In the ever-changing workflow for a film I'm about to start... 

The lab intends to take our Super16 footage and encode it in ProRes 4444 for cutting. My goal is to offline in MC 4.0 and then conform using the high-res files when I'm done.

Has anyone done this, or know if it would work? Any suggested workflows out there? Any info is greatly appreciated!

444 or 4444? Can they not make you DNx files? Seems like they should be able to. Otherwise you have a lot of transcoding/importing time ahead of you. Or you can just cut in FCP.

+1 Agree with kellyv.

The lab we use doesn't like Avid for some reason so I got stuck transcoding.  It wasn't that bad.  I used MPEG Streamclip to go from ProRes to DNxHD and metaCheater 1.5 to get the timecode back that I lost during the transcode.

kellyv:

444 or 4444? Can they not make you DNx files? Seems like they should be able to. Otherwise you have a lot of transcoding/importing time ahead of you. Or you can just cut in FCP.

At first they said it was 4444... learning now that it's 444.

None of the DNx codecs are 444, which is why we're limited to ProRes. We're likely going back to film when I'm done so we want all the color info we can get.

Of course I could edit in FCP, but am hoping to work in AVID.

pianoman72:

+1 Agree with kellyv.

The lab we use doesn't like Avid for some reason so I got stuck transcoding.  It wasn't that bad.  I used MPEG Streamclip to go from ProRes to DNxHD and metaCheater 1.5 to get the timecode back that I lost during the transcode.

Thanks for the reply.  Did you go back to the ProRes files when you were done working? One of the things we're considering is transcoding for offline, working in AVID, then exporting my sequence to FCP to relink to the original ProRes 444 files...

Good question...That project has been shelved for now but I like your idea and I don't see why it wouldn't work.  I'm a FCP novice, though.  I'll give it a try if/when I get to that point.

I import ProRes straight into MC all day, no problems. You'll need FCP 7 to have access to the new 4444 codec though.

And for 1 minute of footage how long does it take to import?