I shot some quick 5d footage at bestbuy to test out the image and workflow. Let me say that the image is FANTASTIC. With that said, I'm getting ridiculous render and exporting times.

For every 10 seconds of footage cc'd with just the FCP 3way color corrector, it's 3 MINS of render time! I'm exporting a 20 second timeline and compressor is telling me 1 hour and 20 minutes for a high quality 1280x720 h.264 file. What the heck.......usually takes 45 minutes for a 3:30 HDV edited timeline to render out in the same setting.

Are these times accurate?

Equipment I'm using :

MBP 2.2 ghz late 2007 model with 4gb of ram
FCP 6.0.5

Appreciate any insight into this. I'm on the edge to purchase either the 5dmk2 or HMC150 partly due to the long work flow and insane ProRes storage space but I may have to deal with it if editing 5dmk2 footage is this crazy. I don't mind the shooting trickery but the back end work flow is what really concerns me.

Thanks

What are your timeline settings??

You are pretty limited with a MacBook (Pro) editing AVCHD. It's better if you go ProRes, but it will take time to transcode...

Hi Xavier,

My timeline settings are whatever FCP automatically sets it to when dragging in the 5Dmk2 footage.

Yeah, I've read up extensively on the ProRes transcoding. It's pretty much 1:1 almost so it's like digitizing tape...at 6 times the file size. heh But I do see the advantage of it and am thinking towards the future when it is fully supported. But the question still remains..are these 5dmk2 times what everyone else is getting?

Depends... if your bringing the footage in, simple cuts and then outputing it back out it
shouldn't be too bad... but if your bringing in the footage and messing with other things
like color or adding fancy swipes and such then the time will increase because the computer
has to work in the extras...

You shouldn't be recompressing your timeline output back to h.264
Set your timeline as prores 1080p and your renders should go a lot smoother, plus your output will have much better quality.

Yeah, I've read up extensively on the ProRes transcoding. It's pretty much 1:1 almost so it's like digitizing tape...at 6 times the file size.

Not 1:1 transcode times on a laptop. I've got the previous generation 17" MBP 2.5 w 4gb RAM and on my last 5D project 3.5 hours of source footage took over 10 hours to transcode to ProRes. 6x file storage is about right though, ~60 gb of source ended up at 350gb after the transcode, using the lower quality ProRes, HQ would have been ~500gb but I don't see an appreciable quality difference between the two.

My finished video at 8 minutes long took about an hour to render out to a 1080p ProRes master and then a couple hours to compress from that to an h.264 master. I never run output to something like h.264 directly from the FCP timeline - always go to an intermediate master first. I haven't tested recently to see if they've improved it but previously I've timed direct timeline exports like that at up to 6x longer than going to an intermediate master first.

Luis, I'm rendering out to h.264 for apple TV viewing and testing out HD delivery. So you're saying set the timeline as ProRes 1080p30p and ignore FCP asking to match clip settings to sequence settings?

Evan, I'm talking about AVCHD HMC150 footage when I mentioned transcoding 1:1. I'm comparing the two times to decide which workflow would be quicker at this point.

Ray, I color grade all my footage slightly. I see it as a huge problem for workflow if I touch every clip slightly with the 3way CC and it takes that long to render.

Thanks for the reply guys.

Echoing the sentiment here, you should definitely be changing your timeline to be something like Apple Intermediate, ProRes, or DVCPRO HD codec. Not H.264.

But better yet, transcode *everything* to one of those codecs first!

The bottom line for me is... The 5DMkII is not a fast video editing scenario. From the very start I accepted the workflow as requiring a transcode process before even touching the footage. I read someone stating the codec used is "not ready for primetime". I would disagree. It was never meant to be a primetime editing codec.

Truth is, so much about the camera is full of the need to hack around the limitations. It can be done, but it is to suffer for.

-steev

Clip settings and timeline settings are two different things. I wouldn't transcode though, just drop the clips into a timeline with a suitable editing codec like prores. Thing is, encoding h.264 is a time consuming process, lossy and not really practical for editing. Transcoding before editing adds unecessary generational loss for the sake of minimal performance gain during the editing stage, not to mention a huge waste of time.

If you use your originals in a timeline with an appropriate editing codec, you can render out your edit much faster and once you're really happy with it, encode it into the delivery format of your choice, with the possibility of keeping a master copy in a more robust codec in case you want to fiddle with it in the future. If your timeline is set to delivery format, your render times will be much higher, which is kind of a bummer if you find you have a typo in a title after waiting for hours for the rendered output, and your master file for alternative output such as dvd or web will be of much lesser quality.

Steev, thanks for the reply.

