Apple have updated their ProRes White Paper and tucked away are some interesting performance figures for Final Cut Pro X on a Retina Macbook Pro. A great read with some great explanations.
When we first started to read this update to the ProRes White Paper, we just thought it had been given a slight tweak to bring it up to date. Then we realised that some of the testing had been done on FCPX 10.0.6 on a Retina MacBook Pro, so we read on!
Read Apple's ProRes White Paper
We would recommend that everybody should read the publication as it provides some really good background information about ProRes and other codecs. A few things jumped out at us.
The first was the mention of 5K ProRes material. Did you realise that 60p 5120 x 2160 ProRes 4444 has a target data rate of 3535 Mb/s?
Second was the multicam editing performance of the ProRes codecs in 10.0.6
Here are the test conditions, Brownie points if you realised that FCPX can only show 16 angles live at once in real time, hence the endstop.
"Testing conducted by Apple in October 2012 using OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.2, a prerelease version of Final Cut Pro X (10.0.6), and shipping Mac Pro 3.06GHz 12-core Intel Xeon units configured with 12GB of RAM. Performance may vary depending on system configuration, content, and performance measurement tool use."
Lastly we were interested to read about the performance gains on rendering and encoding using ProRes over other codecs.
"Although fast decoding speed is the primary factor in real-time editing performance, fast encoding speed is also important for key steps in post-production workflows. Like Apple ProRes decoders, the Apple ProRes family of encoders have all been built as efficient software implementations, and fast encoding is achieved through efficient use of multicore processors. Fast encoding speed is essential for some steps and important in virtually all others.
For real-time capture and Apple ProRes encoding of baseband video signals (either analog or digital SD or HD signal sources), Apple ProRes software encoders must be fast enough to keep up with the incoming real-time video frames. An appropriate video capture card must be used for this purpose, but otherwise no specialized encoding hardware is required to achieve real-time capture of baseband video to Apple ProRes formats.
For file-based transcoding of video files that have been encoded with other (non-Apple ProRes) video codecs, transcoding to Apple ProRes entails both decoding of the starting technique and reencoding to Apple ProRes. The minimum total transcoding time will therefore be the sum of the time required to decode the
file and the time required to reencode it to Apple ProRes. For certain video codec formats known to be highly complex and therefore relatively slow to decode, such as JPEG-2000 and the REDCODE® RAW (R3D) native codec format, the overall transcoding time will be dominated by the decoding time. Still, fast Apple ProRes encoding helps make the total transcoding time faster.
When rendering to Apple ProRes, the total rendering time is determined by the speed of both the decoding and encoding steps, which can be significantly quicker compared to other, more complex and slower codecs. The speed advantage of Apple ProRes is also beneficial when exporting a file at the end of a project. If
you need to deliver to the web, DVD, or Blu-ray disc, you can speed up the export process by choosing to edit in Apple ProRes instead of other professional formats, including uncompressed."
All great stuff, but we really hope that Apple implement the ability to convert to ProRes some of the codecs it won't do at the moment. We have read that this is because Apple think that no advantage is to be gained by say converting XDCAM to ProRes. Why do we want this? It would be especially beneficial to those who cut to a tight deadline such as news and sport to have everything converted to keep export times down to a minimum. Why wait for a XDCAM conversion at the squeaky end of the day when it could have been done earlier? A reduction of a minute or two of export time could be the difference between a piece making air or not.
I am the Editor-in-Chief of FCP.co and have run the website since its inception ten years ago.
I have also worked as a broadcast and corporate editor for over 30 years, starting on one inch tape, working through many formats, right up to today's NLEs.
Under the name Idustrial Revolution, I have written and sold plugins for Final Cut Pro for 13 years.
I was made a Freeman of Lichfield through The Worshipful Company of Smiths (established 1601). Though I haven't yet tried to herd a flock of sheep through the city centre!
Current Editing
2020 has been busy, the beginning of the year was finishing off a new property series (cut on FCP) for Channel 4 called The Great House Giveaway. I also designed and built the majority of the graphics as Motion templates. It has been a great success and the shows grabbed more viewers in the 4pm weekday slot than any previous strand. It has been recommissioned by C4 for 60 episodes, including prime-time versions and five themed programmes. The shows have also been nominated for a 2021 BAFTA.
Although both were postponed to later in the year, I worked again on ITV's coverage of the Tour de France and La Vuelta. 2020 was my 25th year of editing the TdF and my 20th year as lead editor. The Tour was the first broadcast show to adopt FCPX working for multiple editors on shared storage.
BBC's Snooker has played a big part in my life, I've been editing tournament coverage since 1997. I'm proud to be part of a very creative team that has pioneered many new ideas and workflows that are now industry standard in sports' production. This is currently an Adobe Premiere edit.
Covid cancelled some of the regular corporate events that I edit such as trade shows & events. I was lucky however to edit, from home, on projects for Amazon Kindle, Amazon Black Friday, Mastercard and very proud to have helped local charitable trust Kendall & Wall secure lottery funding.
As for software, my weapon of choice is Final Cut Pro and Motion, but I also have a good knowledge and broadcast credits with Adobe Premiere Pro, MOGRT design and Photoshop.
Plugin Design & Development
I'm the creative force behind Idustrial Revolution, one of the oldest Final Cut Pro plugin developers. It hosts a range of commercial and free plugins on the site. One free plugin was downloaded over a thousand times within 24 hours of release.
I also take on custom work, whether it is adapting an existing plugin for a special use or designing new plugins for clients from scratch. Having a good knowledge of editing allows me to build-in flexibility and more importantly, usability.
FCP.co
Now in its 10th year and 4th redesign, running FCP.co has given me knowledge on how to run a large CMS- you are currently reading my bio from the database! Although it sounds corny, I am pretty well up on social media trends & techniques, especially in the video sector. The recent Covid restrictions has enabled live FCP.co shows online. This involves managing a Zoom Webinar through Restream.io to YouTube and Facebook.
The Future
I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, so please get in touch at editor (at) fcp.co. I've judged film competitions, presented workflow techniques to international audiences and come up with ideas for TV shows and software programs!
