So here's the qusetion, I'm capturing footage from a HD broadcast (from cable, TWC), being that it's already a compressed signaled would it better to capture it as pro res proxy or a high bit rate H.264? ProRES 422, LT, just seems like overkill. Which would give me better qaulity?
Sorry maybe I'm not explaining myself better. I'm not transcoding to ProRes from another source/format. I'm capturing a HD show from cable TV ( let's say the tv show is CSI in HD) directly to ProRes Proxy as the show is being shown on TV.
In this situation is it better to capture directly to H.264 or ProRes Proxy. Cable TV HD channels are not exactly high in bitrates but I still want keep the recording as close as what is being broadcasted (the source). ProRes 422 seems overkill to me.
From what I read, ProRes Proxy is about 35mbs. Given that's the case would a 30mbs H.264 be worse or better than a ProRes proxy capture?
I wouldn't use Proxy, but if you're just going to archive it, H.264 would be perfectly fine. If you're going to be editing it and./or re-compressing for other purposes (say, burning a DVD), then a good case could be made for Pro Res LT.
Russ
I am planning on archiving it. So ProRes proxy would not be better than H.264? (space isn't an issue) My understanding is that ProRes proxy would capture in 4.2.2 while H.264 is only 4.2.0.
Proxy footage is very low quality stuff designed purely to speed up editing and not for keeping.
What Ian said.
If you were going to edit and grade these clips, a 4:2:2 codec might possibly be a benefit; in that case, Pro Res422 would be a superior choice to Proxy.
Russ
appleconfuse, i would like to help answer your questions, and i hope that what i say is helpful to you from a professional that knows how this works. :-) you should never use anything higher quality than h.264 for recording a tv show from tv. its completely ridiculous to use prores to do this for the following reasons.
1.) i work at a tv station, and i can personally testify that tv shows are already compressed into h.264 at my station. so by the time it reaches you its already in h.264 anyways.
2.) once a video is in a compressed format, it is 100% impossible to add the removed information back into the video feed by encoding it in a higher quality format. it is also impossible to make a 1080p video signal into a 4k video signal just by upscaling it.
3.) prores is meant ONLY for creative professional to create content, not for viewing or storing for personal use. this is not what it was meant for. h.264 is a consumer format intended for the everyday use and will be much more friendly for your purposes. ;-)
you are not making the video better in any way at all by encoding it in prores proxy. the compression process they use to send a video out over the internet either on youtube or at a tv station is already highly compressed h.264. i know this because its my job to receive the video signals as h.264 video files and then to compress/encode them AGAIN before they are broadcast.
i hope this is helpful to you and i certainly am sorry to break this news to you. but unfortunately all you are doing is taking up more space on your hard drive and creating unnecessary work for yourself. to clarify, 4:2:2 footage is completely useless to you unless you are actually color grading footage. otherwise you receive zero benefit from it.
ProRes Proxy is approximately the same bandwidth (bit rate) as high quality H.264 (~ 45Mbps for 1080/30p/60i.) The ProRes will be a lot easier to import and edit than H.264. One of the "features" of ProRes is that it is "virtually lossless" (higher bit rate versions, of course, would be better... but I doubt you could tell much difference.)
Since FCPX uses the terminology of "Proxy Media" which is in fact ProRes 422, but 1/4 "resolution" (1920x1080 becomes 960x540), it's easy to mistake this as ProRes Proxy... PR 422 proxy is a full resolution format. Using it should also lessen the load on your processors. H.264 is usually very processor intensive when encoding.
I don't think you'd be able to tell the difference in the video quality between the two formats. I'd go with the proxy for recording.
capture in prores proxy or H.264