Luis, I see what you mean now. I wasn't aware that timeline setting dictate editing codec. I thought editing codec had to be the same as the source footage unless you transcoded first. I'm with you on the pre-transcode before editing. Way too much time sacraficed. And yes, that typo situation would be terrible, haha.

Well..I just tried loading up a ProRes 422 1920x1080 30p preset and drop in a 5D clip while ignoring FCP's request to change the settings. It dropped on but requires rendering to even view footage on timeline. Takes the same amount of time as if I would have let FCP match clip settings to timeline settings but I wouldn't have had to render first.

Just to clarify Luis, you're saying that if I open up a new sequence with apple ProRes 422 1920x1080 30p as the preset, I can just drop the 5D clips in with no rendering to start editing and simple effects like 3way CC would be much shorter to render? I'm missing a step as it doesn't seem to work.

Thanks again for the replies.

Transcoding before editing adds unecessary generational loss for the sake of minimal performance gain during the editing stage, not to mention a huge waste of time.

The question is *when* do you want to "waste your time." I need playback and scrub SPEED when I'm editing. I don't have the patience to deal with stuttering playback, dropped frames, and FCP just straight up ceasing playback when I'm in an editing frenzy.

Transcode your footage first (and go do something else for awhile), then come back to edit fluidly, and enjoy fast render times on transitions/color correction, similar to HDV/DVCPRO HD workflows.

H.264 inside of FCP is HORRID to edit in.

Steev, I agree. What workflow are you doing to transcode the footage? Just taking all of your raw files and dropping them into compressor for batch transcoding?

Steev, I agree. What workflow are you doing to transcode the footage? Just taking all of your raw files and dropping them into compressor for batch transcoding?

Yep, exactly that - raw files into compressor. I made a setting to encode to ProRes or DVCPRO HD. Then let it do it's thing.

I don't have a strong preference yet between ProRes or DVCPRO HD, but I'd probably choose ProRes HQ if I being a stickler on lossiness. DVCPRO HD would be a more conservative route if I was more concerned with hard drive space.

Regarding lossiness? This is a DVCPRO HD encoded screen grab.

http://www.holyzoo.com/content/dslr/5DMkII_2b.jpg

That's image quality more than awesome enough for me. :)

Lastly, I would say that if time was of the essence and I was *only* doing cuts with no color correction, I would just do my editing in a H.264 sequence, then switch it to ProRes or DVCPRO HD for export. But I love tweaking images, so especially on a serious project, I wouldn't think twice about transcoding.

-steev

The question is *when* do you want to "waste your time." I need playback and scrub SPEED when I'm editing. I don't have the patience to deal with stuttering playback, dropped frames, and FCP just straight up ceasing playback when I'm in an editing frenzy.

Transcode your footage first (and go do something else for awhile), then come back to edit fluidly, and enjoy fast render times on transitions/color correction, similar to HDV/DVCPRO HD workflows.

H.264 inside of FCP is HORRID to edit in.

I'm with you. No one in their right mind would edit native 5D2 footage in their timeline. I think Luis is smoking something when he says minimal performance gain during the edit -- for me it's more like MAXIMAL performance gain during the edit. The 5D2 native files are basically poster children for why intermediates even exist in the first place, I mean this footage makes MPEG2 GOPs look like child's play, LOL.

The very first thing I do once the files are offloaded from the card and backed up is BATCH TRANSCODE to an intermediate. I tend to run that overnight, and then the edit goes soooooo much easier.

Thats why Cineform Neo Scene is so great... it fixes the 30P issue, fixes the color information issue and the intermediate is great for fast editing on the time line...

Using MPEG Streamclip has given me a smooth workflow. I batch export all my clips to Quicktime using XDCAM HD1080p 30 for compression. In FCP timeline sequence, I use the same setting, I do color corrections using apple w/out rendering it, adding dissolves, and also use Magic Bullet and rendering is normal. As what I have learned, using this method gives you smaller files w/high quality video compared to Prores.

Once clarified you have to transcode your footage if you want to edit it properly, please let's not start a "who's using the strangest codec" competition.

If you are on Mac and use FCP, the codecs you should be transcoding to are either Apple Intermediate Codec (only option on FC Express) or even better Apple ProRes.

Once transcoded to ProRes, your ability to color correct will be much better!

Rendered to ProRes and fixed a setting on the timeline. All is fine (except for the long transcode). I can live with it for the image quality I'd be getting.

What kind of loss do you get if you transcode it to something like DVCPRO HD 30p compared to Prores (which should be lossless)?

I made a custom compressor setting, with dvcpro hd, 29,97fps, 1080p. But I haven't reaaally used it all that much yet for something important. Is the loss of information huge or?

Edit: Oh and by the way do you guys experience Compressor crashing a lot when handling the 5d2 footage?

Lars,

I don't have compressor crash at all when working with 5D footage.