GH2 24p AVCHD Workflow with Adobe Premiere CS5

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keithrondinelli

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I know this has probably been asked before on this board, but I was having trouble sorting through all of the various information.

I'm a new GH2 owner, and I want to set up Adobe Premiere on OSX for editing 24p footage. I'm not quite ready to get into the whole Final Cut Pro X thing until the issues have been worked out and I can justify the expense. I've read that Premiere CS5 handles AVCHD natively, and I seem to be able to drag the clips in and edit them, but a few questions:

1) Is there any significant quality loss to editing this way as opposed to transcoding? If so, what to transcode to and what software to use?

2) What are the proper sequence settings? Premiere seems to only have templates for DVCPRO. There's a lot of settings for pixel aspect ratio, etc.

3) How to export?

4) If I'd like to add grading, etc. in After Effects, what's the proper procedure for this?

I know, a lot of questions, but I'd really appreciate the help.
 
1) no.
2) Weird, I did go from CS4 to CS5.5 but I'm pretty sure that CS5 has AVCHD settings for 720p, 1080i and 1080p at all available frame rates. In fact, CS4 did too IIRC. You sure it installed correctly/completely or is this the trial version you're running ?
3) That depends on what your delivering your finished edit to really.
4) I don't do my grading (or anything else for that matter) in AE so hopefully someone else will answer that one.
 
#2) indeed, Premiere, starting with version CS5 has sequence-settings for a variety of DSLR AVCHD modes.

But these show up only with full-licensed versions of Premiere, the trial (or improperly installed-not-entirely-legal) versions will not show these sequence presets nor others for HDV-cameras.

#4) AfterEffects is fine for grading, worth looking into is "Colorista" and as of today, Blackmagic is releasing a free version of "Da Vinci" which should be amazing if they haven't crippled the free version too much.
Link: http://www.tuaw.com/2011/04/12/blackmagic-announcing-a-free-version-of-davinci-resolve/
 
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Is it better to work with the native .mts files dragged directly into premiere or would it be more beneficial to send them through cineform to get that 4:2:2 color conversion. I noticed that the native files become about 4 times larger after you send them through cineform, which starts to eat up hard drive space pretty quickly when working with a lot of files.
 
robzoo said:
Is it better to work with the native .mts files dragged directly into premiere or would it be more beneficial to send them through cineform to get that 4:2:2 color conversion. I noticed that the native files become about 4 times larger after you send them through cineform, which starts to eat up hard drive space pretty quickly when working with a lot of files.
Click to expand...
i'm wondering the same thing
 
robzoo said:
Is it better to work with the native .mts files dragged directly into premiere or would it be more beneficial to send them through cineform to get that 4:2:2 color conversion. I noticed that the native files become about 4 times larger after you send them through cineform, which starts to eat up hard drive space pretty quickly when working with a lot of files.
Click to expand...

can anyone chime in on this? thanks
 
leothelion said:
anyone??
Click to expand...

4:2:2 colour space is only necessary if:

a) you are doing some heavy-duty colour correction / green-screen
b) you are delivering to professional broadcasters, most of which require 4:2:2 as the minimum

If you need 4:2:2 and do not want to go the Cineform route, another option would be to use one of the gh13 hacks that allow 4:2:2 MJPEG, but then you are limited in resolution to 720p or one of LPowells non-standard (anamorph) resolutions.
 
ninetto said:
4:2:2 colour space is only necessary if:

a) you are doing some heavy-duty colour correction / green-screen
b) you are delivering to professional broadcasters, most of which require 4:2:2 as the minimum

If you need 4:2:2 and do not want to go the Cineform route, another option would be to use one of the gh13 hacks that allow 4:2:2 MJPEG, but then you are limited in resolution to 720p or one of LPowells non-standard (anamorph) resolutions.
Click to expand...

Well, then, whats the point of working with the files natively? Then, you cripple your work for should anyone want to professionally broadcast your work. Seems as transcoding to another format, one which is more PROFESSIONAL, is the way to go.

everyone who thinks working on native files on adobe needs to do some research. Instead of just listening to others without infer and then painting yourself into a corner when you realize you lost hours worth of work because you didn't transcode

http://www.eoshd.com/content/8076/how-mac-osx-still-screws-your-gh2-fs100-nex-footage-a-must-read

The solution
You must transcode FS100, GH2 or NEX AVCHD footage to ProRes using 5DToRGB. Fail to do this and you risk baking in severe clipping in the shadows and highlights, which will harm the way your footage looks on Vimeo and when watched by other people on their machines.
Avoid:
  • Editing native AVCHD clips in Premiere Pro
  • Playing FS100 or GH2 AVCHD in VLC Player
Do:
  • The fix is to use 5DToRGB Batch (I currently have version 1.5.9) and transcode to ProRes with the following options:
 
Also to add, while Premiere does edit AVCHD natively, I've found scrubbing through footage converted with Neoscene is much faster, meaning editing is much faster. My computer is getting a little old, but still it's so much easier on a computer not to edit avchd.
 
So it appears to be a Mac issue, or more exactly, a Quicktime issue on Macs. And it only is an issue if the footage is played on a Mac. So why, then, should you transcode all your footage?
 
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