AVCHD vs. MP4 ?

joema wrote: When we used Premiere, it wasn't as much an issue since we worked only with camera media files.

Do you suggest importing using optimized media for cases like this, or not creating optimized media until the rough cut is made and consolidated, or what?

In general, I only transcode to 'optimised media' when I see performance issues - so, rarely, if ever. Indeed, I've recently delivered a 30-minute documentary, 400 clips on the timeline culled from about 600Gb material, and the only ProRes components are precomp graphics and render files following heavy use of Neat Video. Footage is a combination of H.264 and AVCHD.

If I'm doing multicam work with more than about three angles, my systems can't quite cope with H.264/AVC media and I tend to transcode.

What were you doing with Premiere that you're finding difficult in FCPX?

jjsanderson wrote: ...What were you doing with Premiere that you're finding difficult in FCPX?

Premiere CS6 does very little metadata management, and works well with native camera files. FCP X has sophisticated metadata management, so just understanding and using that takes some learning. Import on CS6 is very fast, so pulling in a hundred gigabytes is nothing -- there's no optimized media, scene analysis, color analysis, sound analysis, etc. IOW it's fast because it doesn't do much. FCP X can optionally do a lot more, so is slower (if used).

All those can be turned off in X, I just haven't yet done a rigorous back-to-back comparison under equivalent conditions. I'm actively testing that now; I was just giving my first impressions which may not be correct. I appreciate all the feedback and advice.

Thanks everybody for a great discussion about this topic. I've been searching high and low for an answer to a panic-inducing realisation that I had earlier this week, and I think you folks answered it.

I am colouring Canon C100 (AVCHD) footage in Davinci Resolve 11. I thought that I was working with the best-quality, least uncompressed footage from the C100 but this week noticed in Davinci that all of my footage is labelled as having been compressed with the H.264 codec. I went back and looked at all my clips in FCPX and they too appear to have the H.264 codec! This sent me into a panic and here I am.

However, from what I understand form this forum, this is normal (ie AVCHD uses the H.264 codec) and I haven't lost data by unwittingly reducing my footage to an H.264 codec, correct? Furthermore, I didn't need to convert my footage from the MTS files into something else like ProRes422HQ before importing into FCPX, correct?

Thanks all.

JPM wrote: ...I am colouring Canon C100 (AVCHD) footage in Davinci Resolve 11....I went back and looked at all my clips in FCPX and they too appear to have the H.264 codec! This sent me into a panic and here I am....this is normal (ie AVCHD uses the H.264 codec) and I haven't lost data by unwittingly reducing my footage to an H.264 codec, correct? Furthermore, I didn't need to convert my footage from the MTS files into something else like ProRes422HQ before importing into FCPX, correct?...

Yes AVCHD and H.264 are quite similar. AVCHD is a format which uses H.264, whereas H.264 is a codec. You haven't necessarily *reduced* your data to H.264 -- it was already there, inside the AVCHD format.

I think the traditional answer is that editing H.264 is like editing a .jpg -- it can work out well but each edit can recompress the footage and over enough edits might cause generational quality loss. Allegedly, transcoding to ProRes makes less likely.

However in actual practice people frequently edit in camera-native H.264 without any problems. I don't recollect seeing any objective tests illustrating visible differences. Larry Jordan recently posted that when applying effects to H.264, FCP X transparently renders to ProRes 422 in the background, which would mean there is no real benefit to to ProRes except maybe editing performance. I don't know if that's true or not.

You can always transcode to "optimized media" which is ProRes 422 within FCP X after importing. Just select the clips in the media browser, CTRL-clic, and choose transcode.

One more thought:

If the Resolve round-trip workflow is somehow expedited by having ProRes (ie optimized) media within FCP X, that would be a reason to do it. Maybe Resolve users could comment.

However your overall procedure is typically (1) Import (2) Organize/tag/keyword (3) Edit (4) Apply various corrections, and (5) Lastly, color correct the final version.

Even if Resolve works better with ProRes for some reason, you will only be color correcting the final edit, which is usually a tiny fraction of the original material. If you have a lot of material and if FCP X can adequately edit H.264, why not consider deferring the transcode to ProRes until the very end color correction phase, for just that portion of the material?