Prores Questions

BarryBittman · Apr 23, 2017

I would appreciate your insights. I'm considering advancing to an SSD for the Inspire 2 and would like to present some practical questions that I could not find adequate answers for on the web. I'm presently using H264 and am a bit disappointed. My questions center around the value of moving to Prores.

1. In terms of quality, looking really close, can you see an improvement in video using 422HQ and or 4444XQ in comparison to H264? Viewing the samples on YouTube, I cannot gain a realistic sense, as the files are significantly compressed. Yet looking closely at a 4K monitor, do you see less blocking artifacts and more detail compared to H264 compression? Essentially, is the extra HD space requirements for Pro Res realistically noticeable if your are highly discriminating?

2. Using FCPX, how long does it actually take to ingest the Inspire 2 Prores files from the SSD? Does it make up for the time normally spent transcoding H264 to Prores by FCPX?

Thank you for taking time to answer.

With appreciation,

Barry

Florida Drone Supply · Apr 23, 2017

Hi Barry. I'm happy to help you with this!

1. In terms of quality, looking really close, can you see an improvement in video using 422HQ and or 4444XQ in comparison to H264? Viewing the samples on YouTube, I cannot gain a realistic sense, as the files are significantly compressed. Yet looking closely at a 4K monitor, do you see less blocking artifacts and more detail compared to H264 compression? Essentially, is the extra HD space requirements for Pro Res realistically noticeable if your are highly discriminating?

The quick answer to this is that you will see a very big difference in video quality moving to ProRes (especially 4444)...IF...you need to do much work with the file after its shot. If you absolutely hit the mark for exposure and white balance when you are setting up your shot and don't need to make any significant changes to it in post you will not see as big of a difference. ProRes 4444 has almost all the same information that a RAW file has (and it is nearly as large as well). Many production editors will tell you they prefer to work with ProRes 4444 over RAW because of the simplified workflow and they have nearly the same flexibility in post for color grading the shot. The blocking artifacts come for pixel binning and color sampling for the sake of compression - essentially grouping similar colors together and remembering those pixels all as the same color instead of their slight variations. When you do this enough times you definitely can not reproduce a smooth gradient of a blue sky for example. I am over generalizing these concepts a little to keep my explanation shorter, but there is a significant amount of information on how you get from 4-4-4 color to 4-2-2 to 4-2-0 . ProRes 4444 is a fantastic format and will drop directly on your timeline and is immediately editable.

2. Using FCPX, how long does it actually take to ingest the Inspire 2 Prores files from the SSD? Does it make up for the time normally spent transcoding H264 to Prores by FCPX?

This depends on what you are copying to. If you are transferring from the SSD they were recorded on through a USB 3 connection and onto another SSD or large RAID array they will transfer very quickly. Once they are on the editing drive you are using, you can add them into FCPX and leave them in their current location - they do not need to be moved or duplicated. Maybe this is not your workflow, but the transfer off a fast SSD onto another fast drive using USB 3 is pretty manageable. I think the lack of transcoding would certainly offset the file transfer time.

Hope this helps.

Michael