ProRes or DNxHD to edit 1080P Scarlet footage ?

[Bastien Tribalat]

The title speaks for itself : between Avid's and Apple's codecs, which has the best capabilities for working on 1080P footage ?
(I will use the 2/3 FIXED Scarlet in 1080P except for slow motion shots where I'll have to use 3K [as stated on the latest specs published by RED] and I don't know which codec is the best for editing as I don't have the money for a RED Rocket™™ card and won't be able to work directly with R3D files)

 

[Jon Armstrong]

DNxHD or ProRes

DNxHD or ProRes

The discussion regarding these similar codecs is an interesting one since I have heard people loudly proclaim one or the other.

A couple of years ago I did a comparison of all the (then current) codecs.

The main point with DNxHD is that there is a softening of the image compared to ProRes. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage.

If the footage is interlaced and being sent back to interlace then the softening of DNxHD is an advantage exhibiting less jitter however if the material is progressive and being used in DVD. web, .flv etc then ProRes has the edge

Jon Armstrong
Cinematographer / Post Supervisor
Broome Australia

 

[Mark K.]

They're both excellent codecs, I'd say which one you chose should come down more to which system you can work better with (or already own) Media Composer, or Final Cut.

 

[Oliver Peters]

You might want to take a look at this comparison I did:

http://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/codec-smackdown/

- Oliver

 

[Stephen Gentle]

What exactly is your reason for not working with the R3D?

 

[Bastien Tribalat]

Stephen :

First of all, the SCARLET Fixed will be my toy for my amateur movies' stuff (don't know if the fact that I'm a cinema student lets me call it amateur movies but the rest of the crew is really amateur so.... Anyway...).

I choose it for the fallowing (and personnal reason) :
- all its qualities we know
- RAW
- Upgradable

We will use it as a 1080P camera (because I think the 2/3" sensor is better for 1080P than for 3K... I HOPE I'm REALLY WRONG !!!).
My computer, as described in my signature, won't let me, for now, to work directly with R3D files (when doing "log and transfer" in Final Cut Pro with "native" in the setting, so importing directly the R3D -not a proxy- it is too slow [in 2K shot on R1] BUT with the setting at ProRes4444 it works very smoothly.... The convertion is slow, but after the process evrything is smooth) so I plan to shoot 1080P (or 3K for high speed when needed), open raw files with redcine X to check the picture and correct light and stuff if needed and then exporting it to... ProRes4444 OR DNxHD (I can purchase Media Composer Academic for less than 300 dollars).

I've always been a Premiere guy, but since I tried Avid and FCP my forst choice had been FCP but now I'm seeing than Avid's soft comes with handy features that I'm used to (key framing audio gain was my concern about Media Comp 2.8, the last version I've tried)...

Sooooo, I think it is a pretty boring answer but hoped I answered your question.

 

[Kris Anderson]

What exactly is your reason for not working with the R3D?

Offline editing at 4k? Are you nuts?

 

[Stephen Gentle]

Offline editing at 4k? Are you nuts?

With a decent computer, you can use native R3D in Final Cut and Premiere (and maybe in some of the others). In FCP you can get pretty good performance with Unlimited RT with Medium (1/2 res) or Low (1/4 res?) settings.

We will use it as a 1080P camera (because I think the 2/3" sensor is better for 1080P than for 3K... I HOPE I'm REALLY WRONG !!!).

It probably won't make much of a difference (since pretty much everybody will be finishing their projects at 2K or 1080p anyway) but I'd prefer to shoot 3K, as the extra resolution gives you more room to work with if, say, you want to stabilise some footage or crop in a little before you downscale - useful if you get a bit of a boom mic in the top of frame or something.

 

[Kris Anderson]

What on earth is the point of offllining at 4k? You contradict yourself by saying it's possible at 1/2 or 1/4 res settings, so where is the supposed benefit of cutting in full 4k? Nobody does it.

