RTX100 and 24P

[speedbump]

I have the Matrox RTX100 and am editing with Premiere Pro. These are fine for 60i, but don't have native support for 24P.

I think I can install Quicktime Pro and edit in 24P using the quicktime plugin in Premiere Pro, but losing a lot of the realtime benefits of the RTX 100. I'm going to test this over the next few days and report back...

Anyone with comments or experience in this area is welcome to share!

[scharky]

Unfortunatly, Premiere pro as well as the Matrox and Canapus cards were never designed for 24p editing. You can do it, sure, but like you said, you lose all realtime ability. You might try vegas as it almost seems like it is designed for the dvx100, by the way it handles your footage. YOu have so many options to choose from as far as how you want to have the pulldown handled, lots of 24p rendering options and even 24p mpeg2 encoding, something that premiere still lacks. I have been a long time premiere user, I still use it, but not for 24p editing. SOrry for the bad news.

[Neil Rowe]

it does anything (including 24p files after converting with AE or dvfilmmaker..in fact *theres 20% less data to crunch so it performs even better) real time fine if you have a fast enough Computer using p6.5 or ppro,its just not quite full res, . and you cant use *the matrox card.. i however recently was discussing *the line of adobe products *and their new versions to be released with someone who is an insider with adobe. things sound good.

[scharky]

Iamloser.
Have you heard if these new versions of the adobe product line, I'm assuming Premiere, are paid versions or updates. I have been using pro since it came out, and even with dv film maker, I found the performance to be less than satisfactory on my 2.4Ghz p4 1gig ram. I love Premiere and would love to edit using true 24p pulldown, and not have to go through another step to get good 24p performance. I have also found that it is impossible to export to mpeg2 progressive 23.976fps. everytime I select 23.976 as the frame rate Interlace gets highlighted and progressive gets greyed out.
I am very happy with Vegas as well, and adobe will have to really impress me to draw me back to their side. I still like to do some things with premiere, but more and more I find it easier, faster and just overall more pleasing to do with vegas. I still think it sucks that adobe hasn't even released one update for Ppro. There are many things not right with this program that people have been asking for since the release, and still nothing. For adobe to charge it's loyal customers for something that should have been released as an update, is not right.

[speedbump]

Premiere has to edit 24.000fps, not 23.976, so you have to use DVMaker and convert your clip to 24fps, and your audio to 48048hz, do your editing in Premiere, then use DVMaker's Mutate utility to convert it back to 23.976fps and audio to 48000hz.

Then you use something like Tmpgenc to generate your MPEG-2.

[scharky]

I'm sorry, that just seems like a lot of unnecesary work when trying to edit in 24P, especially when all I have to do in vegas is capture the file, immediately it recognizes which type of pulldown to use and does it. *Then, when exporting all I have to do is decide wich type of codec to use, whether it be quicktime 23.976fps, windows avi @29.976 or 23.976 fps with pulldown, or straight to mpeg2 at true progressive 23.976 fps. *Those options just aren't available in Ppro, as of yet, and I find that very limiting. *Like I said before, I love the Ppro editing environment, however I have to use the tool that works best for me, and that at this moment is vegas. *Luckely I am a student so Vegas only cost me $249 with dvd architect and the "FREE" AC3 encoder. *That is another qualm that I had with premiere, how they give a a trial version of the AC3 encoder, and then it's like $300 to buy the actual version. *Well for that I bought vegas and got much much more. *Again, not putting down premiere, but vegas is the best editing tool I have found for the dvx100, on the PC anyways.

[Neil Rowe]

..all you can do is wait and see about the updates or new version..even if i did know some things...(shifts eyes) im not at liberty to start spouting them on the internet. i personally love the flow of using ppro, and it works well on my setup, and does what i want it to do. all i can really say is "free market"..use what suits you. i wish they had 24p in this version too, but alls i can do is wait till its in there.. you should put in a feature request on the premiere page at the adobe site. you can request any features or thigns you want to see in th new versions. ive put in a few of them now.

[scharky]

Yeah, I put in a feature request a while back for a few different things. I only wish that there was some feedback from the adobe teem about what they were up to.

[Neil Rowe]

fro sure.. i ahte not knowing where ther are really going with anything.. but ive heard some good stuff, and im hoping to see a new premiere pro version at nab, or very soon anyway. hopefully some changes will be in by then to make our lives a little easier.

[PurposeDriven]

Everyone needs to just go to avid. I still have my RTX, but avid is the only way to fly. Esp. if you want to be able to be hired sometime in the future.

