Obviously, otherwise you wouldn't still be doing it) And I assume you're on Mac?

Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it! :)

So, maybe the OP needs to just try it. I have read others say that ProRes wasn't the best for editing, but mussonman has experienced otherwise. No harm in dipping your toes in the water, see how it feels.

I guess I'm sort of retracting my original statement. Just a little bit. ProRes is definitely not for PC people. But for Mac people editing in Premiere -- maybe.

Nevertheless, I do still recommend Neoscene (especially for you, mussonman, since it sounds like your computer isn't the most powerful out there). By the way -- it just occurred to me that you might not even have to purchase Neoscene to get the awesome codec.
 
I use MPEG streamclip, all of the footage gets placed together, making it into one MASSIVE file, but it still plays better than the native footage. It loses a bit of color, but nothing too damaging (At least, I don't think.)


And then, I edit the video in PP, and everything works fine, no crashes, I can export in whatever format I want, and even preview at the highest quality, which I need to set it to its lowest with native footage, and it still skips frames.
 
I have Adobe CS4, which doesn't handle h.264 natively that well.

I use the bundled Media Encoder to convert the DSLR files to MPEG files - which is the native format for PP (in HD, at least. AVI for SD).

I'm sure the massive filesizes of Cineform are worth it for the utmost colour etc, but the MPEG is great for many purposes, and the filesize is 1/3 of the original DSLR files.

Might be an option to consider.
 
I use MPEG streamclip, all of the footage gets placed together, making it into one MASSIVE file, but it still plays better than the native footage. It loses a bit of color, but nothing too damaging (At least, I don't think.)


And then, I edit the video in PP, and everything works fine, no crashes, I can export in whatever format I want, and even preview at the highest quality, which I need to set it to its lowest with native footage, and it still skips frames.

Huh. Well if you're losing a bit of color, I definitely recommend you start using Cineform. It looks great, and edits really smoothly.

I'm still not 100% sure that the free version is the exact same lossless codec as the paid version, but as far as I can tell -- I think it is!

Here's a nice tutorial, including a link to the free software and codec.
 
The advantage of ProRes is that it will decode on nearly any system with Quicktime installed. The disadvantage is that it will only encode on Mac systems with FCP installed, which is rather limiting.

DNxHD can be encoded and decoded on any system that has the free MOV codec installed, but only certain apps will play it in RT out of a dedicated I/O card (For an HD-SDI projector). It is both Mac and PC compatible which is a nice benefit, and the fact that it is limited to 422 colorspace is irrelevent for post-color corrected viewing copies. One thing to watch out for is gamma shifts between Mac and PC playback because it is QT based.

Cineform is nice because it is PC and Mac compatible, and has both AVI and MOV options. It won't play out in RT from certain I/O cards and applications though, and playback at all requires the Cineform codec to be installed. The fact that many people don't already have the Cineform codec installed is what limits this format's use as a distribution and exchange format.

[...]

If you have software that allows export of XD-Cam compatible files, that may be a good way of exchanging data in cross platform.scenarios. The 50Mb version is full resolution 422. Quality will be lower than most of the other methods mentioned above though, and quick playback is not always simple. (Can't just double click to preview it, like an AVI or MOV.)

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/cinefor...-codecs-2011-prores-vs-cineform-vs-dnxhd.html
 
I'm not a great expert when it comes to the video side of things but I can give a bit of useful info. In the vast majority of the professional jobs I've done, ProRes or DNxHD has been the codec of choice for the DI in editing. There is always a trade off with codecs to achieve good quality, either the file sizes are very large, which is demanding on hard drives to store and move all the data or the file sizes are small but highly demanding of CPU processing resources. H264 is very highly compressed, which creates small files sizes but requires a great deal of CPU power to decompress it on the fly. This slows things down a great deal and even with quite powerful computers makes it difficult/impossible to scrub smoothly. For this and other reasons it is almost never used as an editing format by professionals. The advantage of the large file sizes produced by ProRes and DNxHD is that being less compressed to start with they don't require anywhere near the amount of CPU to decompress, which greatly speeds up the editing process. In other words, H264 is a good format to use to exchange material and to post on the web, where small file sizes are important but not good for directly working with.

G
 
Cracker, when mentioning Cineform, you specified Neoscene. Why is that ? Converting to Cineform using the free Studio software isn't the same/enough ?

It used to be the case that the least expensive way to get the Cineform codec was to buy Neoscene (and so for a long time, Neoscene was a popular recommendation). But then GoPro bought Cineform and began offering their codec on their free software. Is it the same codec? As far as I can tell, yes. If you check the thread I linked to earlier, you'll see that a number of even IT's most technichally-inclined were wondering if it's the same codec. As far as I can tell, it is, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to say that for sure.
 
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