Which Post Workflow = No Intermediate Conversion?

[Kholi]

I don't want to be bothered with converting footage to ProRes.

Is there any Post Workflow that doesn't need to convert footage to something else? I'll gladly take it.

I saw this for Premiere: http://forum.videohelp.com/topic334524.html

Accurate?

[Car3o]

what's your plan for pulldown? or is this for the 60p footage?
i'm using cs4 and avchd is not pretty. i'm running xp64 3ghz duo core 4gig ram.
you can't interpret footage any and de-interlacing on the fly is not an option.

dropping your 60p footage on a 24p timeline requires rendering. but this might all be different on a mac.

[Kholi]

After Effects for Pulldown if I have to.

I'm not worried about the horsepower. Right now I'm on a 3.6 Ghz Quad, 4 Gigs of DDR2-1200 and plenty fast GPU power.

In about a week or two I'll be on a custom built i7 Octocore and farming the leftover quad.

Does CS4 deal with the 1080/24 straight? No pulldown options though?

Note: The Dual Core at the office required me to render my 60P on a 23.98 timeline. My home Desktop eats it with no render at all.

[Car3o]

well, i'm not by any means an expert at cs4 sooo...this is what is up.

an AVCHD 1080p 24p timeline requires you to render, playback sucks, rendering takes a lot of time. nobody has told me how to remove pulldown, but! if i place the clip on the timeline and "de-interlace" the file, and render, it's fine. looks 24p no jerky frames.

on a AVCHD 1080p 60i timeline, no render required. playback is a little choppy, but manageable. i'm thinking of doing the first cut edit/color on that timeline drag the files onto the 1080p 24p timeline and de-interlace from there as my final render. i'll probably try this out tonight.

i'm still working on all the different sequences and haven't found one that works. i did convert my footage using avs converter and mpeg streamclip and that really helped but you're trying to avoid an intermediate codec.

i'll keep coming back if i find something. what i'm planning on doing is converting the clips to a more editable/likable format and de-interlace the footage in premiere on a 1080p 24p timeline to see if that works better. i'm pretty sure that's "removing pulldown" if i de-interlace the footage and the file will playback at 23.976 with no interlaced frames.

aye, aye, aye....AVCHD is such a headache.

[Kholi]

Yea, it is. But it sounds like a horsepower issue to me. I would be okay with dealing with that over ingesting into Pro Res.

I think it might help a bit if we're working with AVCHD natively instead of converting to something else. Also working in a 16-bit space might help as well.

Thanks a lot Car3o!! I'm gonna go ahead and start hammering this new system together for some CS4.

[Barry_Green]

I don't want to be bothered with converting footage to ProRes.

Is there any Post Workflow that doesn't need to convert footage to something else? I'll gladly take it.

The answer is pretty much ABA: Anything But Apple. EDIUS and EDIUS Neo, Premiere Pro CS4.1, Vegas 9, Pinnacle Studio, Ulead, Nero, and ... well, I'm not sure about Avid, but pretty much every editor other than FCP or iMovie allow native editing.

As to whether your system is fast enough to handle native editing or to make it practical, that's another question, of course.

[Barry_Green]

I saw this for Premiere: http://forum.videohelp.com/topic334524.html

Accurate?
Unnecessary. That post is old. CS4 supports AVCHD. Although it looks like CS4.1 is what you really need to make AVCHD work properly. I don't know if the 4.1 update is out yet, it was supposed to come out in May, and it adds native AVC-Intra support and rounds out the rest of the AVCHD support.

[John Caballero]

Barry, when you drop the 1080p24 from the GH1 to a 24p timeline in Edius 5 it removes the pulldown automatically? Thanks.

[Car3o]

I pretty much spent all of last night effing around with CS4. Good news, bad news.
Good news is you can edit natively, realtime and easily if you setup the right sequence. I opened a AVCHD 1080 60i timeline and the files scrubbed perfectly. But! removing pulldown is not an option in CS4. You either remove pulldown before you edit or you deal with it and remove pulldown last. You can however edit your files, cut and whatever first then open your timeline up in AE and export removing pulldown. That's for 1080p 24p. I haven't done anything with 720p yet. I might do that later on tonight.

[Kholi]

The answer is pretty much ABA: Anything But Apple. EDIUS and EDIUS Neo, Premiere Pro CS4.1, Vegas 9, Pinnacle Studio, Ulead, Nero, and ... well, I'm not sure about Avid, but pretty much every editor other than FCP or iMovie allow native editing.

As to whether your system is fast enough to handle native editing or to make it practical, that's another question, of course.

Awesome. Thanks Car3o and Barry.

You know? Barry... you're like a prophet. I remember like two years ago how you were going on about native editing and how important it was, how Apple was SO behind.