[Neil Rowe]

i know what you mean..its the industry standard for a reason for sure.. but still...for me and alot of others i would imagine ,its not about being hired.. its about being discovered.. so the nle doesnt really matter . im really not interested in doing broadcast or client based work.. im just a filmmaker. when i make my first gagillion, i can afford robert rodruigez avid fest.. till then premier floats my boat just fine.

[PurposeDriven]

Dont get me wrong. I started with Premiere 5.0. I worked my way up to Pro. Learned how to edit efficiently and good techniques. But the time came where I was being offered a job as an editor and they were on avids. So, I told them that I had a lot of experience with them. I did the jobs, read all the manuals and was working away on the avid as if I had been working on it for years. Our skillz carry across to all the nle's the point is. Adobe gets a bad wrap for being adobe in the video world. I can edit pretty much anything on my PPro system then any avid or fcp could produce. But, the standard is the standard. And for me, in order to make some money every once and a while in this industry, you have to learn them all. Even fcp, which is even easier then PPro in my opinion.

[speedbump]

Well, after spending several hours RTFM-ing and trying different things with Vegas 4.0 (and after updating to 4.0e!) I must admit that Vegas is a nice editing application, with a lot of features that are not immediately obvious at first look at the interface.

I may end up simply editing my 24PA material with Vegas, rather than trying to wrestle Premiere Pro, Quicktime Pro, DVMaker, and Matrox into conformance. ::)

[scharky]

alright speedbump. Another convert to the dark side :)

[speedbump]

Hey, I'm not ready to toss my RTX100 into the street just yet! Just grudgingly admiting Vegas has a lot more utility for me than I originally thought. I'll still probably try to do some work with PPro, just to see what comes out the other end of the sausage factory.

[scharky]

I still use Ppro as well, however, when working with the dvx, its all Vegas BABY.

[PurposeDriven]

Give me one useful thing that Vegas can do over PPro minus the 24p issue (which is being resolved). I prefer avid over all. But my matrox system works well, and there is nothing vegas can do that PPro can't do, if not better. There are a few "handy" features, but nothing that I've seen to compare to the compatibility freedom of the Adobe line. (Just between Vegas and PPro)

[scharky]

Well, for one, it has never givin me "sorry a serious error has occured" and shut down. ppro tends to do that every time I use the mixer too much. I'm not the only one, infact people have been inventing workaround over on the Premiere forum, but it's kind of lame to have to tiptoe around this problem. Second, still images. When using premiere, no matter the type of still image, there tends to be problems when rendering, giving you a black or green screen on some of the imagages. Nobody seems to know why this happens, not even adobe. Third is the cost. You can get Vegas+DVD (With the AC3 encoder I might add) for much less than premiere by itself. OF coarse I bought both the Academic versions of the Adobe Video Collection and Vegas+DVD, so that works out great.
I really am not saying that there is any advantage of one over the other, except for the 24p issue, vegas has some things that are lacking also. If I had the money I would definatly move up to avid, but I don't so now I use Ppro and Vegas. I know that everyone is saying that the 24p issue in Ppro is being resolved but I have yet to see anything from adobe about that. They have been extremely quite since the release of Ppro, without a single update as of yet. It is still buggy as it is a brand new program, but some of these things should be worked out. Oh, one more thing that vegas has over Ppro, a project trimmer. Why in the world did Adobe get rid of the project trimmer? anybody?

[Neil Rowe]

excuse my ignorance, but whats a project trimmer. ppro didnt lose anything that 6.5 had to my knowledge. i use them both, and have noticed anything missing, only improoved or added.

[scharky]

The project trimmer, which was in all previous versions of Ppro is basically what it sounds like. It should be located under the batch pulldown in 6.5. It allows you to basically discard any unused footage, then takes your clips and chops off the excess footage. Lets say I have a five minute clip that was captured. I use a total of 30sec of this clip in the final production in 3 ten second clips. What the project trimmer will do is take those 3 ten second clips and save them as 3 ten second clips in a new folder with a new project and all of your other files. It also allows you to add so many frames to the beginning and ending of each clip for future editing purposes. I have been able to get 30GB projects down to a more workable 5 or 10GB and easily archive them to DVD. Without the project trimmer, it is not so easy to archive. You basically have to go and find all of the clips you didn't use, get rid of them, have premiere yell at you telling you that the clip is missing, make sure you don't delete the wrong one, and then you still cant cut up your segmented files into shorter lengths. I hope that makes sense. Very usefull tool. And I am positive that it is not in Ppro, I even called adobe, and they said "possibly in future updates".

[Neil Rowe]

hmm. i never actually used it in 6.5.. that is really weird that they would drop such a usefull feature like that.

[scharky]

I think it was more of an oversight than dropping it on purpose. As they did start from scratch I recall a couple of things that have been forgotten.