The Definitive EX1 Codec > Premiere > FLV/DVD/BLU-RAY??

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EIREHotspur

Well-known member
Posted this on the Adobe site too

I have just purchased an EX3 and have spent the past 2 full days trying to get decent results from Adobe Premiere CS3.

Like most I want to be able to produce FLVs, DVDs and Blu-Rays.
So far with all my tests I have been less than inpressed with the quality of exports.

I bought a new Dell M90 Laptop last year to use as a roving editing machine, figured I could hook it up to my moniter at home to use as my main machine. The fact it had an express slot was purposely intended to be compatible for a future purchase of an Ex1.....which was what I had my eye on at the time.

Will wrap up the story...Downloaded a trial of Cineform Prospect HD.... Laptop has a 93gig HD and Cineform files are just too large regardless of the quality.
I also read that I now need Procoder to get decent downconverts.
I tried all the project settings
- EX Projects with the RAW Ex files from the SxS cards
- Prospect Hd Projects with Ex files injested as Cineform
- Pal Widescreen with Ex files resized

Is this the situation in this day and age that a decent workflow to get footage from the EX3 is
Shoot EX3 > Injest as Cineform & Edit > Output Cineform > Convert to FLV/DVD/Blue-Ray with Procoder.

Doesn't seem to be too much advantage to me with owning an EX3 with tapeless workflow if I have to jump through that many hoops.

Seems to be a sort of conspiracy though to have people rely on Cineform as an add on.

I notice Adobe have named Cineform as a partner for this new standards codec they are going to push?

Seem to me that Cameras like the EX1 and EX3 are dangling codecs like carrots so we are tempted to get "just that one more piece of software" to get us where we are going.

I will be awaiting the 23rd of September to see if Adobe CS4 if they address their mainconcept encoder for EX1/EX3 file export.
Never mind all the other bells and whistles.

I will have to rethink my Adobe route otherwise because having a euro8k+ camera and not getting the best out of it isn't doable and has been bitterly dissapointed.
 
Not sure why you're bothering with cineform. I simply drop my BPAV folder into CS3 and start editing. Ridiculously good quality on mp4 export, dvd export, etc
 
Because I cannot get good output from Premiere EX Project settings alone.
What is your workflow for FLV, DVD & BluRay.

I have not seen anyone post on this without mentioning Cineform or any other secondary converter like Procoder etc.

I Get jaggy edges and bad quality stuff....especially on DVD MPEGs.
 
That'd odd. I simply select an xdcam ex project preset for a new project, drop in my bpav folder, and edit. When I'm done I export to dvd (encore) and bump up the bitrate in the custom encoder settings. Results are great.
 
Thanks for your two replies.
I will try going straight to Encore with the files and see how it turns out for me.

What settings do you use for FLVs & BluRay?
Do you simply export through Adobe too?
 
I suspect you're shooting 60i. If you shoot progressive footage, Premiere does a fantastic job. I never shot 60i with the camera--too much loss of vertical resolution.
 
No I only tried 1080i when I switched the camera on.....I am only using Progressive.
720 50p will be my preferred setting from now on in fact....I want to be able to shoot fast movement like Sports etc

Also I am in PAL land in Ireland so I won't ever need 60i

Do you ever use Cineform Mark? there is no doubt about it that it does up the colour and give a richer picture.
File sizes make it very hard to manage unless you have a huge high spec machine.
 
Ok I retested this morning.

I imported a 1080 25p clip of my garden into Premiere 3.2.

Opened the XDCAM EX 1080 25p Project setting.
Exported to BluRay DVD, MPEG2-DVD and FLV through the Adobe Media encoder.
I am happy with the results.

Opened the XDCAM EX 720 50p Project setting.
Exported to BluRay DVD, MPEG2-DVD and FLV through the Adobe Media encoder.
I am Not happy with the results.

This is a BluRay screen grab.
Look at the Jaggies on the window sill....it also appears along the seats on some angles.

MPEG2 Blu-ray
PAL 1280x720, 50fps, Progressive, Quality 5
Widescreen 16:9 (1.000)
Profile: Main - Level: High

Botrate Encoding: VBR 2 Pass
Min Bit Rate: 15 - Target Bitrate: 20

I get the same jaggies on the export to DVD and on Resizing this file in a DV Pal and exporting to DVD.

