Proxy vs. Transcode - basic question

[RudiZed]

Hi - can someone point me to the right thread or give me a quick answer to this newbie question?
What if any advantage is there to transcoding my footage to ProRes via Redrushes instead of just editing with 2K proxies in FCP.
I will be going out to RedCine via Crimson anyway to do colour correction and will likely finish grading in Apple Color, so I don't need the highest quality footage in FCP, just doing the offline edit there.
Thanks.

 

[Julio Quintana]

The only limitation that I have found is that the 2k proxies are referencing back to 4k files, so they don't play back as smoothly as self-contained ProRes files. So on my MacBook Pro, for example (2.5 GHz, 4G ram), I have to render the proxies in Final Cut to work with them. Not a really big deal, but sometimes annoying.

Julio Quintana

 

[skim08]

Yes... I find the constant need to render to be unacceptable. Maybe on a short project it wouldn't bother me... but I'll be working with a feature's worth of footage. So I'd rather create new self-contained movies.

because we may finish w/2K ProRes (if time / $ will online back to R3d), cutting from transcoded movies also makes sense for our workflow.

Also - and I haven't read anything that substantiates this fear (maybe someone out there can set me straight ) - but I at least feel safer transcoding everything and putting the drives w/ R3ds aside, rather than having to constantly read off my proxies which refer to the R3Ds, and run those drives. I do have another backup and will also backup to LTO, but I'm a paranoid creature.

However I'm not sure how transcoding affects the Crimson workflow, if it does. And therefore not sure if there's benefit with that workflow to just sticking with Proxies. Just haven't had chance to test it myself yet.

best,
susan

 

[John Tissavary]

Susan - if you maintain the Quicktime metadata (i.e. use RedRushes/RedAlert, RedCine, or Log & Transfer for transcoding process) then you should be fine.

Regarding using the proxies - if you're going to do an online then camera generated reference files in FCP work great, and I don't really believe there's a security risk there.

We use the _P proxies; for us during offline it doesn't really matter wether it's 1/4, 1/2 or full res.

We have been offline/onlining our own projects as well as those of customers since September last year using camera generated proxies in FCP, exporting EDLs, then conforming and grading in Scratch.

I've had one HD subsystem go down recently, filled with a feature's worth of R3Ds that I was ready to online. Backups were on hand so the setback was very temporary. I do not attribute the use of the hard drives to this failure. Rather, the HD failed after having been turned off, moved to a new location, and turned back on - which is the same story for every HD I've watched fail.

I think it's essential, no matter how much or how little you'll be accessing R3D footage, to have at least one backup on LTO tape. Hard drives are a very flakey way to back up data, but obviously it's nice to have a spare set of data around should your working drives take a dump, that way you'll save time and can restore from tape to the failed or new drive(s) while still working from the second set.


cheers,

JT

 

[Scott Simmons]

The more you pile on proxies the more render and computing power required. One stream and you are fine. Add effects and dissolves to that one stream and you have to render. Multiclip many proxies and you have a train wreck.