Editing video in Fcs or Adobe Premiere production

[dtechlogic]

Hi Guys,

bought my mac pro like three weeks ago and now i have video footage that i am ready to edit. THey are AVCHD footage like three hours. Will it be ideal to use FCS or Adobe CS 5.5 premiere. I am still learning the ropes. If i use FCS i know i have to log and transfer but were do i change it to prores 422 something like that. What are the steps will i follow and will the footage keep their quaility after the transfer or it down grades. This will end up on one DVD or two depends the lenght after editing. Please advice on this. What is the ideal setting so that the quality looks good on DVD when watching it on TV.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Adobe will allow you to edit the AVCHD w/o transcoding it but the performance might not be what you want unless you have a beefy machine.

Using Log & Transfer w/FCP is pretty straight forward and covered in the manual. You shouldn't have any worries about transcoding into ProRes (I'd recommend ProRes LT) because the AVCHD compression is where the footage gets kicked in the nuts.

Making a good looking DVD can sometimes be a challenge all by itself. My typical approach is to export a same as source movie from FCP, drop that to Compressor, apply the DVD preset that is closest to the length of my project and then tweak quality settings as high as they'll go w/o running out of space on the disk.


Lethal

 

[dtechlogic]

I will try that at home. I did not received the manual with mine. it sucks.


Anyways here is my mac spec. 8 core 2.4GHZ 16GB of memory 4TB of space Ati Radeon 5870.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Manual should have come as a PDF and is accessible from the Help menu in FCP. If for some reason it's not there I you can download the PDF from Apple, here.

Premiere Pro leverages the CUDA tech found in Nvidia cards so you won't be able to squeeze the most out of your system. But if you already have both apps you might as well trying editing the AVCHD natively and see how it goes.


Lethal

 

[dtechlogic]

Will any of the Nvidia Video card like 570 or 470 works with mac pro. Oh well i guess i might have to sell my cs 5.5 production premium. Any ways. I will give it a try. This is my first time using FCS. I have already started loading some of my videos to CS Premiere.

 

[cgbier]

Manual should have come as a PDF and is accessible from the Help menu in FCP. If for some reason it's not there I you can download the PDF from Apple, here.

You can open them via Help and print them to PDF for "offline" view.

 

[lesreaper2009]

If you already have CS5.5, just use that. I use Premiere Pro on a bunch of productions and it really is an impressive piece of software. AVCHD is HIGHLY compressed and requires a decent machine as someone else mentioned. From your setup, it sounds like it might be able to handle it.

The best thing to do is to make sure your media, cache, and applications are on separate drives. It helps redistribute the load a little on the machine. Spend the money you would on FCX on those drives.

FCS sucks right now. Of your 16gb RAM, it can only use 4 no matter how you cut it because it's 32 bit. That will change with FCX, but personally, I think you're better off getting some drives as I mentioned before with the same money.

I say this only as someone dealing with time constraints. I don't have time to wait for FCS to get material in a state I can work on it. I'd rather just use Premiere Pro and know that it works, natively, and it's awesome. I edit a lot of XDCAM that way, and it works great.

Good luck.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Will any of the Nvidia Video card like 570 or 470 works with mac pro. Oh well i guess i might have to sell my cs 5.5 production premium. Any ways. I will give it a try. This is my first time using FCS. I have already started loading some of my videos to CS Premiere.

I wouldn't throw the baby out w/the bath water. There are certainly things you can do with CS 5.5 that you can't do w/the Final Cut Suite.

Off the top of my head I'm not sure which Nvidia cards will work w/your tower.


Lethal

 

[AppleDroid]

I don't do a ton of editing but I recently upgraded my CS4 to CS5 Master and found Premiere and After Effects a pretty easy transition from using older Final Cut Pro/Express. Most non-linear editors are similar and if you are already familiar with the Adobe shortcuts etc then you should feel right at home.

 

[dtechlogic]

I was feeling like i should just sell my mac and get a pc instead. But i am going to hang it there and i don't even how much i will get back on my mac. Anyways i just rebooted and when into boot camp and use Sony vegas since i have a license for it. Also So far i have 4TB of space. And you are right i am thinking of getting a drobo and clean up my G-Raid 500GB and use that for video. Anye here know is those G-raid can be upraded. like take out the two 250GB and put in two 500GB to make 1TB or not possible. Also I am going to keep playing around with Adobe Premiere Pro. I even using Photoshop intensively with stuff that i am doing. So far they ask me to record a friends wedding this July 7. and also another by June 27 and take pictures.. Also any site you guys recommend for advice on recording and picture tips.

