parallactic-pictures
Active member
Wow, CPU Usage is over 90% and RAM is about 3.5GB (out of 4) when I play a 1080 clip in my editor window.
Good codecs for editing in Premiere
- Thread starter parallactic-pictures
- Start date
Wow, CPU Usage is over 90% and RAM is about 3.5GB (out of 4) when I play a 1080 clip in my editor window.
medeamajic
Carbonite Member
I agree with Eric1138. Try converting to the Panasonic P2 codec. That should work OK but like orhers have said a Quad Core system would be your best bet for HD.
j1clark@ucsd.edu
Veteran
I just got the GH1, have had a Sony HDR-SR11, and did a short film last year with the HMC150, all use AVCHD, and no AVCHD 'plays' well in either of my NLEs, Premiere or Final Cut Express.
Since I had Neoscene crap out on me, I used the JES tool to do the inverse telecine process. So I log and transfer in FCE to AIC, then use JES to create a 1080 24p (23.97) result.
I've not done much with editing at the moment, but from the look of it, that seems to give a file that is at the right frame rate, and is 'more easily' edited with my hardware... a duo core Mac Book Pro 17".
PerroneFord
Deals in Lead
Sure, when you throw away nearly a third of the data, things get easier to play.
PerroneFord
Deals in Lead
Exactly. Your system is maxed out trying to do this. If you cannot upgrade your system, them edit proxy files and do an offline/online workflow. It will be infinitely faster, and you won't lose any quality converting to some poor codec. In your place, based on these tests, that's exactly what I would do, and what I have done when I had a slower machine.
Not sure what you mean by that - converting to MXF is going to DVCPRO HD which is intraframe (not the interframe of the native MPEG-4), and the data rate is actually much higher.
Now, it does alter the resoultion to 1280x1080, but I'm pretty sure you won't notice the difference upon export and viewing on a nice HD monitor.
parallactic-pictures
Active member
Well, here are my options right now:
- I have Final Cut Studio 2 on my Macbook Pro. I'd have to reinstall it though, since I reformatted that computer recently. But I'll do that today and see how the HD footage plays on that. Because like I said -- I can play the HD footage at full rez on both computers outside of Premiere, and they play fine. It's just stuttery when I play within Premiere.
If FCS plays the footage fine, then that will be bittersweet. I say that for two reasons.
1. In the little time I've played with it, I find Premiere way easier to edit with. It's more user-friendly for noob editors like me. FCS seems to rely on you knowing all the keyboard shortcuts. I take one look at all the options Premiere presents you below the composer window, and I feel more at home.
2. The other reason I'd rather edit on my Windows machine, is because it's a desktop computer with more power and a 24 inch Samsung HD LCD. So I have a much larger workspace to do my editing. But of course, with a PC my options are only Premiere and Avid. (I don't currently own the Avid software, and was never really crazy about it to begin with).
So yeah, I'd really like to make this work with Premiere on my Windows machine. And to do that, I guess I can either just:
a) Scale all the footage down to 640x360 so it plays smoothly.
b) Do an offline edit, and then an online. Though I will admit, I have no idea how to do that, so Perrone, if you haven't grown sick of this thread yet, lol, please instruct me on the steps. I'll also do my own research and talk to some editor friends.
c) And finally, I can just upgrade my machine to an i7 processor and double my RAM. Though I've been told I'll be looking at about $700 or so, for that upgrade.
This is my current system:
Processor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115206
RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227267
Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128365
So really, I think I'm going to eventually do all three options. For the purposes of this test footage, I just want to put something together that is sort of fun, to show my friends what this camera can do. I'll also upload the video here, so you guys can see the fruits of your labor with this thread. Haha.
But I'd like to know how to do an offline/online edit too, for the next film I work on, as I really don't know when I'm going to be in the market to upgrade my PC again. I just upgraded it last March, and also just spent close to $2,000 on my 7D.
So I think my wallet needs a break.This thread may be exhaustive, but hopefully it proves helpful for other filmmakers who want to edit their footage and find themselves in my position.
Again, this is because of the nature of the footage. The native file from the camera is MPEG-4. Just in case you don't know how MPEG works, the simple version is this: it doesn't record full frames. It records one full frame of video, then for the next 15 frames, it only records the differences between that new frame and the original. MPEG was designed as a playback codec - not an edit friendly codec. So, when you drop the footage in Premiere Pro, or any NLE that doesn't transcode to an intermediate codec, Premiere Pro has to create all that information to fill in those half empty frames - thus the need for a beefy system...the computer is doing a lot of work.
At the moment, here are your choices as I see them:
1) Use FCS, which will mean converting all the clips to ProRes for editing. FCS doesn't work with the files natively.
2)Take my suggestion and convert all your files in Adobe Media Encoder to 1080 60i P2 files, and import those into Premiere Pro for a much smoother editing experience.
3) do your optioin C (which I recommend anyways) and then do option 2...
There's a video from Adobe that shows that CS5 might have native support for these DSLR cameras, and that should make life a lot easier, but it'll still take some processor power.
PerroneFord
Deals in Lead
Yeah.. I do. And I'd prefer not to take my 1920 source and compress it to 1280, only to have to scale it back to 1920 for display. I'd much rather use a full raster codec in the first place.
Edit using the offline files and then once it is finished, create a new sequence at the standard 1920x1080 raster and copy and paste the cuts from the 640c480 timeline/sequence.
