View Full Version : Vegas h.264 render in FCP test??


Derek Weiss
October 5th, 2008, 11:13 AM
I'm working on a PC in Vegas and rendering some .MOV files. Just wondering if they are compatible in your FCP timeline.

Does this clip open in your timeline? 56mb 1280x720p

www.pitonproductions.com/Clients/fall.mov

Thanks!

Matt Davis
October 7th, 2008, 06:56 AM
Does this clip open in your timeline? 56mb 1280x720p

So this test is a 30 fps 1280x720 movie in H.264 format.

I can place it on an H.264 timeline and it plays back with no problems. If I place it on an XDCAM-HD 'EX' timeline, it wants to be rendered - it will not play back in real time. But I've got it at the quality you see in the movie supplied. If that helps.

To get something to an editor via the internet, H.264 is an option, as is PhotoJPEG at about 80% to 90%. But both formats will need to be transcoded to make them into something that plays back in real time.

But that isn't always necessary.

I get a lot of motion graphics from freelance designers - they supply movies to me in PhotoJPEG 80%, and I do what I need to do with them and render out. Not a problem.

I've had to supply footage from an EX1 to an Avid editor, and rather than use the 'recommended technique' (lay off to tape! Egad...) we managed to settle on an AVI file of PAL Anamorphic DV.

I've leant more towards PhotoJPEG because it's robust, easier to encode/decode and it's pretty darn good. H.264 can very good when given the bandwidth, but it's not an edit format if highly compressed.

HTH...

Derek Weiss
October 7th, 2008, 08:25 AM
Thank you for taking the time to do that Matt.

So the preference for delivering footage to FCP users would be PhotoJPEG?

I just need to buy a Mac and be done with it;)

Dominik Seibold
October 7th, 2008, 11:24 AM
h264 is superior to PhotoJPEG in terms of quality per bandwidth.
I've got a MacPro-2,8GHz and a 1920x1080-clip in h264 needs about 70% of one core for playback. The same clip in PhotoJPEG needs about 30% and in mpeg2 about 54%. You have to decide, whether this matters.
The problem with editing h264 is not the quality (at the same filesize you get much better quality with h264 than with PhotoJPEG), but a great number of frames per keyframe (if you use interframes).

Noah Kadner
October 8th, 2008, 10:09 AM
What's the purpose of the workflow? H.264 exchange is fine for offline editing but it's not a great format to try and finish a project between Mac and PC because depending a great deal on settings you may lose an unacceptable amount of quality due to concatenation. The best formats to go back and forth are still uncompressed, image sequences or just send tapes or whole folders from solid-state cameras.

-Noah

Perrone Ford
October 8th, 2008, 10:43 AM
I use PNG for this. The data can go both ways PC <--> Mac, quality loss is zero (depending on settings) and it keeps things simple. I also bought a program called MacDrive (ver. 7) that allows me to mount Mac formatted drives, CDs, and DVDs. Easy as pie and very cheap.

Derek Weiss
October 8th, 2008, 10:03 PM
What's the purpose of the workflow?
-Noah

I'm shooting video from remote control helicopters for a client. Part of the gig also includes post production stabilization.