 

[drewyboy]

From my limited personal experience, adobe media encoder sucks. It very well could have all been me, user error, but I was never able to seem to get a good output. Then again, my previous employer only had a $3,000 camcorder which was not that good at all w/ green screen. But on the other side, loved AE, premiere, is a meh, not all that interesting but did the job. So point being, didn't like media encoder, but that could have been because input wasn't great because of cheap hardware.

Edit: Also, we only had a few hundred in lighting, which was a pretty cheap setup also.
Edit#2: For external take a look at CalDigit. Haven't personally used, but have read and heard nothing but great reviews.

 

[martinX]

You should buy more stuff. Maybe a Red. That'll do it. Stuff shot on a Red always looks killer and wins awards.

 

[musique]

Other sites

OP, you asked about other sites. I've found these two forums to be helpful:

dvxuser.com
dvinfo.net/forum

Both of these don't seem to be Mac or PC centric. Rather they have sub-forums dedicated to FCP, Avid, Edius, Premiere, etc.

creativecow.net also has lots of stuff about video.

Good luck.

 

[KeriJane]

I was feeling like i should just sell my mac and get a pc instead. But i am going to hang it there and i don't even how much i will get back on my mac. Anyways i just rebooted and when into boot camp and use Sony vegas since i have a license for it. Also So far i have 4TB of space. And you are right i am thinking of getting a drobo and clean up my G-Raid 500GB and use that for video. Anye here know is those G-raid can be upraded. like take out the two 250GB and put in two 500GB to make 1TB or not possible. Also I am going to keep playing around with Adobe Premiere Pro. I even using Photoshop intensively with stuff that i am doing. So far they ask me to record a friends wedding this July 7. and also another by June 27 and take pictures.. Also any site you guys recommend for advice on recording and picture tips.

Seriously, don't go to a PC!

You would probably be able to get a decent amount for your Mac but don't do it!

I did NLE on various PCs for years before coming across my current Mac Pro 1.1... There is no comparison. Your Mac will give you years of stable and fast service. We don't do as much video work now but I still appreciate my older MP's abilities. I had used Priemere Pro 2 on the PC before going to CS3 for a time on the Mac. Nowadays I use FCS and put up with the relative slowness of some operations which is still a lot faster than the PCs were.
Perrsonally, I find FCS easier to use than Adobe though I had always had good output with CS2 and 3 whereas I've had some "learning experiences" with FCS.
You should probably be able to upgrade your G-RAID OK. They are or at least used to be one of the companies that put standard drives inside.

Advice for a wedding? At least two cameras operated by two people. This give you redundancy and the ability to choose the best footage based on /angle/lighting/etc...

Good luck,
Have Fun,
Keri

 

[arjen92]

You should buy more stuff. Maybe a Red. That'll do it. Stuff shot on a Red always looks killer and wins awards.

I don't think it's the camera, it's the people that choose Red Camera's, that make the final product awesome.

 

[dtechlogic]

Thanks for the avice.Also i was doing a video test during the weekends in FCS and i am getting this message. Maybe how do make it stop and when i play the file if i add effects or transitiion. i see that it does not show the clip.
I have attached the screenshot to this reply and those were videos that i grabed from a Ipod touch
It is a mix of videos and picture at the ending.

 

[LethalWolfe]

You've got a red render bar which means your clip settings and seq settings are out of whack. FCP doesn't like the native format the iDevices shoot video in. Did you transcode them into a different codec? If not, that would be step one. Step two would be setting the seq to be the exact same as the clips you transcoded. The easiest way to do this is to open a new sequence, drop in a clip and click 'yes' when FCP asks you if it should make the seq settings match the clip's settings.


Lethal

 

[dtechlogic]

i will follow the steps when i get home. Also i this the export to quicktime and save it. after that i open it with compresor then burn it to dvd with dvd pro. When i play it no audio. What did would have happened there. did i left the audio behind..

 

[alph45]

i will follow the steps when i get home. Also i this the export to quicktime and save it. after that i open it with compresor then burn it to dvd with dvd pro. When i play it no audio. What did would have happened there. did i left the audio behind..

really seems like you need to read the manual or try a tutorial to get basic workflow down.

if your using compressor for example, you don't export to qt first, you use compressor to export.

 

[handsome pete]

really seems like you need to read the manual or try a tutorial to get basic workflow down.

if your using compressor for example, you don't export to qt first, you use compressor to export.

Not necessarily. Depending on the project of course, a lot of people export a quicktime, then launch and bring in Compressor separately.

 

[alph45]

Not necessarily. Depending on the project of course, a lot of people export a quicktime, then launch and bring in Compressor separately.

your compressing twice, how is that good.