Do you edit for a living? Do you know how annoying and slow it would be for any computer to have to push that around while making edit decisions, trimming, layering etc? And then, they can still only output a maximum of 1080 on Avid or maybe 2k on FCP with a Kona 3.

Ridiculous. You can't possibly be doing this day in, day out if this is what you advocate.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

What on earth is the point of offllining at 4k? You contradict yourself by saying it's possible at 1/2 or 1/4 res settings, so where is the supposed benefit of cutting in full 4k? Nobody does it.

Do you edit for a living? Do you know how annoying and slow it would be for any computer to have to push that around while making edit decisions, trimming, layering etc? And then, they can still only output a maximum of 1080 on Avid or maybe 2k on FCP with a Kona 3.

Ridiculous. You can't possibly be doing this day in, day out if this is what you advocate.

4K R3Ds work offline on Sony Vegas with a Core i7 860 system. (It's not even an expensive CPU - $280)

Also, I see no reason for editing for a 2K output having shot in 4K nowadays. Even if you feel it will only end up on Youtube. You never know. Besides, Youtube will most certainly move to 4K and beyond, it's just a matter of time. As will home video, and every other video and projection format. Earlier, with Core 2 CPUs, the time/cost factor was there. But the latest Core i7s take care of 4K footage with no problem.

Cineform 4K works flawlessly, at 4K, 32-bit and "Best" settings. It is remarkable with how much ease the system handles it. I remember it would handle 2K flawlessly on a Core 2 Duo! But, of course, it is not a lossless codec.

Also, I am pretty sure the 1/2 or 1/4 res was the settings for the preview window.

 

[Kris Anderson]

4K R3Ds work offline on Sony Vegas with a Core i7 860 system. (It's not even an expensive CPU - $280)

Also, I see no reason for editing for a 2K output having shot in 4K nowadays. Even if you feel it will only end up on Youtube. You never know. Besides, Youtube will most certainly move to 4K and beyond, it's just a matter of time. As will home video, and every other video and projection format. Earlier, with Core 2 CPUs, the time/cost factor was there. But the latest Core i7s take care of 4K footage with no problem.

Cineform 4K works flawlessly, at 4K, 32-bit and "Best" settings. It is remarkable with how much ease the system handles it. I remember it would handle 2K flawlessly on a Core 2 Duo! But, of course, it is not a lossless codec.

Also, I am pretty sure the 1/2 or 1/4 res was the settings for the preview window.

Correct me if I'm wrong but Cineform is a mastering tool, is it not? Of course it can deal with 4k files easily. But is anyone cutting features, tvc's or doco's in Cineform?

 

[David Rasberry]

Correct me if I'm wrong but Cineform is a mastering tool, is it not? Of course it can deal with 4k files easily. But is anyone cutting features, tvc's or doco's in Cineform?

Cineform is a codec plugin. It provides a single high quality universal format conversion from many different camera codecs. Works with Adobe and FCP I believe.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

Correct me if I'm wrong but Cineform is a mastering tool, is it not? Of course it can deal with 4k files easily. But is anyone cutting features, tvc's or doco's in Cineform?

I was referring to the Cineform HD codec. I am not very familiar, and haven't used it outside of the 14-day trial, but you can convert your camera raw files (such as R3D, AVCHD, XDCAM, etc. ) which are codecs designed for camera capture to a Cineform HD codec which is designed for editing/post production.

The results are very good - the image quality is near lossless, the file sizes are reasonable (for the quality), but the real advantage is how usable the Cineform HD files are for editing. You can edit 4K on the fly on even an average modern system - it is that good. I am pretty sure it is compatible with all major NLE software. However, like I said before, the current crop of Core i7 CPUs can handle R3D 4K footage, in Sony Vegas at least.

In addition to the codec, the software, Cineform Neo, comes with several other acquisition features I am not aware of.

As for, is anyone cutting in 4k/Cineform? I am sure there are. Cineform has grown from strength to strength and has a significant userbase.

