7D H.264 to ProRes files... Timecode question

[John Hewat]

Hi all,

I sought so much advice beforehand, and decided to convert my 80+ hours of H.264 documentary footage to ProRes to make the edit easier.

I am using Mpeg Streamclip which seems very easy and user-friendly.

I asked beforehand but was assured by a buddy: "Mpeg Streamclip does not lose your timecode."

I should have asked more people I guess because, sure enough, every clip that has come out of Mpeg Streamclip has a timecode starting at 00:00:00.

I freaked out - I have two machines doing the 4TB of conversions for over 24 hours now so if I've wasted my time I'll be unhappy.

Then I looked at the original H.264 files.

(Bear in mind that I came to this project very late, well after all the footage was transferred to disk and unfortunately, the director and producer are unable to tell me exactly how the 7D footage was captured.)

From what I can tell, all the originals have a timecode starting at 00:00:00 as well! Being my first time working with 7D footage, I was failing to understand.

Until I did some more research and discovered that the 7D does not give the clips a timecode as it records them.

So anyway, my question is am I going to have trouble because of timecode?

If the originals all start at zero and my new ProRes files start at zero, then all is well right?

It may not be ideal to have a timecode that starts at zero for every clip, but I can live with it; I've already organised all the footage anyway, so I don't need the timecode for anything important now other than re-linking the ProRes files to the original H264s for final export.

Right? Or do I have bad news coming?

[Greg Penetrante]

Hello, John.

As long as you organized your clips you will be fine. At this point, unless you have second system sound with identical timecode with which you have to sync, you won't be needing the timecode on the clips ;)

Greg

[Craig Parkes]

You have it right excep one thing, you wouldnt link back to the originals for final export unless you have transcoded at a smaller proxy resolution.

There is no advantage to doing so, only if you ever needed to re transcode from the originals (i.e your prores files got lost in a drive crash) would you go back to the original h.264, or if you feel like the transcode was done poorly or some reason and you want to re master the project because of that. But as a straight format conversion there isn't an appreciable advantage to going back to h.264 unless something goes wrong ith the transcoding process.