PP5.5 - AVCHD transcoding - what codec? Yes I know ......

T

thabo

Well-known member
Firstly, I'm aware of the CUDA / CPU goodness / koolaid that Adobe loves to talk about but if you've not got a supported card in your laptop then your'e SOL. My HMC40 spits out AVCHD and while very simple editing works fine in PP as soon as you add a layer of text or so some of the color effects you are stuck with having to do a render.

My current workflow is to fire up FCP6 an transcode to ProRes422. Then I import into PP5.5. (this obviously does not work when I'm using PP on my Windoze7 laptop.

Why does PP not ship with an intermedia codec? Do I now hove to get neoscene $$$ or can I somehow get ProRes encoding to work on the PC? I have actually switched back to FCP6 as having to wait for rendering is an exercise in futility.

(Note the workflow links at the top of the threads are dead)
 
Errr, an Avid codec on an Adobe product?? $2500 and they can't throw in a $100 / $200 codec?
 
Any idea of what would a compatible codec to ProRes422 Standard codec be in Avid DPX terms? Looking at Media encoder and I see Full range, over range and standard range options. What bitrates are these. I think prores standard is 50Mbps so plays nice with older laptops.
 
Cineform is the best/fastest I've used, though it costs 150$ or something like that. One poster here suggested transcoding to Avc-intra, which you can free within the adobe media encoder. Might be worth a shot.

and yes, as others have said, the free avid dnxhd codec works too.
 
Your 30p footage is recorded over 60i, so it will show up as 29.976 Upper.

You can just use the 1080 59.91i DNxHD codec and you're fine.
 
Why does PP not ship with an intermedia codec?
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Because if you have the right hardware, you don't need one. And in this case, the "right hardware" includes an i7 950 or i7 2500K at a minimum for AVCHD and similar media. Anything less and you're just asking for issues.
 
No 1080p 30 - WTF!
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Well, as there is no 30p standard for HD broadcast or Blu-ray delivery, that's not surprising. Your normal choices will be 30i, 24p, or 60p for ATSC, and 25i or 50p for PAL.
 
Have you actually tried Ppro? On my friend's laptop that's got i7 @ 1.8ghz (not Sandy Bridge) and ATI GPU, it works more than fine. It works far better than previous generation of quad core(Q6600) @ 3.2ghz using Ppro CS4 or Vegas 9 and Mac Power PC using FCP 7. Laptop i7 @ 1.8ghz certainly isn't even close to i7 950 or i7 2500k but it just works damn fine which took me by a big surprise. Back in the old days, my Q6600 @ 3.2ghz with CS4 chocked so bad to the point real time timeline previewing wasn't even possible.
 
You could also use the hack to get the Mercury Engine to use your Nvidia card (it is Nvidia, right?). Haven't tried it on my laptop, but it works just fine on my desktop. Also, how old is your laptop, and what are the specs on it?

And, while they don't include a $100-$200 codec with that $2,500 software package, remember what all you're getting. For $2,500, I'm assuming you're getting the CS5.5 Master Collection... that's Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, After Effects, all the variations of Flash, and a bunch of other utilities on top of Premiere/Encore/OnLocation/Audition/AME. That's a steal for $2,500.

But as others have stated, ProRess, Cineform, DNxHD, and AVC-Intra are all viable codecs regardless of platform, and except for Cineform are all free.
 
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Mike Harvey said:
You could also use the hack to get the Mercury Engine to use your Nvidia card (it is Nvidia, right?). Haven't tried it on my laptop, but it works just fine on my desktop. Also, how old is your laptop, and what are the specs on it?
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Last time I checked, even the (6 mo. ago) current Apple Mac Book Pros didn't have enough video memory to run the Adobe CUDA enhancements, even with officially supported Nvida graphics interfaces.
 
Yes, your GPU has to have at least 1GB of dedicated memory. My VAIO doesn't have an officially supported chipset (330M with 1GB), but it's incredibly easy to add it to the supported card list and it does make a noticeable difference in performance.
 
I don't think that's true. The more powerful your GPU is, the more layers of footage you can use, regardless as to whether or not you put effects on them.
 
Gary Huff said:
I don't think that's true. The more powerful your GPU is, the more layers of footage you can use, regardless as to whether or not you put effects on them.
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The point is decoding is only done on the CPU, at least the last I had heard.
 
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