ProRes 422 and XDCam HD
 

I'm still having trouble seeing the advantage to converting native XDCam HD 35 VBR to ProRes 422. I've heard you get SD file sizes with HD material when using ProRes but XDCam HD already does that. Is it a color space issue? Speed of rendering? I always thought it was a bad idea to transcode a native format to something else unless you had no choice.

The better colourspace will help with any rendered effects such as filters, CC and transitions etc.

Simple way is to do all the work in XDCam HD codec and when you are finished drop the finished sequence into a ProRes timeline and render.

If you are planning on mastering back to XDCam then I can't see where there would be an advantage to this route. However if you are outpuuting to HDCam or above then it will improve the quality.

Dan, the main promise of ProRes is to make UNCOMPRESSED HD come down to near standard DV data size without a loss in visual quality. Since XDCAM HD is already just above DV25 data rates, there is no significant advantage to using ProRes. If however, you were grabbing a live HDSDI feed from the camera head into an uncompressed capture, ProRes would be your friend.

-gb-

There is also the issue of an Intraframe codec vs. a Interframe codec

Ah yes the evil of Mpeg 2 Long GOP!

Help me out Bennis. I don't see the relevance of your statement in the context of this thread.


-gb-

I think it's another long GOP Mpeg2 is bad to edit with reference

There's a setting in FCP6, that if you have a native HDV/XDCAM HD timeline, FCP can use ProRes as a render format. It's in Sequence Settings/Render Control.

This makes the old method of copy/pasting XDCAM HD native timelines into Uncompressed or other codec timelines unnecessary (or mostly unnecessary).

Cool, I'm getting my copy of 6 next week.

Thanks for all the responses and for confirming where I was headed. We shoot on XDCam HD 35 VBR, edit natively and then master back to XDCam HD 35 VBR so in this workflow I see little advantage to ProRez. VERY COOL though for the HDCam and higher folks.

Hate to beat a dead horse here, but just when I thought I had it all figured out I have to ask:

-If you are XDCam HD native all the way through post and then mastering back to XDCam HD- why would rendering in ProRez do you any good?

Okay Dan, as much as I loathe animal cruelty, I'll bring out the whip one more time. In the scenario you mentioned, there is no benefit of ProRes 4:2:2 IMO.

-gb-

Thanks for the additional swat at the beast Greg. I brought it up again because I keep seeing it mentioned on other "reputable" sites that one should use an XDCam HD timeline but render in ProRes for the scenario I described. This site has a higher percentage rate of correct advice in my experience so I'm going with that.

i beleive (though have not personally tested) that using ProRes422 as the render codec may provide a speed advantage. rather than conforming every render file as MPEG HD the renders are instead encoded as ProRes422.

as I said, I've not tested this, am merely offering it up as a suggestion.

One reason you may want to not stay with the XDcam format is because it is interframe which isn't as ideally suited to editing as intraframe (prores422). Depending of what you are doing, this could be a factor.