PProCS4 and HMC150 workflow issues

[shadowProd]

I've been a long time user of Premiere and have had a DVX for almost five years now. I just bought a HP quad core-512 graphic-6gb Ram-1TB Raid computer and I bought a class 6 sandisk extreme 20mbs SD card so I could play around with an AVCHD HMC-150 workflow.

So, I went down to my local camera store - stuck my card in the 150 and shot five minutes of footage on the PH 1080p 24p mode and took it home to try it.

First off, do you go 1080P regular or anamorphic preset? I understand it's all 16:9, but which setting would one use. In the past I've always shot widescreen on my DVX, so I always chose the widecreen preset. Is the anamorphic setting the same?

Anyway, I tried both and here is what I found. The clips came right up and I opened them and started to build a timeline with various clips. The first thing I found was that the footage was artifacting/solarizing all over the place - very annoying - this happened in both settings. I also got intermintent green screen flashing like a various clip was corrupted or something. Sometimes it would show up - sometimes not at all - during various attempts at playing it.

This happened in both presets, but in the anamorphic preset all the clips needed to be rendered. Once they were rendered the artifacting went away, but if you were in the non-anamorphic preset, then you were dealing with the artifacts/solarization type problems all the time because PPro didn't allow you to render.

When I exported to Mpeg2-DVD from the anamorphic preset the downrezzed footage looked worse than a DVX100a and I got those intermintent green screen breakup/flashes, but when I exported the regular preset to microsoft AVI it transcoded and looked just fine (for downrezzed footage)

Lastly, the PPRO 4 timeline interface seem to subtly pulsate (top bar across timeline only) when I played back my timeline in both settings - is this a bug???

Anyway just looking for thoughts or ideas on what I may be doing wrong? Thank you.

[MrFluffy]

Use widescreen not anamorphic. Anamorphic doesnt use square pixels.

In my tests, with little clips from here I dont have the camera yet, I found that a fast HD was irrellevent. What really counts is RAM and CPU.

See:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=149929

[Mike Harvey]

Shadow, I finally installed CS4 this morning, and am getting the exact same thing when playing clips back. I only had a few minutes to play with it, but it's the same problem. I just used whatever the default was for 1080p/24 (I'll check when I get home whether it's widescreen or anamorphic). I only saw the green flash once, but the "solarizing" is always there.

I'm running a Q6600 CPU, 8 gig of RAM, Vista 64, Nvidia 8600GTS with 512 MB RAM and CS4 is running from it own drive separate from the OS and the 1 TB striped array for video, so there is plenty of horsepower to run it. When playing the clips in Nero or back from the camera, they look fine.

Anyone have any ideas?

[MrFluffy]

Until there is a native 64bit PPro I dont think that your going to be able to play back 1080 in real time. I could just do 1080/24 but scrubbing was bad.

I wont be using PPro for 1080, I'll use Ae instead as it allows for the construction of proxy footage to make the whole thing a lot faster. I'll probably only use PPro for construction of the final output when all the clips are finalised.

[Mike Harvey]

Found the solution on another thread for the "solarization" issue... in the corner of your monitor window, there is what looks like three little lines and an arrow. Click on it, and a drop down menu should appear. about 2/3 the way down... you should see "Highest Quality" "Draft Quality" and "Automatic Quality". If Auto is selected, click "Highest" and it should play back fine.

[shadowProd]

Thanks for the responses and tips. When I went to the DV expo in LA and spoke with a rep from Adobe, I told him what was happening with me regarding the native editing on CS4. He confirmed it all and told me that they are working on it and that there will be an update in November and one in January that will resolve all these issues. Let's cross our fingers.

[KeithAndrews.TV]

I am really beginning to think that this is a Premiere issue in regard to playing back and editing the native AVCHD clips. I've got a Q6600 CPU with 4gb of RAM, 10,000 RPM RAID, and Vista 64 bit and can't even begin to playback the footage in realtime, not even in draft quality.

Consider this though. I CAN playback the native .mts files with VLC in real time at full res, with not even the hint of a stutter while I am encoding and exporting a .flv file with Media Encoder and PPRO CS4 using dynamic link. What's going on with that?!

[ilauzirika]

I also can play the files with mpc at real time.....But premiere crashes on me everytime I try to play the files............. (amd 64 x2 processor and 3gb of ram, Hopefully I'll be updating next month).

[dr jones]

is it true that PP CS4 only has an AVCHD sequence preset for 1080 and does not have an AVCHD preset for 720p?

[m.t.]

You could try and drop your 720p footage in the xdcam preset.

[KeithAndrews.TV]

As of right now, from everything that I been reading and from personal experience with Premiere CS4, there are no 720p editing presets. Only 1080p and 1080i.

As far as importing the AVCHD 720p footage into a different preset, that will work, but will not give you realtime editing as it would if there was an actual 720p preset. There will be a red bar above the editing tracks and you will have to render the footage for real time playback.

This is something that Adobe will have to correct and release in a future update to the software as it did with JVC's 24p HDV codec.

Current workaround is to use the MainConcept Transcoder to convert the AVCHD footage to DVCPro HD and then import that footage into a DVCPro HD editing preset. That will give you real time playback without rendering.

[David Saraceno]

There are no 720p presets in CS4 Premiere Mac, and I suspect that is true cross platform.

RT editing is non existent on a 8 core Mac and SATA drives with a 512 MB GPU.

Premiere will hang constantly, and the media encoder when outputting to a p2 folder will report "disk full" and hang requiring a force quit and reboot.

And this is on a fresh HDD with a fresh install of OS, etc.

It don't work

[David Jimerson]

You can modify the presets and save a customized one.

Real-time editing is fine with 1080/24p footage on my Quad-Core Windows machine.

[dr jones]

unless i am missing something there is no way to make an avchd preset with 720 even via custom. there is only options for 1080i and 1080p and 1080 anamorphic.


this is disappointing to me because i'm concerned i will lose detail/image quality if i import 720p into a 1080p timeline and then scale it up and render out as 720p.

[KeithAndrews.TV]

unless i am missing something there is no way to make an avchd preset with 720 even via custom. there is only options for 1080i and 1080p and 1080 anamorphic.


this is disappointing to me because i'm concerned i will lose detail/image quality if i import 720p into a 1080p timeline and then scale it up and render out as 720p.

You are correct. There is no way, even in the custom editing preset window, to select 720p as a resolution for AVCHD. It just wasn't included with this release of CS4.

You are also correct that scaling your 720p video to 1080p will result in a softer image.

I am hoping that Adobe will release an update soon that will correct this issue. Until then, we have to continue to use the MainConcept Transcoder workaround.

[David Saraceno]

Hey David.

You indicate you can create a custom preset for 720p AVCHD preset, but three people say Premiere won't permit it. I can't do it either.

How did you do it?

[dr jones]

i'm also very curious how david did it