You can save yourself time, effort, and energy during your editing sessions (and even improve exporting speed) by changing camera orignals into media files that are easier to edit with.
Let's discuss ingest, copy, transcode, and proxies creation and why transforming your media from Long GOP camera originals to edit ready codec might be a good idea for your workflow.
This video describes the process and why you'd want to change your camera originals into intermediate files for editing.
Chin Fat
Here are my notes:
- You are going to need to make copies of your original files in the form of transcoded (ripped) files or proxy (representative files, smaller in size) files. See the article or video above if you need help with these things.
- Each method has their own benefits and shortcomings.
- Transcoded files (to ProRes or the like) are high quality files but are recorded with an easier codec to playback and render with. However, files take up a great deal of hard drive space (they are deleted after export, however).
- Proxies are lower quality files, are recorded with an easier codec to playback with, but do not specifically improve render speed. Takes less space, but you need to handle two sets of files while editing.
- Transcoding or creative proxies can be done at the time of import the files.
- Process is sometimes referred to as "ingest" instead of Import
- Tip: whether you choose to transcode or create proxies, avoid using H.264 as the format.
- It defeats every purpose you are trying to overcome.
- H.264 is small in file size but difficult to edit with.
- Choose ProRes, Cineform, or DNxHD/HR, typically
A file that is a "supported file format" doesn't guarantee it will playback well on a specific computer. You might need to transcode it. If you can't transcode it in Media Encoder, consider Handbrake as an alternative.
- A video file may be very highly compressed with a variable frame rate and difficult for almost any computer to process adequately. Even powerful computers will struggle with these formats; so, it's not unusual at all.
- Examples include drone footage, screen captured "gameplay" footage, and with footage from Android and iOS devices.
- If the imported file plays back in a halting or "stuttery" fashion, and your resolution is low, say 1/4 or 1/8, this is a sign you need to transcode or create proxies.
Personally, I like to transcode using ProRes so I can take advantage of smart rendering during exporting.
- Smart rendering is a process that makes exporting much, much faster.
- In designing a workflow for yourself, it can be beneficial as to how you import your footage as it will determine how efficiently you can export, from the very beginning.
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