 

[Stephen Gentle]

What on earth is the point of offllining at 4k? You contradict yourself by saying it's possible at 1/2 or 1/4 res settings, so where is the supposed benefit of cutting in full 4k? Nobody does it.

I never said anything about editing at 4K - I just said working with the native R3Ds. The codec that handles it has the ability to extract 1/2 res or 1/4 res previews from the files on the fly.

As the RED/Final Cut workflow guide says,

Method 2: Ingesting Native RED QuickTime Files
You can instead ingest the R3D media as native RED QuickTime files. When you do so, youʼre actually embedding the native R3D data within a QuickTime wrapper. The resulting media file appears to be like any other QuickTime file to the Finder, but provides direct access to the original, native R3D camera data for specifically compatible applications. This is faster than transcoding to any of the Apple ProRes codecs, and provides the highest quality along with access to the native REDCODE settings when using Color, but the resulting media is more processor-intensive to work with

And once Final Cut Pro supports Red Rocket, theoretically you could edit realtime 4K with 4K monitoring.

 

[Peter Moretti]

You might want to take a look at this comparison I did:

http://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/codec-smackdown/

- Oliver

Oliver, thanks for going to all the effort. That said, I do think there might be an "issue" w/ how you did the DNxHD import and export. You said:

"... In Avid, the conversion occurs during the import stage, so I set my import levels to RGB (for computer files) and imported the stills numerous times in these codecs... "

"... For Avid, this means exporting the files with RGB levels (for computer files)... "

FWIU, Avid's designation of RGB levels for computer graphics is somewhat misleading. What RGB levels really means is that a remapping will be performed upon import or export. And in this case, you probably don't want that to happen.

When you import choosing RGB levels, 0 will be remapped to 16, 255 to 235, and all the other values proportionally remapped as well. When you export choosing RGB, the reverse happens: 16 will be remapped to 0, 235 to 255, and all the other values proportionally remapped as well. In many instances, you actually don't want to do this, even when using or creating computer graphics.

If you want to import and/or export w/ no color level remapping, always choose 601/709 levels.

So for DNxHD, you not only tested the codec you also did two color level conversions. First was from full level (0-255) to studio swing (16-235). The second was studio swing back to full level.

B/c you reversed the color conversion, the final image would look okay level wise, but I imagine additional artifacts where introduced that were improperly attributed to codec compression losses.

HTH, and I hope the information I provided is accurate. (I'm pretty sure it is.)

But thanks again for the test, and perhaps a follow-up could be done (if the info. I provided is indeed correct)?

 

[Oliver Peters]

Peter,

I'm glad you enjoyed the article. What you say about how Avid handles the mapping is correct. But for the purposes of testing, I was using digital photos and comparing the results in Photoshop, so I believe the RGB-to-709 and 709-to-RGB remapping was essential for the testing process.

This allowed me to make comparisons that would be valid for a VIDEO image. If I had imported the digital photo image as 709, then black and white peaks would have been displayed as superwhite and superblack in Avid, which will definitely skew the results of the compressed codecs, as more compressed artifacts occur within that range. RGB-to-709 remapping will properly reflect what a digitized video image would do in the Avid codec. That's the point - not digital photos.

Also FCP has its own way of remapping the image. It is my belief that Apple remaps to 0-235 with a little "black box" stuff in between. You have no control over this in FCP, except for the gamma levels, which I noted. Again, doing the test in Avid with the remapping kept it more or less consistent with the route through FCP. Although a direct Avid vs. FCP comparison isn't that accurate, no matter how you go about it. (Read the post I just put up a few days ago about roundtripping Canon files from Avid to FCP and you'll see what I mean.)

In the end, it doesn't matter what the mapping is. As I mentioned, the relevant comparisons are the different codecs to each other within families and not FCP to Avid or the NLE codec to the original camera still. Since uncompressed went through the same steps as DNxHD or EX, the important take-away is the relative loss from one to the other.

Cheers,
Oliver