FCP or Compressor to WMV?
 

I am working with a friend on some video editing. He uses a PC with Vegas 8.0. and I'm using FCP on a Mac and he is having trouble editing the .mov files in Vegas I render for him (audio not syncing up, very bad quality etc). The video files I am sending him are low quality for him just to do some basic editing for ideas so we can work back and fourth. We are NOT trying to edit together with the same HD ProRes files that I am working with. He is just dragging and dropping whatever I send to him in Vegas and cutting / moving stuff around to give me an idea of how he wants a scene to move.

My question is can I render to a .wmv or something Vegas would read better out of FCP or compressor?

Thanks.

Export a reference clip from FCP then open the QT ref in MPEG Streamclip and export an AVI using the Photo-JPEG codec at anywhere between 75% to 90% (perhaps even lower, experiment to find the right balance between quality and file size).

Oliver,

Both of you download and install the Avid DNxHD codec. Cut him a proxy from FCP at 720x406 (16:9) with the DNxHD 36. This will give him a preview size file, full color, no gamma shift. It will be beautiful. If you two want to collaborate on stuff later, you can use full size 1080p DNxHD 36 files and go back and forth with them until you are ready to conform the master file.

The codec is free for PC and Macs, and you need to do NOTHING to the files to prepare them for each other. Just render and share. Done. It's like having ProResHQ for both platforms. Except with a proxy mode.

If you want and indication of how good the proxy mode is, Ironman and Milk were both cut AND screened with it. Not the master quality, the proxy. The master quality is every bit as good as ProResHQ, except multi-platform.

I talk about this codec so much, Avid should pay me. But it's exactly what Apple SHOULD have done, and let ProRes live on PC as well as Mac so people like us could collaborate without having to do these crazy renders to WMV and bloated Photo-Jpeg.

One caveat. DNxHD previews SLOW in Vegas. So tell him to be prepared for that. He can render to RAM to get full speed playback, or render to mp4 and watch it in quicktime outside vegas to see the entire thing.

Answer

Silly me, I forgot: Apple did release the ProRes codec for PC!

Ah, but there's a catch (there's always a catch)... it's just the decoder. So your friend can read and edit with the ProRes, but not output to ProRes... but is that important to your workflow?

After rereading the OP it occurs to me you are looking to keep the file size slim, correct? I have no idea what file sizes the Avid DNxHD codec produces, but Photo-JPEG is not necessarily a "bloated" format. In fact it is a perfect off-line/reference format to work with. The trick is to find your balance-point between picture quality and file size, which is a personal preference. I find 75% quality at full res to be more than decent. If working at a smaller resolution is fine (and why wouldn't it be?), then you can save even more space by going with a smaller frame size with even a bit more compression to the picture.

No, they didn't. Since it's decode only the PC user is stuck trying to give the file back. So it's not collaborative.

Maybe it's not important to the workflow, but when a solution exists that allows viewing and editing, with similar quality to the view only, why not go that way?

My apologies, you are correct about the "bloat". My mind somehow went to PNG and not P-Jpeg. DNxHD is nice in that it gives you the bitrate in the name. DNxHD36 is 36 Mbps. About the bit rate of XDCamEX except it's intra-frame. There are about dozen bit rates that DNx uses to handle varying frame sizes, frame rates, and whether the footage is interlaced or not. You can choose either 8 or 10 bit encoding in the mastering rates.


P-Jpeg is not a perfect reference format, though it has it's uses. The major issue is gamma shift which means that the colors from one Mac to the next may not be accurate, and they CERTAINLY won't be accurate going from Mac to PC. This in itself is a veritable showstopper for trying to collaborate on video projects. The file sizes are terrific, but the color problems knock it down.

Apple could learn quite a bit from Avid in certain areas on how to improve FCS; this is one very important area.

I did a collaborative project with a Mac user in early 2008. It was my first big project in HD and had a lot of pieces

1. Collaborate with Mac user on Final Cut
2. Work in 10bit for color correction
3. Work in HD(v)
4. Develop Proxy workflow
5. Deal with gamma shift

That project led me to try and find HD workflows that would streamline this kind of thing, and hopefully, would work even when I didn't have to collaborate.

I went through Cineform, proxies, QT-PNG, etc. In the end, I've settled on DNxHD with 720x406 proxy files and 10 bit masters. I pre-process in Virtual dub (deinterlace, denoise, resize, etc.) so when I get to the NLE, I'm ready to rock.

Thanks for all your info, I will give these options a try, IF I can understand it all...=)