Workflow for Transcoding Media Outside FCPX

Interesting thread. So many different ideas floating around.

I'm meant to start editing a music video shot on a 5DMK2 tomorrow; the director is bringing around a hard disk with files from the camera. Should be interesting to see how my MacBook handles them.

Proxy, ProRes or leave it at H.264?

While After Effects certainly seems to be the industry standard in most post houses, the new price of Motion 5 makes it very appealing to young people just starting out. For $50 you get a hell of a lot of software. That will have an effect on the market down the line.

Just a quick report from the field on a shoot yesterday. A bit wordy, but it might be helpful.

Full day "how it's made" type shoot (Robots testing circut boards, stuff like that), had about 2 hrs of footage, shooting continually. Canon 7D, 2 CF cards.

I played DP first, shot about 100 clips and then went to my 2007 MacBook Pro to pull in the footage and backup the cards while the other DP started shooting. First backed up the files to an external drive (I have a FW 800 card reader, so it only took about 5 minutes to transfer 5 gigs). Then I created a new event and imported that first card worth into an event (copying the files to the FCP Event Folder that is). After just a few seconds, I immediately started assigning some keywords, and then just brought all that footage (we shot in sequence) and started an assembly edit.

So these h264 files did play on my MacBook Pro, but barely. It was dropping frames like crazy, but at least I could work. So after about 20 minutes I was able to show the client a very rough cut (and apologizing for the dropped frames).

As an aside here, the editing in FCP X is stellar. This is what the magnetic timeline is made for. The finished rough cut was only about 3 minutes, but I was flying through the edit as it played. Never had to take my hands off the keyboard. Love those the top and tail trim tools and always being in ripple edit mode. It was crazy fast to edit even with the dropped frames.

So I cleaned off the card, swapped it out with the other shooter, and repeated that procedure.

This by far was the cleanest shoot I have ever done in regards to reviewing and even editing the footage on set, plus being able to shot the client a rough cut a half an hour after shooting was pretty spectacular. Equally beneficial was being able to review our shots so quickly in FCP X after we shot them. The event browser icon view showed us all our shots at a glance to ensure we got the shots we needed.

The shoot went late last night so I didn't have a chance to get back to my office on my MacPro, so I plugged in the external drive to my iMac at home and tried to play the h264. Again dropped frames. This is an older iMac, 2009 I believe, so not the fasted machine. I thought about transcoding to Optimize Media, but a quick check on the AJA app on my iPhone showed ProRes wouldn't fit, but ProRes Proxy would. So I went ahead and selected all in the event browser and transcoded everything for proxy media. Took about 45 minutes to transcode. Now the proxy plays like butter on the iMac, and also my old MacBook Pro.

I wouldn't change anything but perhaps transcoded a few clips to Proxy, just to show the client some shots that weren't dropping frames.

tpayton wrote: J I thought about transcoding to Optimize Media, but a quick check on the AJA app on my iPhone showed ProRes wouldn't fit, but ProRes Proxy would.

Hey, I'm doing a music video tomorrow and may run into the same problems (or not). I won't see the footage until the director arrives with an external drive, but I hear its mostly H264 from a 5DMK2 plus some GoPro shots. I was figuring I would just transcode everything to Prores for this edit.

When you say the "ProRes wouldn't fit" what do you mean exactly?

I was running low on space my external edit drive, and the higher data rate prores just wouldn't fit.

Here are some sample data rates for 24 fps, 1080p:

50Mbit/s h264 - 23 GB/hour
ProRes (FCP X Optimized Format) - 60 GB/Hour
ProRes Proxy (full resolution)- 19.4 GB/Hour
ProRes Proxy (FCP X Proxy Format, half res) - about 6 GB/hr

Ben, I too am a big fan of Motion. I use it on most projects and I try to do everything I can in motion and not jump to AE because of the workflow issues.

Do you know a way to warp images, and not just handles, but Like I have a cut out of a man in Photoshop, then I want to warp and move his arms. The only way I can do this is to cut it up into layers at the joints and animate, but in AE they have the warp function that lets me draw my mesh that I can animate.

Motion 5's tie into FCPX is amazingly powerful. And once the round tripping feature returns this combo will really be powerful.

Hi!

This is the workflow that I tried for 10 SONY EX XDCAM clips and every thing worked...
Basically principe is that you use proxy that is encoded externally
like original media. Its very important that proxy is created in compressor because
he is saving original Time Code of clip. Also The name of proxy have to bi the same as the original name of master clip.
After editing proces done, create new project with full spec and paste editing clips in it.
Relink that full spec project to original clips.

- Ingested with XDCAM transfer in one directory.
- Create Sparse image (for exemple called X)
- Transcoded in compressor to Apple ProRess proxy 50% of original size
nothing else changed. (I burned in TC with Compressor-s Time Code filter generator)
Names of proxy clips have to be exactly the same as original clips !!!
- Put proxy clips in new created sparse disk image X.
- Open FCPX.
- Create event in X sparse image.
- Deselect proxy creation in FCPX Preferences for clip import
- Set FCP-x to edit with original media better performance...
- Import clips
- Create project related to that event with settings set on first clip.
- Edit with imported proxy clips.

Finalization - Relinking
(My test project contained Compound clips and Second Story Line no Multicam)

- Create new project with full HD specification...
- Open Proxy project select all clips and and copy them to memory.
- Open full spec Project paste the clips.
- Go Back to Project Library and select full spec project
- Right Click and from drop menu select Relink Project Files.
- At Relink check All box.
- Click on Locate All and navigate to folder with original media.
- CHOSE then Relink

If you look in event you can see proxy and full res clips side by side....