And that sooner or later people would finally get the gyst and start migrating away if they didn't HAVE to have an Apple FCP workflow.

I get it now. No matter how nice ProRes is, I'm not doing anything that REQUIRES me to be on an Apple Platform, and if I need to there are always ways around it.

I'd rather go and cut native AVCHD files and upgrade my rig to match than go through converting. At least that way I know there's nothing else interfering with the quality of the footage. That and the pain in the neck it is to store extra data.

You can keep the RAW files and archive those instead of having to choose between or, worse, keep both the raw and converted. ick.

Car3o -- I'm okay with doing the pulldown later on or before. No big deal. But are you absolutely certain that there's no option in CS4? I mean, there isn't in Final Cut either. You have to go through Cinemal Tools and Compressor so, again, no big deal.

[Isaac_Brody]

I pretty much spent all of last night effing around with CS4. Good news, bad news.
Good news is you can edit natively, realtime and easily if you setup the right sequence. I opened a AVCHD 1080 60i timeline and the files scrubbed perfectly. But! removing pulldown is not an option in CS4. You either remove pulldown before you edit or you deal with it and remove pulldown last. You can however edit your files, cut and whatever first then open your timeline up in AE and export removing pulldown. That's for 1080p 24p. I haven't done anything with 720p yet. I might do that later on tonight.

I played with Premiere today for the first time in years and thought it worked pretty well considering. One thing I noticed was that outputting from a 23.976 timeline looked better than cutting in a 29.976 and outputting at 23 in the end. Visually it looked better to my eyes cutting natively than using Prores in final cut.

[Barry_Green]

Barry, when you drop the 1080p24 from the GH1 to a 24p timeline in Edius 5 it removes the pulldown automatically? Thanks.
I don't think so, no. Not 100% sure though and haven't tried, but I would be surprised if it did because there aren't pulldown flags in the timecode.

[Car3o]

There is not way to remove pulldown in Premiere. It has to be done in AE, but the sad part is, you can't de-interlace in AE, you have to do that in premiere. It's aggravating. I've exhuasted all possible routes and it comes down to just using cineform really to get true 24p out of 60i. 720p is a different story.

[Isaac_Brody]

Not true, you can remove pulldown on export from premiere from a 23.976 sequence. Tried it today and it works.

[John Caballero]

I don't think so, no. Not 100% sure though and haven't tried, but I would be surprised if it did because there aren't pulldown flags in the timecode.

Thank you Barry.

How about this?:

http://www.softster.net/P2559/Multimedia_Encoding/Edius_Pro_Coder_4.html (http://www.softster.net/P2559/Multimedia_Encoding/Edius_Pro_Coder_4.html)

[Barry_Green]

Don't have it, haven't tried it.

[David Jimerson]

There is not way to remove pulldown in Premiere. It has to be done in AE, but the sad part is, you can't de-interlace in AE, you have to do that in premiere. It's aggravating. I've exhuasted all possible routes and it comes down to just using cineform really to get true 24p out of 60i. 720p is a different story.

You can Interpret Footage in Premiere. Currently, that's the ONLY way to remove pulldown in a PP CS4 timeline, flags or no.

[SLoNiCK]

Barry_Green

>Originally Posted by John Caballero
>Barry, when you drop the 1080p24 from the GH1 to a 24p timeline in Edius 5 it removes the pulldown automatically? Thanks.

I don't think so, no. Not 100% sure though and haven't tried, but I would be surprised if it did because there aren't pulldown flags in the timecode.

You would be surprised but it definitely does :) Both for original .mts and CHQ .avi. At least 5th version. I tried on Sonic's files.

I bumped into another problem. The maximum quality AVCHD I can play in Edius with frame buffer filling on my 3,2GHz quad is 720p30. Original files from GH1 load 2 CPU cores to the top and ignore the existence of other 2 but performance isn't smooth. And of course no proper timeline scrubbing and ff/rewind.

It's strange, cause both ffdshow and coreavc codecs play them nicely using nearly 20-25% of CPU performance.

[John Caballero]

You would be surprised but it definitely does :) Both for original .mts and CHQ .avi. At least 5th version. I tried on Sonic's files.


Good news and bad news. I guess I will need a much faster computer, which I was ready to get anyway. I build them myself so I wil have to get the fastest everything. How does ram affect Edius performance? I have version 5. The motherboard I was inquiring about at the latest computer fair I went to was able to use a max. of 16gig. At $100 for 4 gigs thats not a bad amount to put in if it it will improve the programs performance.

Thanks for the info slonick.

[Car3o]

Not true, you can remove pulldown on export from premiere from a 23.976 sequence. Tried it today and it works.

really? where's the option? the 3:2 pulldown for the GH1 clips are WWSSW. Premiere has no way of knowing this and there is no way to tell it. simply selecting progressive frames doesn't remove pulldown. it just changes the frame rate to 23.978 which leads to missing frames and or repeated frames, which is not true progressive frame rate.

