While reading a great article all about the ProRes 422 format, I found the following nugget of info:

While comparing the software-converted files I noticed a couple of interesting issues. My testing found that when the camera native codecs DVCPROHD, HDV or SxS were converted to ProRes in software they universally ran better when using the Standard version of ProRes rather than choosing the HQ version. This was most noticeable on HDV and DVCProHD originals that seem to consistently stutter or choke when playing back software-converted HQ content from compressed camera originals. The best explanation I have is ProRes HQ wants to fill in 10bits of information from the 8bit native compressed files. Due to the massive amount of processing needed to handle this conversion, it overwhelmed most systems on playback, whereas the standard version of ProRes is not trying to over-sample the 8bit data but rather it allows that data to move freely within the larger 10bit color space, easing the load on the CPU when processing the video for output.

via ProVideo Coalition.com: ProRes: A Closer Look.

The author goes on to point out that the worst-quality conversion from DVCPro HD to ProRes 422 was done from Final Cut Pro 6′s media manager. Imagine that! But Compressor did the best file conversion.

I fully recommend this article for all Final Cut Pro editors about the ProRes 422 codec.

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Filed under: Troubleshooting, Tutorial