H.264 to ProRes 422

For those of you who edit in Premiere, do you still do the conversion before bringing in the clips? I know that Premiere handles H.264 files perfectly fine, but is there that much of an advantage to using ProRes files? I keep hearing that the compression in the H.264 makes it harder to do any sort of color correction. Is this true?

also interested in this

I bring them straight in, converting doesn't add anything to the file.
It's about as a pointless as converting JPEG to TIFF before editing PS, the amount of data available to edit doesn't change.

ProRes only exists because FCP9 and earlier couldn't handle H.264.

Leave it as h.264 if you are able to run/hack the Mercury playback engine in Premiere.

Kento wrote in post #15022458
Leave it as h.264 if you are able to run/hack the Mercury playback engine in Premiere.

Yes! I just read a bit of this info last night. So thanks for this.

I even attempted an edit of a H.264 footage and an edit of the same footage that was transcoded to ProRes, and saw no difference in quality in the final export other than the file size being twice as large.

Moppie wrote in post #15022165
I bring them straight in, converting doesn't add anything to the file.
It's about as a pointless as converting JPEG to TIFF before editing PS, the amount of data available to edit doesn't change.

ProRes only exists because FCP9 and earlier couldn't handle H.264.

Great to know as well! Thanks for the tip.

Im interested in this info aswell here on these forums I see often the answers given above but on most the editing/cinema forums people say to convert for grading especially if youre shooting with a flatter picture style.

I have tried both and do not know enough to know which is better.

You won't gain any picture quality at all. You can't add what isn't there.

The big plus of Premiere over Final Cut is that it will natively edit h264. Which is one of the reasons people use it.

However. ProRes is an intraframe codec while h264 is an interframe codec (wikipedia has a detailed explanation of the differences). The main reason to transcode to ProRes (or any other intraframe codec) is that while you are editing it is less taxing on your computer as skipping frames doesn't mean that the specific frame has to be calculated, it is already there.

Might not make a difference if you are running the latest and greatest fast computer, but it can mean less frustration if you have a slower machine or need to edit on the move on a laptop. Just need to go through the conversion process first.

Color grading is not affected if you do it all in Premiere, but if you edit h264 then export out as h264 to a color grading software, then export that out to h264 you are introducing a lot of information loss. Better do it all in ProRes across apps and then do the final export as h264.

wineguy97 wrote in post #15029538
Color grading is not affected if you do it all in Premiere, but if you edit h264 then export out as h264 to a color grading software, then export that out to h264 you are introducing a lot of information loss. Better do it all in ProRes across apps and then do the final export as h264.

Unless you take advantage of the rest of the Adobe suite and use Speed Grade and After Effects as part of Premier


FCPX can now edit H.264 natively, and does a very good job of it.
A friend is in the process of moving into FCPX and is shooting a lot of H.264 footage, he is rather enjoying not having to wait for everything to be converted to prores, which can take a long time, even on a high end computer.

Thanks for the tips guys what youre saying makes sense. That being said maybe ill try and see which way my system performs better. I have a high end Nvidia GPU using the mercury engine so I assume it wont make much of a difference.

wineguy97 wrote in post #15029538
The big plus of Premiere over Final Cut is that it will natively edit h264.

Not anymore, fcpx handles it fine

I came across this I thought I would share it.
Why you should use Avid DNxHD and Apple ProRes

Kento; What do you mean by "Hack" the Mercury engine?

I think he is talking about enabling Adobe premiere to use more nvidia based graphic cards then is set up to by default. Basically allowing people to use the mercury engine built into the software but not made available to most people since they dont have one of the few recommended graphic cards.

I have mine hacked (its not really even a hack) and set up to use my GTX660Ti 3GB GPU. I get very fast renders and playback.

One thing to add to the previous posts: Prores422 hq/lt are video files in a 4:2:2 color space meaning there is more color information available..... Now, that wont add any information to your footage, however if you are colorgrading, that is usefull data to have, allowing less added noise and a little more latitude.

I think the best solution is to stay h264/ AVCHD and if you wish to color grade, just output the final file as prores and send it to grading at that point.