Cutting a doc and debating which NLE, and what Codec

I've got a Doc I'm starting. 30 mins in length, I'm looking at using Davinci to transcode my R3d's and also Phantom footage.

I don't have a red rocket and I don't have Cuda compatible cards, but from what I understand CUDA wont really play in the transcode. I do have 2 MacPros that will run these programs.

I am leaning to cut in AVID, but I'm also thinking about Premiere. If I am cutting in Premiere is ProRes the best bet? Or can I use an H264 codec, save some space. Maybe have dailies I can give to the Director? Or am I cutting off my nose without CUDA?

I'm drowning in options. Anybody have a preferred settings in Resolve for for 5k Red to DNxHD?

>I'm drowning in options.

You bet. A year ago I'd probably have said Avid. Today, with Premiere NEXT just around the corner... Things could change in the next few months.

What kind of edit is it? Effects heavy? Lots of stills? Large stills?

One part of it depends on whether you're starting the edit before or after June 17th if you're cutting in Premiere, because the Next version of Premiere will come with native DNxHD support, and that's huge, but... you don't want to base your workflow around something you haven't had time to fully test, or a .0 release.

As for H.264, I've cut DSLR footage in Premiere, and it's not bad at all. Some folks have had issues. To me it feels almost like ProRes, except when you hit "J" to go backwards, then it's awful. H.264 was not designed for playing backwards. The main issue if you ask me, is how you are making those H.264 files as H.264 is a very scaleable format with many different profiles, some of which will work better than others in Premiere. Also, it depends on your machine. Personally, I'll stick to ProRes Proxy for offline, or DNxHD 36, as those are light formats you can throw around.

You could, however, try this other route, and do the offline in Avid, then bounce it to Premiere/AE for finishing.

But the most important thing is stick to what you're comfortable in, and test out the workflow. Unless you plan to use it as a learning experience, then that's fine. That comes with a bit of stress, though.



www.strypesinpost.com

I don't do long format so I cannot speak to that but I do know that H264 is a delivery format - not an edit format (highly compressed). I am currently working on 5K RED RAW (R3D) footage converted to prores in QT Pro for an After Effects composite project. It's the only edit / master codec I use.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Thanks for the input.

My comfort zone is definitely FCP. But I need to get past that, so unless they tell me different I'm pushing ahead with MC. I've gone with DnxHD36, I didn't see that much improvement with DnXHD145. (I think I was running into limitations of the lens.) I debayered at 1/4 as I didn't see much difference from 1/4 to 1/2, and plus my system started choking on the 1/2. 5K interviews, WHY?

but I may use DnX145 or higher for some of the more visual stuff. Can I mix the codecs like that in a project. BTW I am using Resolve lite, it is faster and gave a better result then Red cine x Pro. At least with my limited tinkering. Resolve is definitely making itself invaluable as The Ingestion software of choice.

H264 may be a delivery format, but people are cutting in it. Yes it would drive me crazy if I cant play backwards smooth. I have exported interviews to my ipad and done a little pre-cutting, in the past.

>Can I mix the codecs like that in a project.

Yes. You can. Just know that if you want to export a same as source reference QT, you may have to do a video mixdown before you can export same as source.

Once you familiarize yourself with Avid, you will stumble upon some interesting editing shortcuts in Premiere, because Premiere is a bit of an Avid/FCP7 hybrid.



www.strypesinpost.com

The thing about H.264 is that it was designed as a delivery format. But things have changed since 2006. Machines have certainly gotten faster, and although I will never recommend using H.264 as an intermediate format (XAVC could be a future option), for editing, it really depends on whether your machine runs software/hardware that allows you to keep up with it.

In Joey's case, for RED, although RED can be edited natively, he'll have a bit of a better time cutting (and especially compositing) if it was in an intermediate format.



www.strypesinpost.com

Why don't you download a trial and have a play with both in some kind of mockup of what you'll be facing. PP is developing in leaps and bounds, but Avid is solid and well ingrained in the industry.

I also cut a fair bit of h.264 in PP now, which I would *never* do in FCP. Ingest, cut, export, no problems. Fast, efficient and no massive file sizes. I do agree about the playing backwards though, and I've seen that on a few different codecs. There's a lag before it starts to play in reverse.

However, I have had the opportunity to have a play with the new PP recently and I have to say it's really snappy. I'm looking forward to working on it.

I did do a test with red native and my system really wasn't happy. I own adobe suite 5 but I downloaded a 6.? Demo to try it out. I think if my system had CUDA, I probably would have gone that way. If this show payed, twice what it does I might have Bought one of the new cards that support it.

I thought for a second about FCP 10. Which is very fun to cut with but, my only project in it was a trailer, and by the time I was nearing the end of the cut, the tracks were such a convoluted mess of sequences inside sequences, that some little changes required drilling in twice.

CUDA does not accelerate RED decoding. RED decoding is locked by RED's SDK. RED for long form, although it's an interesting idea, it may be a stretch.

Mercury, is not restricted to CUDA or OpenCL. Actually, there is a lot of misinformation about Mercury. Mercury is an umbrella term for a series of processes involving multithreading, multiprocessing and GPU acceleration. Also, mercury is not a fixed thing. The implementation changes and improves with every version of Premiere. The presence of CUDA and OpenCL mainly allow some processes to be offloaded to the GPU, and these are largely effects.



www.strypesinpost.com

Mercury gets better with every version. It was unusable on CS 5 and is significantly faster in CC for me than CS 6.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

I'm going to say one thing about 5K RED. You need 2 RRs to play that back in real time. If you only have one, you are better turning off RR and letting Mercury handle the playback. On a MacPro, I can get pretty decent playback at half rez at 1080. It also depends on the compression type used.



www.strypesinpost.com

Yes, premeire leverages CUDA the most, and so if you don't got it, it's advantages are minimalized.

