Little Ending.. Big Endian MP4 Would Play Fine IF...

[basspig]

Ooooh! I'm so close to a beautiful editing solution here, that it pains me.

I have tested Cineform (too much extra workflow, huge files)
I have tested MainConcept MPEG Pro HD 3.1 (buggy, slow, quad core struggles)

I am testing direct import of .MP4 again.

The darned files play BEAUTIFULLY in Premiere CS3, excepting the fact that there's no audio. CPU utilization is in the low 20% range, and no dropped frames.

Heck, my template title test that crashes Premiere with MainConcept installed, plays smoothly with a flat memory usage that doesn't increase over time. And the CPU utilization with the unrendered title is only in the low 30% range. Unrendered titles and effects play with no apparent effort at all.


The only downside is there is NO AUDIO when MP4 files are directly dragged into Premiere CS3. Arrgh! I'm so close---yet so far away from a usable solution for Premiere.

Test for yourself. Set up a new Custom project. 23.976 fps, 1920x1080 square pixels, YUV as the rendering CODEC and Desktop as the setting. Drag in a few .MP4s off the SxS card. See how efforless they play.


Additonal testing reveals that rendering out some footage to WMV format produces a twice-per-second blink to black--as if a 2-frame dip to black transition were added every 12 frames of a 24P clip. This, and the audio seem to be the two obstacles at the moment.


I am talking to MainConcept, trying to convince them to offer just an XDCam CODEC, without all the Dolby, AAC, h.264 licensing expense added on. I told them they would have a winner if they would offer just an XDCam CODEC for Premiere at $99. I hope someone there is considering that.

[LuckyStudio 13]

Sweet, a double system will work just PERFECT then !

[madebykong]

Try using FFmpeg to convert your audio. Lots of threads about this.

[basspig]

From what I've read about FFmpeg, it also reencodes the video. Is it possible to have it leave the video untouched and just reverse the endian order on the PCM audio? That could be a solution.

It looks like this camera's first large-scale paid job is coming up this Saturday, so I'll either need to buy MainConcepts bloatware or find an alternative solution that does not degrade picture quality.

[madebykong]

i believe you can use FFmpeg and output only audio - I haven't tried this yet with EX1 files (my EX1 comes in next week), but I've used FFmpeg in other situations to output only audio, ie:

ffmpeg -i inputfilenam.mp4 -acodec pcm_s16le outputfile.wav

i've also read that others have just gone ahead and grabbed the video + audio, and then take only the audio files.

[basspig]

I downloaded the program, and after hunting down a program to decompress the bz2 file, out pops a tar file, which I was able to open with WinZip. Now that produced a complex hive of subfolders and a lot of .c files (source code?).
It looks like I need a C compiler to make an executable out of these, but I think I may be in a little over my head here. Even more confusing is that the instructions seem to require a UNIX system to execute the build and install.

Is there a Windows equivalent of FFmpeg? I'm on a Windows XP box here.

[madebykong]

i get my ex today - will give it a shot on premiere cs3 and let you know...

i think some people post their compiled binaries for windows online. may want to google it.

[myCharlie]

I have used the FFmpeg utility to convert a 25MB file size using DNxHD 175 and it took around like 12 hours and by the time it's done, the file is over 1GB. Now, I have not tried just using the audio...but I assumed if you're going to use just the audio, a DNxHD 36 is much faster the way to go. But I'm using Avid so perhaps for Premier CS3 it might be different.

[basspig]

i believe you can use FFmpeg and output only audio - I haven't tried this yet with EX1 files (my EX1 comes in next week), but I've used FFmpeg in other situations to output only audio, ie:

ffmpeg -i inputfilenam.mp4 -acodec pcm_s16le outputfile.wav

i've also read that others have just gone ahead and grabbed the video + audio, and then take only the audio files.


FFmepeg isn't long filename-aware, is it?
Reason I ask, it because I am testing with a typical directory in Windows XP and FFmpeg keeps spitting back "no such file or directory" even though I typed in the full path to the source files. I nearly forgot how nasty life was back in the DOS days with AutoMenu and batch files. This experience brought back the nightmares with Technicolor vividness.

And while this may solve the sound issue, I'm also getting a blink issue every GOP. It plays fine in Premiere, but try to render the footage out to any other format and the output file has twice a second blinks to dark green.

UPDATE:

Trying the import of XDCam .MP4 files into a Premiere HDV project. Finally solved FFmpeg WAV conversion issue. Converted my 3 concert clips' audio to little-endian.

I did a test export of 45 seconds of the .MP4 imported XDCam footage and that clip looked fine. No blinks. Now I'm dragging over the 48K reverse-endian audio and am going to marry it to the XDCam clips that it belongs to.

