File sizes...looking for second opinion!
 

Hello Everyone,

Shooting a bunch of interviews with 7D and converting to ProRes (standard, not HQ) for editing. I have converted around 200GB of H.264 material which has left me with a project size of over 450GB's of ProRes material.

I'm well versed in big file sizes working with HD before but i'm from the 720p crowd shooting with HDV. I could get a similar sized project folder to no more than 150gb usually.

Is it simply that 7D shoots bigger images, therefor bigger file size, or am I missing something in my workflow? Is ProRes my best option?

Look forward to your opinions/suggestions. Is this normal?

Neil

Hi Neil,

Yes, it's normal and yes, ProRes is a good option.

You are using more than twice the number of pixels shooting 1080 rather than 720, so immediately you're upping the data rate. Also, ProRes is a lossy codec, so it is pretty data hungry too compared to the heavily compressed HDV codecs.

One option is to do a cut using the original H264 media, then convert the edit to ProRes for grading and finishing. Though to be honest, hard drives are so cheap now I generally just convert the whole lot for editing, but only archive the H264.

Thanks Liam,

I had an inkling it might be right. Was quite shocked to see a brand spanking new 1TB LaCie was now nearly half full from just one project.

Agreed with the cheapness of hard drives though, i may find myself buying a dedicated hard drive for each new client and just absorbing it into my rates. worth thinking about anyway.

Thanks for your advice anyway,

Neil