[Car3o]

You can Interpret Footage in Premiere. Currently, that's the ONLY way to remove pulldown in a PP CS4 timeline, flags or no.

no you can't. you can only assume frame rate under interpret footage which is not removing pulldown. it will skip or repeat frames. the option to remove 24pv pulldown is greyed out.

[John Caballero]

I just tried a watch.impress file with Edius 5 and the final result seems pretty good. I have no idea if I am doing this right but I opened a 720p 24 timeline. Dumped 720p60 footage there. Clicked the file went to clip>properties>videoinfo>framerate and changed it to 23.97 then rendered to mpeg 2 to look at it. The rendered file shows frame rate of 23.97. Is this correct? I am doing something productive? 'Cause I have no idea.

[Isaac_Brody]

really? where's the option? the 3:2 pulldown for the GH1 clips are WWSSW. Premiere has no way of knowing this and there is no way to tell it. simply selecting progressive frames doesn't remove pulldown. it just changes the frame rate to 23.978 which leads to missing frames and or repeated frames, which is not true progressive frame rate.

No, what I meant is pulldown is removed on export. So don't even interpret the footage in Premiere just import it as is at 29.97. Then Sstup a 23.976 sequence at 1080, basically choose the 108024P AVCHD preset. Dump one of your 29.97 1080 GH1 clips on the timeline and render it. Now export the clip to prores at 1080 23.976 progressive. This removes the pulldown leaving you with a 24P progressive clip. You could cut a whole 1080 sequence and then export it and it should be fine with no pulldown.

Or you could go straight to Adobe Media Encoder if you want to remove the pulldown on specific files before editing in Premiere or Final Cut or whatever other program you want to use.

[Car3o]

it's not removing pulldown. scrub through your clip. the clip will say 23.978, but you'll either have dropped/missing frames or repeated frames. which when there's people walking or any type of movement they are jumping from one place to another. there is no automatic pulldown within premiere when exporting or in media encoder.

[Isaac_Brody]

Definitely some jumpiness in it. I wasn't seeing any ghosting or leftover interlacing so I thought it was working correctly. I'm going to play with this more, I'd like to think there's a mac workflow that doesn't require any transcoding...

[SLoNiCK]

John Caballero

I just tried a watch.impress file with Edius 5 and the final result seems pretty good. I have no idea if I am doing this right but I opened a 720p 24 timeline. Dumped 720p60 footage there. Clicked the file went to clip>properties>videoinfo>framerate and changed it to 23.97 then rendered to mpeg 2 to look at it. The rendered file shows frame rate of 23.97. Is this correct? I am doing something productive? 'Cause I have no idea.

If you drop video directly to TL, not to Bin, then it's useless to change clip's framerate - nothing will change. Of course you will get 23.97 output, but with some frame blending.

There are 2 ways of treating 720p60 video on 720p23.97 timeline:
1) Drop clip to Bin, move to its video properties, set 23.97 framerate and place it on timeline. You'll get some nice slo-mo.
2) In clip's video settings change field order from "progressive" to "TFF" and you'll get crisp 23.97p footage without any frame blending. Strange but true.

BTW, did you get smooth playback?

[Kholi]

What's the verdict on Pulldown? Is it as Car3o says?Do it before or after?

[Car3o]

Definitely some jumpiness in it. I wasn't seeing any ghosting or leftover interlacing so I thought it was working correctly. I'm going to play with this more, I'd like to think there's a mac workflow that doesn't require any transcoding...

it'll drive you insane. i know! i'd like to think there was a PC workflow as well, but AVCHD is not very user friendly.

[Car3o]

What's the verdict on Pulldown? Is it as Car3o says?Do it before or after?

Kholi, so far the best option is to use AE or cineform to remove pulldown. I honestly would have to suggest cineform. AE does do pulldown, but it's not nearly as efficient, nor as fast. However, you can edit natively if you were to just cut your files on a 1080 60i timeline without the need for an intermediate codec, but pulldown is going to be your biggest brick wall. My thoughts is to:

Open a AVCHD 1080 60i sequence. Drop your files/Edit/Save Sequence/Import Sequence to AE/Remove Pulldown/Export Lossless Codec/

Open a new 1080p 24p sequence. Drop you file/Always de-interlace/Export Final Output.

Personally it takes about 15secs to convert a 30sec cineform file and then I can just avoid all that hassle of all of the above. Essentially it's the same as using cineform, but instead of using cineform first, you're using AE to do it last.

[Kholi]

Sweet. Thanks man. I know it's quick to convert a file to Cineform, it's not really the speed I'm worried about versus any little bit of quality loss going from AVCHD to something else.