Thats why I can use to advantage Resolve, despite most of what resolve rocks at requires CUDA, which Resolve reminds me constantly.

Seriously at this point I think I went with Avid for this show because the footage just played/looked best.

Quote
H264 may be a delivery format, but people are cutting in it.

So? People cut with WMVs too...doesn't mean it's a good idea. I only use H264s for exporting for approval or to post on a website.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Joey, it depends on which machine you're cutting on. Premiere has a very powerful playback engine, with a decent machine, you can cut H.264, even 5K RED and it's quite smooth. But I don't mean take those RED footage and convert everything to H.264, then use that as your final master. That won't look pretty.

Ethan was considering using H.264 as an offline codec in Premiere, then he'll reconnect back to the RED mags for the grade and finish. I have worked with H.264 (DSLR footage) in Premiere (without GPU acceleration), but that's mainly 5-10 min pieces, and it's fine. No lags, no beachballs (except when playing backwards), no crashes, no complications, it's sweet. I'm not sure how much DSLR footage it can take. I currently have about 4 half hour episodes in the same project file (not H.264 except for 2 clips) and it's moving along fine. Premiere can take a LOT of footage in one project. Same with Avid.

WMVs on the other hand has bad performance because Adobe doesn't officially support WMV, and support only comes via flip4mac. Won't recommend editing with it.


>Yes, premeire leverages CUDA the most, and so if you don't got it, it's advantages are minimalized.
>Thats why I can use to advantage Resolve, despite most of what resolve rocks at requires CUDA,
>which Resolve reminds me constantly.

There's a difference between Resolve and Premiere. Premiere is also able to make very good use of CPU, not just GPU. Resolve is mainly GPU. That was why when we had one RR and 5K footage, we ended up using RR inside Resolve and we switched it off for Premiere, because Premiere didn't need it, and the RR was actually slowing it down.


>Seriously at this point I think I went with Avid for this show because the footage just
>played/looked best.

If you're measuring it with CS5, that's 3 year old technology. Premiere really improved in the last couple of years.

But hey, have fun whatever you're cutting on. Premiere, and Avid, I love them both. Some stuff is better in Premiere, some in Avid.



www.strypesinpost.com

WMV's. ROFL, " Why not they look great in my PowerPoint presentations. Don, our IT guy does it all the time."

H264 is a tool like any other, it has it's place. The iPad app "Touchedit," will be using it. As someone who has transcoded some dailies to H264, and put on an iPad, to do some pre-editing. This was almost 2 years ago. For those of us that deal with hours and hours of dailies, it makes some sense.

...but im not going to be doing any finishing from an iPad. Right now we transcode from DSLR footage, to ProRes, and in the rare instance conform back to the H264. To then transcode to ProRes again, so that it can become H264. Soon to be H265. Although having said that I realize, the latest news is all about DSLRs shooting RAW.

I'm just trying to keep an eye on the horizon.

Thanks everyone for the feedback.

That's the point - lots of people are shooting H.264 now. In FCP I always transcode this to ProRes first, which can take hours of your edit time. In PP, it's drag and drop and cut and export without any trouble at all.

But it's horses for courses. And horses for jockies too. If you like your workflow and it likes you, stay there while you can.

I use H.264 all the time in Premiere with no problems. But I think it depends on where you want to save time. It's great for quick turnaround projects but for longer projects I always transcode to a lower-complexity format because your continued render and export times will pay a bigger price over time than the amount you initially saved by not transcoding.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

You're right Jude = horses for courses. Depends what you are doing with the footage as well. Wouldn't dream of using or recommending H264 in a compositing / keying / tracking project...the color information is garbage. If there are weak standards for delivery, it really doesn't matter. Try submitting an H264 for broadcast.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

If the camera recorded to H.264, the only benefit you gain by converting to ProRes is in real time playback and faster rendering. You don't get better color space by converting to ProRes, in fact, you only lose quality converting to an intermediate format, just that with ProRes you don't lose that much quality. You don't have to render out as H.264 even if you ingested and edited native. Most of us are rendering out to ProRes, just that we don't spend a day converting all the footage to H.264 before we start editing, because Premiere can handle it easily.

I have a H.264 clip in my Premiere timeline right now, and you won't be able to tell the difference in playback. And I'm not using any super computer either. I'm using my 17" MacBook Pro with 8 GBs of RAM.



www.strypesinpost.com

I export as ProRes too, because that's what the deliverables require, but as Strypes said, you're not making your footage better, because it originated as H.264. In PP the performance difference between working native or spending hours transcoding first is pretty much nil.

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If the camera recorded to H.264, the only benefit you gain by converting to ProRes is in real time playback and faster rendering.

Uh...yeah. That's why you don't shoot in H264. You are already destroying your colorspace before you get to Post and you cannot put back what is not there to begin with. Running the risk of sounding like a snob, I have yet for someone to hand me H264 shoot material and I am in a tiny little market. The worst I see is XDCam and even that is transcoded to prores on ingest. We tell shooters what we prefer and they shoot that way. If you have the option for that, it's a wonderful thing.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Yeah, it completely depends on your market. Almost every group I know now has at least one DLSR in their kit which they either use as a group of main cameras, or as second cameras left in more dangerous spots. They are great for sensitive docs because they're so small and don't intimidate people, and they're great for commercials because they can get into tight places and they're great for corporates and TV because they can get trashed and not blow the budget.

And now that they're easy to cut with, the sound is improved and they're so cheap, they're absolutely everywhere. Just don't try panning or doing run and gun. Hopeless.