HDV and ProRes mixed -> best workflow? (Output: SD-DVD and HD file)

Dear all,

I am right now editing in great hurry. Original material is all shot with the same Canon camera, but I received some of the footage files as HDV and about 1/5 as ProRES 422.

The material is HDVi50 (PAL). I am firstly editing scenes in their own sequences and then putting these together in the master sequence.I have a screening to client on Tuesday and I'm very grateful for any help / experiences with these questions:

1) The sequence I am cutting the material: should it be ProRes or HDV? It will contain mixed HDV and ProRES material.

2) DVD output: should I de-interlace the material -> then scale down -> then do the MPEG2 in compressor? Or do the conversoion straight away in Compressor?

3) In the screening, I do not have to have a DVD, I can also use my laptop and connect it to the projector. It will be SD, as I am not sure wheter the projector is HD.

4) Any other issues / problems that may come along that I am could be unaware?

Final output will be SD-DVD (PAL) and a HD file. Length of the final video is around 10 minutes. Runnig FCP ver 6.

I could do a lot of testing, but I simply lack the time to do so (editing all-day-all-night-long -schedule) that I really appreciate any advice here in advance! Thanks!

1/5th ProRes?

1) TIMELINE

i'd provisionally say edit in an HDV timeline.

the issue that might arise is HDV can take some time to "conform" prior to you being able to export.

a fair bit depends on your processor speed.
the last long-form film i did was all HDV, and it exported from the timeline very quickly, without the dreaded "conform" time.
i asked about that here at lafcpug, and the consensus was that the speedy export was likely due to the quality if the system,
(and not that the need to conform didn't exist any more)

so, do you often work with HDV and have no problems exporting?
then edit in an HDV timeline.

if you are going to be doing a fair bit of grading and other effects work, then i'd say swap over to Prores.
you could do this after you edit has been approved, and before you start your grade.

i guess the safe bet is to use a ProRes timeline, same frame size & pixel aspect as your HDV,
render as you go, (Downtime, sleep & meal breaks)


2) DVD
you can do all of those things (de-interlace, scale, mpeg conversion) in Compressor as part of one operation.

personally for de-interlacing i like to do that in FCP, using the Graeme Nattress de-interlace plug-in.
i'm very fussy about de-interlacing, and the Nattress filter is very very good,
giving you a high-quality picture without the dreaded "blend" effect, (where both fields are super-imposed)

of course, NEST your finished timeline and de-interlace that, otherwise motion effects etc are still 50i
i don't know what the results of simply cutting in a 25p timeline would be.

i cant speak about the compressor de-interlace filter as i haven't used it very much.
i believe you are probably better of using the "better" mode in compressor rather than the "best" mode as it takes so much longer, and can introduce some unwanted artifacts.

3) SCREENING
YES.
connect your laptop to the projector, in your system Preferences, go to Display Settings, and tell it to "Detect Displays" it will see the projector as a second desktop.

if you are playing off a quicktime file, then you can Shift Apple F to "Present movie" to the second desktop.
in QT Player you can open the Movie Properties of the file (Apple J),
go to the Video track > Visual Settings, and chose to de-interlace.
forget about using Quick Time X, it doesn't have those controls.

OR
you can play directly out of FCP to the projector.
quality will be the Canvas to desktop you may have seen.
preview quality, but with a kind of built-in de-interlace.

this way you can do on-the-spot changes.



hope that helps somewhat,
nick

Thank you so much for a quick response!

I'll take these points into account. Processor is dual G5 2.3.

(Whoa, such a pain to work in a too tight schedule. Got sick for a while... deadline, however, is not negotiable in this case. Familiar situation to many here, I guess.)

One more thing. Switch your sequence render codec to ProRes (under Sequence Settings>Render Control>Codec, select ProRes422). That will speed up your render time (for preview during the edit session), as you won't be rendering to HDV.



www.strypesinpost.com

Thank you!

Hey, strypes,

You say, above: "ProRes ... will speed up your render time for preview during the edit session, as you won't be rendering to HDV."

Your experience is different to mine. I find that, when cutting HDV in an HDV Sequence, switching rendering from HDV to ProRes in the Sequence Settings in fact considerably slows down rendering time. My timings show me that a ProRes render takes about 4 times longer than an HDV one.