What is the solution....anyone?
Can I have your presets for successfull Blu-Ray and DVD from 720 50p?
VideoJaggies.jpg
 
I tried Cineform back in February. Honestly didn't see any advantages, but noted a lot of problems, like black level shifting when going from paused to playback in Premiere, and huge file sizes creating a disc management nightmare. In a world where we shoot 150+GB of XDCam footage on a weekend, having that triple in size due to Cineform conversion just doesn't make sense.

I think I see the problem with your screen grab. Adobe defaults it's encoder to "interlace". You need to go to the out put tab of preview in the Media Encoder and uncheck "interlace" in the upper left. That burned me several times until I made custom presets with it turned off. Why they default that to on is beyond me.
 
Good to hear an alternative to all the people pushing Cineform....makes for a balanced view on it.

You were right....sometimes a moustache could be right under our nose when we are looking for it.......I changed that settings and got the jaggies out of the BluRay and DVD.

I got a problem of ghosting in the DVD though.....this is obviously to do with the 50p frame rate. I selected progressive in output.
Did you ever shoot and export 720 50p for ordinary DVD?
What settings....I tried PAL DV Project.

Many thanks for that Mark.
 
Glad to hear the solution was a simple checkbox. So many people never notice it because it's badly-placed in the preview screen, which is always hidden by default.

Ghosting occurs with 24fps footage in Premiere (and presumably with 25fps PAL footage) because Premiere, by default, turns on "Frame Blend". I get that when I'm doing any kind of 24p work, and I have to right-click each clip and uncheck that feature. This also goes for the timeline that may be nested within another timeline--both have to have Frame blend unchecked or you'll get ghost frames between frames.

Note that Windows Media Video does not handle 24P properly--it always inserts ghost frames on WMV exports which is one of the reasons why I stopped using WMV format to post video online. The ghost frames use bandwidth and reduce the bandwidth available for each frame by 40%.

I'm not intimately familiar with PAL format, but I do believe it's interlaced on DVD at 50i, otherwise it's progressive at 25p. In NTSC countries, doing a 24p DVD involves changing the flags on the m2v stream to tell the DVD authoring system that it is 60i. This gives the TV/DVD player the proper cues to do 2:3 pullup from 24p MPEG program streams.
 
Thanks a lot for that Mark....frame blend settings it was....results are good now.

Just got to practice with settings as getting very grainy images with anything inside.
Love the tapeless workflow though.
 
:)Hey, Fohdeesha: Do you have to convert those files to to Sony MXF files, or can you run them directly in raw mp-4 on the time line? -- thanks carl.
 
Carl Marxx said:
:)Hey, Fohdeesha: Do you have to convert those files to to Sony MXF files, or can you run them directly in raw mp-4 on the time line? -- thanks carl.
Click to expand...

Premiere pro cs3 has complete native support for xdcam ex. Just import the whole bpav folder and drag it onto the timeline. I've never even installed Sony's clip browser.
 
EIREHotspur said:
Thanks a lot for that Mark....frame blend settings it was....results are good now.

Just got to practice with settings as getting very grainy images with anything inside.
Love the tapeless workflow though.
Click to expand...


For the grainy images, make sure you're not shooting with any gain above 0dB. Full Auto mode will increase the gain. I avoid it like the plague (hey, I was a V1U user before the EX1) and lock it down to 0dB at all times, even in low light. I can imagine few situations where gain would be necessary, in practice. If you can avoid it, grain should not be an issue.
 
EIREHotspur said:
Because I cannot get good output from Premiere EX Project settings alone.
What is your workflow for FLV, DVD & BluRay.

I have not seen anyone post on this without mentioning Cineform or any other secondary converter like Procoder etc.

I Get jaggy edges and bad quality stuff....especially on DVD MPEGs.
Click to expand...

Per chance, are you rewrapping to MXF before importing to CS3? That would be the problem. Don't rewrap, as CS3 has a bug in that it only samples 1/4 the color information of MXF. Import the BPAV folders directly and edit. The only reason to use MXF is if your shots are more than 17 minutes long and you want glitch-free audio, in which case, you import MXF, export WAV and throw away the MXF, then marry the new WAV file to the BPAV imported clip of the same.

For Blu-ray, I use a custom profile based on their template for Blu-ray. I'm shooting 24P and editing as such. If you're using 60i, these things may not help. I use h.264 as the Blu-ray codec and set 15/25/30mb/s as the min/avg/max datarates. My BD-Rs look great on my 12' projection screen from an 9' viewing distance.
 
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