Right now every little bit counts. I'll try After Effects for pulldown.

[John Caballero]

BTW, did you get smooth playback?

I did on the MPEG 2 and the AVI renders but I have to try it with different footage. It was a slow left to right pan of ancient buildings, I guess they are, that was in the watch.impress review. It look good to me but I guess I need more in the footage, people or cars. I will eventually try thru the bin, etc. like you described. The problem is I will need the faster computer for the AVCHD to actually play. But is a start. Not many people around here work with Edius I suppose but it is a great program. Thanks for your help and we will keep working for a smooth workflow by the time we get the camera.

[SonicStates]

John did you download my stuff. I've got plenty of shots with people, cars, fast pans etc... It may help you evaluate a bit better. Remember at that stage I was totally unclear about the shutter speed issue so there is only 1 clip (I think) that is at it's proper shutter. I'm away from the office comp so can't upload anything else at the moment but I am interested to see what your impressions are with an Edius work flow.
Cheers,
Sam

[John Caballero]

I will tomorrow. Thanks.

[Uwe Lansing]

it's not removing pulldown. scrub through your clip. the clip will say 23.978, but you'll either have dropped/missing frames or repeated frames. which when there's people walking or any type of movement they are jumping from one place to another. there is no automatic pulldown within premiere when exporting or in media encoder.

Right. The best workflow i´ve found out so far on a PC, is to use AE or Procoder 3. If you have the Cs4 Production Premium it´s very easy to go with dynamic link (replace footage with ae-composition). PC3 makes a good job as well.

[Car3o]

i'm going to test out PC3, but I believe Kholi's issue is getting around having to convert to an intermediate codec to remove pulldown. but this will be helpful to those that don't mind or spend the money on cineform...i'm testing now.

[Kholi]

The gyst is that I'm hoping-- although it probably won't matter-- that cutting the MTS files directly then going to AE with those MTS files will yield a better image as far as interlace residue and banding goes.

May not even work, and if not then I'll go back to ProRes but if it looks ANY better I'll stick with CS4 and After Effects

[ChipG]

Edius Broadcast is awesome for native editing. I have 2 Avids and think Edius is the most under rated editing program.

[ChipG]

John did you download my stuff. I've got plenty of shots with people, cars, fast pans etc... It may help you evaluate a bit better. Remember at that stage I was totally unclear about the shutter speed issue so there is only 1 clip (I think) that is at it's proper shutter. I'm away from the office comp so can't upload anything else at the moment but I am interested to see what your impressions are with an Edius work flow.
Cheers,
Sam

I did and played around with the clips in Edius for a couple days.

Edius workflow for ths stuff is so easy! I can't say if it s easier than CS3 & A&E because I don't use them but I can't see how it could get any easier or faster than Edius Broadcast.

[LizaWitz]

I don't want to be bothered with converting footage to ProRes.

I agree. I believe that Toast will allow you to pull the H.264 (eg: MP4) video right out of the AVCHD stream without any re-encoding. Then you can use JES deinterlacer, and end up with a true, 24fps MP4 file.

I would hope that FCP will edit this natively. I know iMovie will. My camera records to MP4 files and I just drop them in my iMovie Events folder, start iMovie and edit away.

If what I've been told about Toast is correct, then this would be a pretty ideal workflow. You'd have no loss in quality (other than the deinterlacing) and


The answer is pretty much ABA: Anything But Apple..... well, I'm not sure about Avid, but pretty much every editor other than FCP or iMovie allow native editing.

AVCHD is MP4 video in an MPEG-2 transport stream. If you take the MP4 video out of that transport stream, you can edit it natively with iMovie (and I would assume FCP).

All of the editors you're talking about are "native" only in the sense that they dont' do the conversion in advance. FCP wants you to put it into ProRes and iMovie wants you to put it in AIC, but this is to allow for better performance while editing. Apple figures its better to spend the time up front. These other editors make your computer do the work over and over, every time it displays a frame or runs the footage or renders a cut. H.264 is hassle enough to deal with for the NLE, putting it in a MPEG-2 transport stream and having to do both conversions all the time seems ot be a huge waste of CPU resources to me.

[Isaac_Brody]

I agree. I believe that Toast will allow you to pull the H.264 (eg: MP4) video right out of the AVCHD stream without any re-encoding. Then you can use JES deinterlacer, and end up with a true, 24fps MP4 file.


I wish. I tried this method and it didn't work. Unless someone else has tried this method with some success it's a no go.

[ydgmdlu]

If you're on Windows, you can use AviSynth to frameserve to Premiere Pro. I created an AviSynth script that takes care of the pulldown removal: Inverse telecine with no intermediate conversion required!