Which Apple ProRes preset for final film delivery?

[alisons96986511]

Hi all.  I have edited a film natively in Premiere Pro (H264 .mp4) and colour graded it.  I now need to export it for a festival and they want Apple ProRes (max 8GB).  H264 is an 8-bit codec so I think AppleProRes 422 HQ will be a good choice, but given I have graded it, do you think it is worth me considering Apple ProRes 4444?  Thank you!

[R Neil Haugen · Accepted solution]

No, as that would have helped as a capture codec but cannot give any added color depth to that which wasn't there to begin with.

If you start with 8 bit capture, that's all you ever have through the whole project, really. You can't recreate what wasn't captured.

Neil

[alisons96986511]

Thank you, that is very helpful!  Just wanted to be sure 🙂

[Richard van den Boogaard]

Like Neil said, you cannot increase the quality by switching to a higher level codec. This is akin to using a DSLR to take a photo of a printed copy. The quality doesn't improve.

[alisons96986511]

Thank you for tthis.  It was the fact that I had colour graded the footage that made me question whether I should choose APR444 but I think I am just altering the colours that are there, I haven't created any extra 'shades' as it were!

[R Neil Haugen]

Exactly. When we do color/tonal work, we take what is already there and stretch values here to compress values there. We can't add new values, new data. Just change where the RGB references to where the current pixels are mapped to

It's why originally capturing the clips in higher bit-depth can provide such immediate image quality boost. Because we have more pixels than we must to have a smooth image in gradations, we can do much more pushing things around before we can see artifacts and banding.

But once captured, you're only working with what's already there.

Neil

[alisons96986511]

OK perfect, thanks so much for taking the time to answer my question guys!  Makes 100% sense 🙂