Fast Proxy in AE for 4K??

I mean FAST. Some of the internet sources talk in hours...I'd like minutes, please!

Just need to make proxies from 4K RAW 60fps realtime stuff (FS700/Odyssey 7Q+)so I can actually watch the clip and pick the best parts. RAM preview waaaaay too slow.

I've got draft setting, quarter resolution set up in creating proxy, the clip is only 42 seconds long, and I want to isolate the best 15-20 seconds. The render predictor thing reported 7 minutes....OK...I can deal with that, but now it says 5 minutes, and I started rendering over 20 minutes ago.

I was shooting waving trees in high winds. I men HIGH winds...some of those tress came down last night....so I'm looking to avoid the inevitable camera shake, and get the best waving tree action, etc.

Is there a really fast way to do this? I could potentially use the AVCHD from the camera's SD card, but they are not in sync.....I guess it doesn't need to be perfect.

I'd love for some help here! Thanks!

Have you heard of ffmpeg? It is open source software and I use to to batch convert media to proxy size. It can do plenty of other things too (like convert to Prores on PC). The only thing is that it is command line based so that might scare some people off. It is available for Mac and PC from www.ffmpeg.org

You would make a .bat file to execute the conversion and the syntax looks like this;

ffmpeg -i source_4k_file.mov -s 1920x1080 -c:v libx264 -preset fast -crf 30 -c:a copy proxy.mov

There are a million different flag options but in this example -s is scale, -c:v is the video codec (h264) -preset fast just sets some other standard things you don't need to worry about -crf is the quality (smaller number = bigger file and better quality 1 to 99) -c:a copy means it just copies the audio from one file to the next without any conversion.

It's pain to learn, but a great tool once you do. If you or anyone is interested and needs more help let me know.

Very interesting...I'll check it out! Appreciate the offer to clarify future confusion, too!

miz, why is your 7Q and camera AVCHD not in sync? When I was shooting 4k 30p raw my avchd worked perfect as a proxy.

Now I'm shooting the prores it isn't syncing perfect like it was on raw, sometimes I'm missing a second or 2 at the beginning or the end... makes me a little nervous. But I just roll extra to make sure I get it.

Gene, as you know, I have been a big fan of MpegStreamclip for years. It's batch functions work very well and can handle RAW going in with many, many options for proxy export. If I'm not mistaken, I do believe this is a solution; although it's strong points come in the form of quicktime files, it will also output to .avi and a plethora of other windows friendly formats. It's also free... Another option (also free I believe) is Adobe DNG Converter.. It is designed to tackle the task you describe.

Scott - funny, I guess I assumed since the ProRes was out of sync that the RAW was too. I'll check it....certainly the easiest (already done!) proxy solution.

Linus, well, yeah, that's an option....probably easier than ffmpeg - whatever I end up having to use, it had better be fast!