Synching footage up now. This should be interesting...

[matthew77]

Ooooh! I'm so close to a beautiful editing solution here, that it pains me.

Basspig, not to sound like one of those Mac jerks, but if you buy a Mac and FCS you will have a nearly flawless system for XDCAM EX editing - simple workflow etc etc - all the issues you describe gone.

It really works well - even I was surprised (and I'm one of those Mac jerks).

[basspig]

That may be true, however that would entail years of retraining for FCP and many thousands of dollars in new hardware and software.

Heck, Vegas on our old machine handles XDCam fine. Only problem is, no one in the shop is comfortable enough to do a huge project with it!

[matthew77]

Basspig,

You could be editing in FCP in 15 minutes. It runs like most NLE's and will be familiar almost instantly.

And it would pay for itself in a week based on time saved.

And no one would feel uncomfortable doing huge projects on it.

And your footage would look great - you edit in the original codec.

[basspig]

I'm using this thread to carry on the discussion about the concert recording with XDCam because something about the other thread hangs both my computers whenever I load it, so I am unable to view or post to that thread (at least with Windows PCs).

So here's the latest rough synch on the first half of concert is just about done (I have to check for HDV 'dropouts' that typically happen 1-3 times per hour of footage to make sure that I didn't miss any A/V synch slippage on the HDV tracks).

I've rendered about a minute of just the XDCam track to Windows Media. This is raw .MP4 imported into Premiere Pro CS3, with separate WAV audio extracted with FFmpeg and married to the .MP4 track for synch purposes.

Audio came from the flown microphones and this is a mix of LF-CTR-RF mics only.

Here's the 14MB WMV:

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=034F0CB353E5C908


At this medium long shot, no CA is visible and the shot looks great. I'll post some CA shots in the lunar eclipse CA thread later...

[Stevet]

I'm using this thread to carry on the discussion about the concert recording with XDCam because something about the other thread hangs both my computers whenever I load it, so I am unable to view or post to that thread (at least with Windows PCs).



Wow...
Yes, that thread had me rebooting three time!
I could not believe just viewing that thread was doing this.
weird...

[Stevet]

Mark it looks good, though I see you were probably fighting the typical low issues at some of these concert events.

[basspig]

Yup, really weird, so it's abandoned as far as accessing it with IE.

Re: video clip of cellist...
Did you mean to say "low... light"? That would be true for the V1Us, which were wide open at 360º shutter, but the XDCam was running about f4.8 during that shoot. I was afraid to go turn on the shutter and go wider at f1.9 because I wasn't sure then if blurring would result.
This clip simply demonstrates that the XDCam makes nice video in a properly-lit stage. It does pick up much more detail in the shadows than the V1Us did, though. The latter crushes blacks in the suits, music stands and floor to a lesser extent. The XDCam obviously sees all detail, and this was with a STD curve. Cine curves would open that up even more. I almost need to crush the blacks in post to make it blend with the V1U footage.
The only issues we fight at these venues is the embittered staff whose arms we twisted to get our mic array flown over the auditorium. But it's worth it because how else are ya' gonna' get audio like that? :)

[Stevet]

blurirng at f1.9, why?
It's should be tact sharp at f1.9.
You should not have to avoid it.
In fact, I usually stack on the ND filters most of the time to get wide as possible.

Mark, you really need to send your camera in man.

[basspig]

blurirng at f1.9, why?
It's should be tact sharp at f1.9.
You should not have to avoid it.
In fact, I usually stack on the ND filters most of the time to get wide as possible.

Mark, you really need to send your camera in man.

The video of the concert was shot mostly f4.8. Do you think it looks soft? There's too much light to use f1.9 in this case.

I'm of the opinion that this lens is not as good as the first camera I got Feb 5th, so I'm inclined to send it back--I just don't want a bunch of back and forth trips to Sony and the same problem upon receipt.

Anyone have a GOOD contact at Sony Broadcast who's familiar with the XDCam lens issues? I'd like to start a dialog so they know I'm having an issue with my lens and to open a case history/trouble ticket on the camera so when I send it in there's a full history.

That's going to be tricky, with my schedule filling up for weddings and concerts this spring. I really DON'T wish to rent again. That was such an enormous waste of money.

[basspig]

Working on the A-B-C-D roll edits now for the concert.

This is the multicam editor in Premiere, with four cameras!

http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/28120/1204780409.jpg

With luck, everything will render out fine.

I had three 'dropout' events on the HDV footage that I've detected so far, and NO problems with the XDCam footage.

No after-market CODEC installed. I've managed to use the MP4 files from the BPAV folder on the SxS card directly in Premiere, with FFmpeg extracted reverse-endian audio re-married to the video in Premiere for synch purposes.