ProRes Nessesary???

Im a little confused???
Ive been shooting my HVX200 for the past couple years and cutting all my productions on FCP2. Ive always assumed that its best to import and set all my projects up in the DVCPRO HD 720p24 format, since thats what Im shooting in. My footage is brought in via 1394 Firewire and the final projects are mastered to Quicktime files, then imported into DVD Studio Pro for authoring.

My question is:
Is there a benefit to setting up my FCP sequences in the ProRes 422 1280X720 format with the workflow that Im using???

Form what Ive gathered via (reading) there's no reason...

Thanks!!!

None whatsoever.

DVCPRO HD is a little bit peculiar. It's an acquisition format, but it's also suitable for editing natively. There aren't many formats like that.

But as always, the trade-off is quality. DVCPRO HD is actually a very low-resolution "high-definition" format. The nominal 720p format actually only records a raster of 960x720; shooting in DVCPRO HD throws away a lot of resolution.

Also, DVCPRO HD is not transparent across multiple generations. That's something you should be aware of. If you take a shot from your HVX200 and color-correct it on your Final Cut timeline, you're essentially decoding it to uncompressed, applying the color correction, then re-encoding it back to DVCPRO HD. This degrades your footage slightly. But frankly, if you've never noticed before, you shouldn't worry about it now.

The benefit to ProRes is that it's perceptually lossless out to about ten generations, which means you could convert everything you shoot to ProRes, pull a key off it, superimpose it on another shot, add graphics or text, then color-correct the whole thing without ever visibly degrading any of your elements. Then you could do all that again, and still not see any degradation.

But since you're starting with such a compressed format anyway, and not really doing anything particularly intensive to it, there's no reason not to just stay in DVCPRO HD.

Jeff,
That all makes a ton of since.... Thanks for your detailed response! I do color correct though, sorry I left that info out. Sometimes I use Magic Bullet Editor and sometimes I use Color. With that being the case should I be cutting in a ProRes sequence to keep the integrity of original footage???

Once again, if you haven't noticed the extra compression hit by now, you probably shouldn't worry about it.

The compression your referring to would be most noticeable in gradients such as sky's and color transitions correct???

Probably not, no. You'd probably spot it most clearly in areas of high contrast and fast motion.

Not to keep bugging you but your really helping!!!
I actually have noticed that I loose resolution when I color. So to reduce the loss of resolution I should import in the DVCPRO 720p24 (like I've been doing) and cut in a ProRes 422 720 timeline?

Thanks again for all your input!

There's no point in cutting in a ProRes timeline- however for rendering and color correction yes you would see an improvement by switching to ProRes or even uncompressed. But again that can be done after editorial.

Noah

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So your saying edit in a DVCPro 720p24 timeline than make a new timeline in the ProRes or Uncompressed format and copy and Paste my completed edit into the new timeline?
Sorry if its a dumb question...

Just toggle your timeline to ProRes HQ 720p24 (or Uncompressed if your capture card supports it).



www.strypesinpost.com

Stay DVCPRO HD all the way. Capture, edit, color correct. Transcoding to ProRes is really unnecessary.

Please note...PLANT EARTH was 90% DVCPRO HD...shot with the Varicam.

Copying and pasting to ProRes is, IMHO, silly and completely a waste of time. I worked on three 2-hour history channel shows and two series (one Discovery, one HIstory) that were entirely shot on DVCPRO HD, and we kept it in that format from start to finish. Even sending to COLOR and back.

ProRes is not needed in this case.


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What do you mean by "toggle" your timeline to ProRes? I didnt know you could change the timeline format from one to another after edits have been made. How do you do so?

Then Im confused!!! How come they say if you export to color or Magic Bullet you'll loose resolution because more compression is going to be added? yet if you export via uncompressed or ProRes you wont?
If your correct, thats great!!! Id much rather stick with one format from beginning to end.

Thanks!!

> I didnt know you could change the timeline format from one to another after edits have been
>made.

Go to sequence settings. Sequence presets. Select a ProRes or Uncompressed timeline with the same frame size. FCP will not allow you to toggle between different framerates.

>How come they say if you export to color or Magic Bullet you'll loose resolution because more
>compression is going to be added?

[www.kenstone.net]

On rendering,

Source codec ->decompression -> render -> recompression to sequence codec.

If you work in uncompressed, your footage does not go through any recompression after rendering.



www.strypesinpost.com

That's nitpicking. I have delivered so many shows using just DVCPRO HD, color corrected with the 3-way, then COLORISTA (better), and then Color. I saw more than one of these projected onto a 40 foot screen via a Christie 2K projector...and they all looked GREAT.


www.shanerosseditor.com

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[itunes.apple.com]

There won't be much difference if you're working with DvcproHD than if you are working with the long GOP formats. DvcproHD is a 100mb/s 4:2:2 format to start with, unlike XDCAM EX or HDV, so you're less likely to notice generation loss on DvcproHD if you're going less than 4 generations. And in most cases I can't imagine where you will go more than 4 in a typical post production workflow.

You are more likely to see a difference rendering through filter stacks with render options set to floating point accuracy than at 8 bit rendering.

However I usually opt for the Uncompressed workflow if I'm going out to HDCAM/HDCAM SR and if the drive allows it.



www.strypesinpost.com

Thanks a ton for all your input!!!!
Regards,
Taylor