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong? It wouldn't surprise me at all. I am big on mistakes.

I'm currently cutting something which originates on 4 Canon cameras: an XLH1 (HDV 24f), a 3ti (H.264 at 24p), another 3ti (H264 at 30p by operator mistake) and a tiny little pocket camera that shoots 720p (H.264 at 30i). So, as you might imagine, I've been messing around trying to find the most efficient way of (a) cutting in a consistent timeline and (b) thinking about how I'm going to get this stuff to the best final output which will be 422 at 24p.

So, after consulting with my team of forensic photography experts - namely my dogs Banjo and Kipper - I have decided to transcode all the H.264 material to HDV for editing. Then I am planning on finishing in ProRes by converting all these separate elements to 422 24p and going back to the ORIGINAL camera files to do so.

I decided NOT to transcode everything to ProRes 24p for editing precisely because the ProRes renders, in my tests, took so much longer.

Whatcha think?

Harry The Idiot.

ProRes is way better than HDV in my opinion. It's not long-GOP and it renders graphics better. Also, there's no long conform time at the end of the edit and that basically evens out the render times during the edit in ProRes.

If I were you I would convert everything to ProRes from the get-go.

"convert everything to ProRes from the get-go."

agreed in the case of H264 media.

Harry, maybe your renders were taking longer as you were rendering HDV Media to ProRes in an HDV timeline
did you try a speed test on rendering ProRes media in a ProRes timeline?

You are exactly correct. I was doing HDV renders to ProRes in an HDV timeline. So if I plonk HDV into a ProRes Timeline and set Sequence Settings to Render as ProRes you are saying it will render as fast as rendering HDV in HDV Timeline using Render as HDV?

I will summon my team of slaves and conduct further tests. Damn. I thought I had it cracked.

But there is also the whole question of drive space to consider. If I pre-convert everything (the HDV and the H.264) to ProRes before editing I will be dealing with about 4 or 5 times the storage space. And this documentary is shooting 5 hours of stuff per day. So I thought it would be smart to reduce the dailies to HDV and later conform back to the original camera files.

What do you think?

This thing will probably shoot for 50 days ... maybe more.

5 hours per day x 50 days = 250 hours of this stuff. That's 2.68TB in HDV 24p. But in ProRes 422 24p it's 12.62TB. And I always have 2 backups, so the real number swells to 8.04TB in HDV versus (gulp) 37.86TB including the backups in ProRes 422 24p (not HQ).

Please let me know your thoughts.

Best

Harry.

Sorry, I didn't mean convert the HDV - I meant convert the H.264 to ProRes and then run everything is a ProRes timeline. The HDV will work fine in there. Converting things to HDV is not a good idea, in my opinion. It's too flakey and processor intensive. You can use ProRes LT which makes smaller file sizes and is great quality.

"So if I plonk HDV into a ProRes Timeline and set Sequence Settings to Render as ProRes you are saying it will render as fast as rendering HDV in HDV Timeline using Render as HDV? "

no i'm not saying that,
im saying that if you render ProRes in a ProRes timeline it might be just as fast as rendering HDV in an HDV timeline.
(i guess i was thinking about your next project, Harry, not your current one.)


"if I pre-convert everything (the HDV and the H.264) to ProRes"

sorry, i didn't realise you had so much native HDV media.
i'm not of the school of converting HDV to ProRes for editing,
especially for a long-form project.

"So I thought it would be smart to reduce the dailies to HDV and later conform back to the original camera files."

so conform back to the H264?
then render to PRoRes in the timeline?
interesting.

i think there is room for error there,
not based on any personal experience (i haven't worked that way) but from what i,ve read it seems there is room for weirdness when working with H264 in FCP.

just make sure you export a guide before you reconnect to the H264 and render,
then check against the guide.


nick

Thanks very much for the replies, one and all. It's so good to know that I can scream for help from my acquaintances on this board and confess.

I'm not going to edit anything in H.264. The idea is to transcode the H.264 to HDV and use that HDV for my cutting copy timeline. So I then have a totally HDV cutting copy which includes real HDV files.

I then edit - brilliantly.

