pro res or not to pro res before import?

I film using some GH4's, 8bit only at present. I normally import the media straight from the sd card into FCPX but lately I've ben reading people transcode to prores etc.

Am I missing something here, any advantages to my workflow or final output?

Hey Phil,

If you have been working comfortably with the native footage from your GH4 until now, there is no reason why you should change anything. Unless your system struggles with non-optimized clips, or unless you need to do heavy compositing or grading inside FCP X, there is no real advantage in optimizing your clips to ProRes.

Of course optimized footage will give you some better editing performance and also somewhat faster exports, but optimized files can take up a lot of extra drive space and creating the optimized media also takes time. So it's really up to you to decide what would work better for you.

-Ronny

Thanks Ronny

I have a MBP retina 2014 and a Imac 2013 i7 with Lacie raid so my workflow seems ok, can't lie there are times things can slow down.

If you feel that things are slowing down using native media you could do a test with a next project, optimize your media (or create Proxy media) and see if this makes things work better for you. If it does, it's worth the effort.

- Ronny

For image quality I would say that you don’t need to do this since FCPX does all the rendering in ProRes which is what preserves image quality. The higher the bit rate of the "render format" of your project the less degradation you will have . Apple ProRes 422 and higher are about perfect.

As Ronny mentioned it all depends of the performance of your system with the INPUT codecs since optimized media usually means higher bit rate but easier decode …

I classify all codecs in 3 families :

INPUT codecs : cameras , recorders . ingest device
- These are related to hardware and usually do not survive well reencoding (multi-generation)

EDITING codecs : ProRes , Dnx..., (cineform+-)
- These are codecs that do support from well to perfectly the « reencoding »  of video, i call them multi-generation codecs

OUTPUT codecs : Any codec as per Medium or broadcast requirements : Vimeo Youtube, DVD, Blu-Ray, broadcaster spec sheet usually related to their equipment and servers or adopted standard.

:sick: Many inputs codecs require rewrapping and some freak camera codecs will require transcoding to optimized media .

my 2 cents

I'm quite interested in this topic because I'm also facing having to edit GH4's C4K H264 24fps movs. I have the idea that, if you don't mess (decompress for compositing, color grading, transitioning, adding any text or FX) with your original material, making the timeline exactly after it, then you won't loose quality. When editing long projects, it seems this saves a lot of time and storage. In my case, I'd rather cut first, arrive to a pre final cut, and then retouch, mess with the material. I'm guessing, after optimizing only the final cut material, which takes a lot less time and space than the whole footage. I haven't been editing for ages and I'm trying to come back, so please correct my ignorance.

Hi Feder, and welcome to the forums.

I think that's a good workflow.

- Ronny

A slightly different bend on the question.
If for whatever reason you decide that you need to transcode to ProRes prior to import, what apps do folks recommend and use?

Thanks, Greg