HDV rendered as ProRes export problem

I have captured and edited HDV as HDV but with render as ProRes enabled. My final timeline has been rendered completely (global color correction). When I export it as a QuickTime Movie it takes an extremely long time (many hours) even without "Make Movie Self-Contained" selected. That puzzled me until I noticed that FCP transcodes everything back to HDV during export. Of course, I don't want that, since it is an unnecessary loss in quality (why did I bother to render as ProRes if it gets converted to HDV at the end anyway?) and since I just don't have the time. The whole movie is right there in the timeline: finished, rendered, pristine ProRes. I just need to get it out of FCP as it is. How do I do that?

I tried changing the sequence setting to ProRes, but that resulted in the loss of all render files. Also, it does not seem very elegant since it introduces an unnecessary re-compression.

There's a difference between setting your timeline render format to ProRes and setting your timeline format to ProRes.

In point of fact, your whole movie is not right there in the timeline as finished, rendered, pristine ProRes. Your whole movie is right there in the timeline as a hell of a lot of HDV media, plus some little segments here and there than Final Cut rendered and wrote to your framestore's render cache in ProRes format.

You have two options at this point. First, you can just edit your finished timeline to tape over SDI, assuming you're equipped with an I/O board. Since Final Cut can play back unconformed HDV in real time, and since all the shots that need rendering have been fully rendered and can play back in full quality in real time, a real-time lay-off is easy as clicking "edit to tape."

However, if you don't have an I/O board, and what you really want is a ProRes Quicktime movie, then you need to change your timeline format to ProRes and re-render everything. Literally everything; every frame will need to be rendered.

Yes, it's kind of lame that setting timeline rendering to ProRes, then changing your mind and setting the timeline format to ProRes causes Final Cut to discard your rendered shots. But it's sort of understandable why they did it that way. The edit-in-HDV, render-in-ProRes option is for a workflow that ends with a real-time output, usually to tape. In that workflow, there's simply no reason to convert untouched frames to ProRes, since Final Cut can already play those back at full quality in real time.

As to your last point, yes, technically setting your timeline to ProRes will result in a re-compression of all frames. But ProRes is transparent across a single generation, so you won't see the effect of that compression hit. I did some tests early last year, and even pulled a difference matte comparing some HDV shots with the same shots converted to ProRes. If I really blasted the exposure on the matte, I could see a difference, but otherwise, it was just pure black.

If you really want to skip that compression pass, you can always change your timeline to uncompressed 8-bit. (Or, technically, uncompressed 10-bit, but that won't help much, since your source material is all 8-bit anyway.)

Thanks for your answer Jeff. I guess I will rerender everything as ProRes for my final master export. Either by changing the timeline settings to ProRes or by exporting it using QuickTime Conversion. But what about preview versions for the client? I can't afford to render 5 hours everytime I made some changes and the client wants me to sent him a quicktime for approval.

Is there any way to get the footage out of FCP quickly without a tape deck when quality is not a big concern?


> There's a difference between setting your timeline
> render format to ProRes and setting your timeline
> format to ProRes.
>
> In point of fact, your whole movie is not right
> there in the timeline as finished, rendered,
> pristine ProRes. Your whole movie is right there
> in the timeline as a hell of a lot of HDV media,
> plus some little segments here and there than
> Final Cut rendered and wrote to your framestore's
> render cache in ProRes format.


Actually, it should be all ProRes since I did a global color correction. But that is beside the point.

the trick is to edit in a Prores timeline,
and render as you go.
AND render while you are not working by using auto-render.

when it comes time to play-out, or export, you wont have 5-hrs of rendering to do,
just a few minutes, hopefully.

a gotcha is that auto render wont render anything that is a "full" quality effect (olive grey render bar.)
but as you are cutting HDV into a ProRes timeline you will most likely not have those, but rather lots of "Preview" quality effect, or green render bar



nick

So - just to be clear - do you think I should change all my timelines and nested timelines and timelines nested in other timelines and.... well, just change all my timelines to ProRes by simply going to sequence settings and changing the "Compressor:" setting to "ProRes (HQ)"?

You can use ProRes 422 HQ if you want, but you don't need to. Regular old ProRes 422 is more than sufficient for shows that were originally shot on HDV. There's just not enough detail in your frames to require the higher data rate.

I'll let somebody else field the nested-timelines question, since I have never used that feature.

Danqi
The alternative is to take your existing timeline and choose Export > Quicktime Movie ... then under Settings, instead of Current Settings you can choose the appropriate ProRes format for your edit master. You'll still be re-rendering everything but it would be simpler at this stage than going through and resetting all your timeline and nest sequence settings to ProRes, and the result will be the same. In future, if you have an appropriately feisty Mac and find this render all on output task to be prohibitive, then setting your timeline to ProRes and rendering as you go sounds like your best bet.
Cheers
Andy