Final Questions before starting film project

I was hoping someone could clarify for me which codec we should use for a feature film (60 hours of dailies) that we are shooting 35mm and transfering to HDCAM (not sure if it's sr or not) then having Technicolor capture ProRes for us. We are thinking of staying at 720p23.98 but I'm not sure of the difference between ProRes and ProRes HQ and whether it's worth the extra 30-40% of storage space. I am using 4 1TB esata drives in a software RAID 0 (everything is mirrored on another editing station so I don't need protection.) We will be doing a film finish, so this is all for offline, plus an audience preview screening so it will be projected. I assume the HQ is higher resolution. Will I notice the difference? I do have enough space ProRes SQ 1080 and ProRes HQ 720. Any way I should be going up to 1080 with my system?

Thanks to everyone who has answered my questions over the last month. It's been a bitch getting final financing but we are finally shooting next week! Movie stars suck, especially when they drop out of your film three weeks before the start of shooting....

The difference between ProRes 422 and ProRes 422 HQ is bit rate, not resolution. Both are full-raster codecs. They're variable bit-rate, but ProRes 422 HQ has a higher hard ceiling. ProRes 422 tops out at 145 Mbps, while HQ tops out at 220 Mbps. For 1080p24 material, HQ usually runs around 165 Mbps on my system. So considerably lower than 10-bit uncompressed SD.

If it were me, I'd do 1080p24 at ProRes 422, not HQ. Working in 720 never seems to be quite as reliable as 1080 in my experience, but admittedly that's a gut reaction rather than anything I've analyzed.

I'll second Jeff on that...

60 hours of 1080p23.98 ProRes will be about 2.92TB you will be running a bit close to filling the RAID up but not seriously so. Just get rid of shots that are absolutely no good.

I often cut ProRes and HQ 1080p25 on the Laptop on a 2 Drive RAID 0 (Hardware RAID though) but thats only connected via FireWire 800

The reason it should be 1080 is simply the extra detail can mean the difference in spotting possible FX/masking work issues before you come to the negcut/2k/4k scan. If you are getting 1080p23.98 HDCAM SR and Technicolor do a good tech grade then obviously these could be used to master as a DI - if its HDCAM then (Jeff knows my feeling on plain HDCAM) its not great for mastering where a lot of grading/fx work is required.

I did a feature recently which we offlined in DVCAM no issues except what I described - extra budget was need to do some removal of items/signage in certain scenes that we just didn't see on the SD version.

720p is pretty good but there is nothing like cutting at a decent res - plus any effects work can be pre-comped with your rushes and then replaced with the 2k/4k later with minimal fuss.

Another reason (man I could list a 100!) is that any out-takes or footage for EPK or making-of will be in HD which is a massive boon.



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The answer to which ProRes Codec to use also depends on the final output. If your finishing to HDCAM SR I would recommend medium quality ProRes (140Mb) but if you want to output to film then I recommend ProRes HQ.

But if that's the case I would only accept HDCAM SR Dual link 4:4:4 from Technicolor. Unless they are providing you with an offline version HDCAM and then conforming using their DI process -- for which your undoubtedly paying way to much. [just kidding...]

Thanks everyone. We are ultimately cutting negative so it's only a reference for fixes, visual effects will just be temporary. I'll have the lab do a test of SQ 1080 and SQ 720 and see if the difference is noticeable on our displays.