When I finish - if that ever occurs - I would then fire up a completely fresh ProRes 422 24p Timeline and hide the HDV transcodes from FCP by removing the drive with the transcodes on it. Heh heh!

Then I would copy my HDV cutting copy Sequence File and paste it into my spanking new Pro-Res Timeline; FCP will scream at me that it can't find the (hidden) media.

But - Ha!

At that stage I tell FCP to reconnect to the original H.264 camera files since I would intentionally keep the file numbers of the HDV cutting copy transcodes the same as the original H.264 file numbers. I have artfully kept the original camera files on a disconnected drive which I now re-connect.

FCP then reconnects because I point FCP to those H.264 camera files. It doesn't know that the HDV transcodes exist, so it goes to the camera files (H.264). Right? I hope so.

Now I've got an edited ProRes Sequence with a mixture of HDV and H.264. And I didn't have to actually edit anything in H.264. See? Well, maybe not. But that means you haven't been following the glory of my geometric logic.

I set the Sequence Render Setting to ProRes and render the whole lot.

Voila. I now have a rendered ProRes Sequence.

Now I color correct in that fresh ProRes Timeline/Sequence file.

What I am trying to achieve is to edit in HDV for reasons of drive space and conform back for finishing.

Please tell me where this system is no good. I did look into using ProRes Proxy, but the quality is so awful that I would go bonkers looking at it during the edit. I've never used ProRes Lite so that's unfamiliar territory.

Am I mad? Or perhaps deluded?

Harry.

PS. After working in FCP for 11 years and suffering increasing numbers of crashes, I have just done what one is supposed to do. I bought two new 3TB internal drives and installed a fresh system and FCP, Compressor and nothing else. It was start again time. In the three days I have worked with the new drives and installs I have not experienced a single hang or crash; whereas before I was crashing at least once per hour. My life has changed.

Apparently it's all true. I always thought it was an old wives tale.

Happy 5th July to you all.

H.

Well, I'm guessing the speed difference you're seeing may have something to do with your render drive. ProRes renders are larger than hdv. You can do a test- add a dissolve and render it in hdv. Then switch render codec to ProRes. And see the difference. Of course, i assume you are working with decent storage for media purposes.



www.strypesinpost.com

Quote

FCP then reconnects because I point FCP to those H.264 camera files. It doesn't know that the HDV transcodes exist, so it goes to the camera files (H.264). Right? I hope so.

right!

Quote

I set the Sequence Render Setting to ProRes and render the whole lot.

not necessary in a ProRes sequence.

it all sounds good, Harry, and i did understand that as your workflow.

all i was saying was that H264 files might cause you some problems in your conform.
how are you grading? sending to colour?
i dont know how that handles H.264

here's a neat two-step you could do:

as you say, copy your final edit into a new project,
reconnect to the H264 file
then Tools Menu > Create Master Clips which will give you a new bin with all your master clips in it.
in the bin, sort by Compressor type,
choose all the H.264 files, and use Media Manager to move or copy them to a new location.
(if you move them to another folder on their existing drive, it's practically instantaneous)

once you have them all in one place, you could easily run them through Compressor, converting them to ProRes.
(the up-shot is you are only converting the files you need, not everything)

NOW you can take the H264 files offline in the FCP project,
and reconnect to the ProRes copies.

just a thought, and no real need to do it unless you find that (or get advised that) a long timeline's worth of H264 files gives you troubles.


nick

>i dont know how that handles H.264

Actually, I found that for some clips (could be a camera setting), Color preserves the superwhites, while a ProRes transcode via QuickTime flattens them. But Color has never been good with mixed media, not that I have tried grading mixed media in Color.


One thing about switching the render codec to ProRes- it is strictly for offline preview. FCP will ignore those files when you are exporting a qt movie, as your sequence codec is set to HDV.

If you switch your sequence to ProRes, you will have to render everything to ProRes, unless you transcode before editing. Transcoding for long form? Depends. I always feel that ProRes has file sizes comparable to uncompressed SD, and over the years, storage has become cheaper. Working in ProRes is not feasible for some long form work though (multicam reality or docus), as you tend to go through enormous amounts of footage.



www.strypesinpost.com