In the bin, right click each of the rushes and click "Replace Footage" and using the dialog box, source and link to the orignal HD files or the full raster transcoded files.
Done
parallactic-pictures
Active member
Hey Smifis,
PerroneFord just gave me a great, thorough tutorial on getting the clips into the correct format to do my offline edit with. But I'm not at the phase where I got Premiere ready to load up. So my question is... what should my project settings be? Do I set them up for SD since I'll be doing my offline edit first? Or do I want my project settings, from the get-go, to be HD / Desktop / 48khz / Square Pixels, etc... to allow for the phase of this whole procedure where I finally do the swap for the HD files? I'm aware you can check some settings once the project is underway, but I'm also aware that you're limited from certain settings changes once you're project is open and you're going forward.
PerroneFord just gave me a great, thorough tutorial on getting the clips into the correct format to do my offline edit with. But I'm not at the phase where I got Premiere ready to load up. So my question is... what should my project settings be? Do I set them up for SD since I'll be doing my offline edit first? Or do I want my project settings, from the get-go, to be HD / Desktop / 48khz / Square Pixels, etc... to allow for the phase of this whole procedure where I finally do the swap for the HD files? I'm aware you can check some settings once the project is underway, but I'm also aware that you're limited from certain settings changes once you're project is open and you're going forward.
For your offline edit, SD project and once you are happy with the cut, copy and paste the whole time line (Ctrl + A) into a new HD Sequence.
It might be an idea to see which codec will cut the best at SD resolutions. I do like DV, i find it cuts very well on any machine. If you use DV, make sure your offline cut's sequence settings are set to DV. otherwise, go into the general tab and set Desktop, and the rest to whatever you choose your offline files to be.
I'll post up some screen prints later if it will help you.
It might be an idea to see which codec will cut the best at SD resolutions. I do like DV, i find it cuts very well on any machine. If you use DV, make sure your offline cut's sequence settings are set to DV. otherwise, go into the general tab and set Desktop, and the rest to whatever you choose your offline files to be.
I'll post up some screen prints later if it will help you.
parallactic-pictures
Active member
Okay, I set up the Premiere project as DV - 24p - NTSC in Standard Def (so not Widescreen). But when I bring the test clip in, it plays superfast and there's no audio.
The way Perrone and I converted the test clip was via StreamClip. We chose 'Other Formats' then selected AVI from the dropdown in the next step. Then went into Options and tweaked the Video options so it was 4:3, 23.98 fps, Progressive and scaled to 720x480 SD. But there seems to be a glitch in Streamclip, that it then won't let you tweak the Audio options. It actually freezes StreamClip completely and even the CANCEL key doesn't work. I was able to reproduce this glitch about six times already. And so the output from Streamclip is stuck with 22kHz on the audio. Not 32 or 48 (which seem to be what's accepted in Premiere).
So since I see no way to get around this glitch, are there any other DV codec options available to be for this clip? This set-up plays completely wrong in my Premiere window (both the Playback and the Composer / Timeline window).
The way Perrone and I converted the test clip was via StreamClip. We chose 'Other Formats' then selected AVI from the dropdown in the next step. Then went into Options and tweaked the Video options so it was 4:3, 23.98 fps, Progressive and scaled to 720x480 SD. But there seems to be a glitch in Streamclip, that it then won't let you tweak the Audio options. It actually freezes StreamClip completely and even the CANCEL key doesn't work. I was able to reproduce this glitch about six times already. And so the output from Streamclip is stuck with 22kHz on the audio. Not 32 or 48 (which seem to be what's accepted in Premiere).
So since I see no way to get around this glitch, are there any other DV codec options available to be for this clip? This set-up plays completely wrong in my Premiere window (both the Playback and the Composer / Timeline window).
PerroneFord
Deals in Lead
Absolutely EXCELLENT!
There is no widescreen flag in Mpeg Streamclip so we just did standard NTSC DV 24p.
I believe that the file was playing quickly because of the version of DV that was chosen. Following this Adobe workflow my solve all problems at once.
Thank you for doing this.
parallactic-pictures
Active member
Smifis, this is amazing. I can't thank you enough. I'm transcoding the files right now. I'll report back once I have them all in Premiere.
Rock on.
ps
This tutorial deserves it's own sticky post. For real.
parallactic-pictures
Active member
Sighs. I swear, this is the never-ending problem with me. Everything was working fine, until I went to import the offline clips into Premiere, and noticed that they are all now 30fps, instead of 24. So I went back and double-checked the process. And no where during the Media Encoder phase did 29.98 ever get selected under fps. So I redid the whole thing again... and once they're transcoded, again, they come out to 29.98 instead of 23.98.
And therefore, they look very odd in my playback window in Premiere.
Any idea why the fps is being increased by Media Encoder, even though my output settings in that program are clearly set to 23.98?
And therefore, they look very odd in my playback window in Premiere.
Any idea why the fps is being increased by Media Encoder, even though my output settings in that program are clearly set to 23.98?
PerroneFord said:
What do you mean? I'm sorry, I'm tired as i've yet to sleep for the last 24 hrs.
:violin:
Thanks! :smile:
Really, this whole forum need a tutorial section and if it were to be made a sticky, i would change about half of the images and link it to my website (which i have yet to make).
Thomas