Any tips for good Intermediate file format workflows?

[Monotroska]

Hey everyone.

We have been using FFAStrans for transcoding master from our editors to MP4/H264 files for further upload online etc.
Having gotten new prosumer cameras that record H264 (with long GOP) the editors struggle with performance in Adobe Premiere, since the long GOP format is slow to decode on their machines. One solution has been to let Premiere ingest the MP4/H264 and use Cineform as an intermediate format that is much more responsive for the editors to work on. However some of the workstations are not very fast, so that takes quite some time for those machines to transcode to Cineform.

My idea was to have FFAStrans do the ingesting of all the MP4 files (from docking station on the FFAStrans server) then server it to the editors from the NAS storage server. The editors then master in an intermediate format the FFAStrans picks up and transcodes back to MP4 plus save the master.

However FFMPEG doesnt seem to support Cineform encoding. And decoding is also very slow.
One solution is to use Adobe Media Encoder just for anything Cineform related. But I would love to keep everything in FFAStrans.
Another solution is to use a different Intermediate format. ProRes works well on Adobe Premiere too, but unfortunately not exporting, as its PC workstations, not Macs.

Anyone has tips and tricks for a good workflow like this? Any other formats worth looking into?

Sidenote, since the FFAStrans machine has a new Geforce card, NVENC works really fast for H264 encoding. Tried making an i-Frame only encoding with NVENC... Worked, somewhat... Its still a little slow for the editors, not as responsive as Cineform and ProRes. Anyone tried something like this?

Cheers

[admin]

Are you looking at proxy files or easier-to-edit online files? Maybe DNxHD could be a solution. It's fast to encode with ffmpeg.

-steinar

[momocampo]

Hello,

I think you could do something simple : Use mxf(or mov) with XDCAM-HD codec as intermediate format. Good quality, not too big and working with Premiere. You can also convert your files with DNxHD codec too (No GOP and easy to read for a PC but big storage necessary...)
Try that but FFAStrans encodes with no problem this kind of format. It's true that the H264 isn't a editing format, you have to convert this files to a codec with no GOP or less GOP possible.
Depending of your source files but if your mp4 files are 50 Mb/s, you can transcode them to xdcam hd and finalize your project with xdcam files.
Hope it helps
Cheers