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bsilva48
bsilva48
Participant
October 17, 2013
Question

Pro Res vs h.264

  • October 17, 2013
  • 2 replies
  • 30525 views

Hey, I'd like to really clear this up for the sake of my own workflow.

So my company shoots everything on DSLRs (occasionally Canon c300) 1920x1080 compressed h.264 and we've recently switched to Premiere from FCP. When editing in FCP I would convert all of our media to ProRes and edit with that. But more recently in Premiere I've been recommending we edit on the h.264 format to save encoding time and HDD space. But I also know h.264 is a delivery format and not really an editing format. I've had tons of issues with it in FCP but so far so good in Premiere.

So, am I at a disadvantage editing h.264 footage vs ProRes in Premiere? Are there any potential risks in doing this?

Thanks

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2 replies

timothya46344266
timothya46344266
Participant
April 27, 2015

I just want to chime in after spending all my sunday deciding whether to transcode to prores or not with the new Premiere CC on a documentary I just shot.

Decision...I'm transcoding to Prores 422HQ.

Why?

Scrubbing and moving around in the timeline made things so much nicer. My CPU bars went full throttle with H.264 footage. With Prores it was like silk moving through clips, CPU bars had no effect. Also slightly faster rendering.

I'm about to spend a month cutting this Doc and 12 webisodes. Harddrives are cheap, I will transcode overnight. I based my decision on ease of use for THE LONG TERM.

If I shot an event during the day and needed a cut by nightfall I would not transcode.

Hope this helps:)

    E
    excited_Genie16B8
    Legend
    October 17, 2013

    You're at an advantage using PP and editing the original media.

    able123
    able123
    Inspiring
    October 17, 2013

    I recently bought a ninja to use with nikon d800 ...hdmi output (uncompressed output 1080p ) to ninja, saving as pro res or avid codec... ( my choice for me is avid for pc )...

    That gives me a 10 bit 422 space instead of the 420 8 bit space, and also the bitrate is higher on the ninja recording ( mov with avid codec out of ninja SSD ).

    the advantages are : 10 bit space with high bitrate capture and any color correction and effects etc done in editing will be in the space for " editing" rather than a file used for delivery ( viewing ).

    Also, I dont get the stress on the cpu etc. that the h264 puts on the computer.

    there is no advantage to editing the original stuff in this case..in fact is the opposite...

    It is similar to using log c from a card on the alexa or using 2 HD SDI bnc outputs to get the 444 to a recorder outside the camera... know what I mean ??

    N
    needles27
    Participating Frequently
    October 17, 2013

    There is no question that Prores gives you a better file to edit and grade with if you have that choice at acquisition.  But, if you already have H.264s as your source files, there aren't any good reasons to transcode to edit in Premiere. (unless you have under-specd hardware)

    You won't gain back any color space or remove compression artifacts by moving H.264s to ProRes, you will just lose time and HDD space.  I too used to edit in FCP and had to transcode, and the ability to bypass that step is one big reason I came over to Premiere.  Version 5.5 on the Mac didn't give me good playback results, but CS6 and beyond have played the H.264s just as smoothly as ProRes.  It is more CPU intensive, so having a decent machine is necessary.

    If you find that you are getting realy choppy playback, you can try to drop the playback resolution (although with H.264s that sometimes can't help) and if you are still getting trouble, then I would do the transcodes.

    So, in summary, you don't lose anything by editing in H.264 and you gain time and HD space. 

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