Export and Ingest presets advice

just a heads up.  I've been working on both a windows machine and a mac for the last year, transferring projects and media without issue.  I almost always use prores proxies with the same pixel dimensions as the original media cause I just feel it's safer fwiw bwdik.  prores works consistently within the premiere environment in Windows whether the proxies are generated on the mac or the windows machine.  

The proxy workflow and creating and saving a working ingest preset can be a little daunting (again bwdik) and you may not always realize that your proxies are not attached...  So I have a metadata preset available to show whether the proxies are attached or not.  You can also do a "reveal in finder" (or the windows equivalent) when you've selected a clip in the timeline or the bin with the proxy toggled on in either the source or program monitor.    And always test creating the proxy for one clip and checking to make sure it's attached before doing all your clips (the voice of experience is speaking here).

Also, you might consider actually making your camera original "offline" and actually relinking to your proxies.  The advantage of this workflow is that your renders and exports will be much faster.  And when you're ready to do your final full rez output, just make the proxies "offline" and relink to the camera original.  

If you're doing really quick turn-around content for social media with very light editing and minimal or no color correction, then maybe keep your source MP4.

Otherwise, no, do not keep everything MP4.

Take advantage of what Premiere Pro calls Smart Rendering (everything will be faster).  That is: transcode all of your camera originals to ProRes; set your Sequence Video Previews to ProRes; Export your edited master to ProRes.  Then, as needed, drop that into Media Encoder to create whatever you need for delivery.

If you're creating content for social media, go with ProRes422 LT.  (1080p ProRes422 LT requires about 700MB/minute.)

If you're creating content for broadcast, cable, streaming services; go with ProRes422 HQ.  (1080p ProRes422 HQ requires about 1.3BG per minute.)

Apple ProRes

https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/Apple_ProRes_White_Paper.pdf

Everything that this white paper discusses (frame size, frame-independent, chroma sampling, sample bit depth, data rate, quality, editing performance, flexibility, peak signal-noise ratio) is what makes ProRes excellent for editing and it is everything that MP4 is not.  On the flip side, what makes MP4 bad for editing is what makes it strong for delivery.

Hey, this discussion is SIMPLE and in relatively plain English. You oughta listen to a ton of what I do ... when colorists get talking about whether to use ACES0 or ACES-AP1, what IDT to use with what CS options, and which EOTF and ODT should be used, and what they should look for in MAX-fall and Max-a ... sheesh. That's just a small subsampling!

"long-Group-Of-Pictures" ... what a heck of a bit of nomenclature, but that's the official designation for that sort of structure.

Interframe versus intraframe ... um ... are we talking automotive design, rockets, or rugby here or sumpin'?   😉

And the various types of '-frames' have been added to by partial '-frames', extending the distance between complete i-frames to at times over 100 frames in some analysis work I've seen. You think you're confused? Think of your poor computer at that point!

Neil

Mov/mp4 isn't an issue at all. PCs have worked with mov files for many, many years. Premiere Pro has for many years not only read but exported the QuickTime ProRes formats ... all of them.

I tend to prefer mov to mp4 but that's a personal thing. As on the cameras I've got, mov is intraframe while mp4 is intraframe long-GOP. So depending on the codec in that mov, maybe go with that. Not a big AVCHD fan here. And while you can make proxy files in-cam and 'attach' them in PrPro, you can also pretty quickly simply have PrPro make proxy files for your original media in the background, which is what I do.

Sometimes I use the Cineform preset that's perhaps a quarter-res frame-size, sometimes the ProRes Proxy preset. No rhyme nor reason there, they both work fine.

Neil

mp4 is typically long-GOP,  the most amazing compression for file-size but the nastiest, most vile format/codec for editing ever conceived. I would NEVER use if for a proxy media.

Proxy media is all about playback, right? For that you need an intraframe codec. The Cineform, ProRes, and DNx options in the included proxy presets all work quite well.

Neil