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Mainconcepts MPEG Pro HD 3 for PPro
I purchased this product and although it does in fact display and allow me to edit in AVCHD, there are a lot of problems I am having with it that I thought I would share and see if it’s just me (my system) or if it’s more universal.
First of all, let me say that I have contacted Mainconcept and after some initial responses they seem to have given up on me. The last thing they sent me was a BETA version 3.2, but the installer crashes every time I run it.
So here are the quirky things I’ve noticed.
First – the system requirements are much higher than suggested. I was running PPro CS3 on an AMD X2 3800+ Machine and it was working fantastically – I could edit HDV and P2 DVCPRO-HD just fine (DVCPRO HD required faster hard drives is all.) When I installed MPEG Pro HD 3, nothing played. The video started playing then froze. Nevermind that it couldn’t play AVCHD either.
Second – So I upgraded to an AMD X2 6000+ system (Maincincept support had me look at the CPU usage and it was hitting 100% often in the old config – now it runs at 75%). And then the AVCHD footage played beautifully. I swear it looked better than the HDV conversion I had been doing before using Nero 8. But now my DVCPro-HD footage that had worked before was not playing (and then just the 720P footage wouldn’t play, the 1080i footage was still ok.) I un-installed MPEG Pro HD and the old footage all played fine.
Third – I find out next that with the codec installed, I also can’t play DV footage. So now I am faced with a system where i have to constantly install and un-install some software in order to do my job (I actually making money doing this.) That’s about the time they sent me the 3.2 Beta I can’t install, so maybe that fixes some of this, but I wouldn’t know.
Fourth – I still really like being able to edit in AVCHD natively in PPro, so I keep chugging along and hoping MC gets back to me with a solution or more suggestions and then I discover to my horror that the AVCHD footage will not take a track matte. I occasionally have to blur out certain areas of a screen and I like to use a box or circle to cover them up, then use that as a matte for a blurred layer of the video. Now it doesn’t work. Well that really stinks. I have to use the 8 point garbage matte which already works badly enough in PPro on HDV footage without MCs product installed.
Finally – I discovered just yesterday that the 3-way color corrector doesn’t work on the AVCHD footage either. So I am done with this program/codec. I wish it weren’t so, the image does look very good and it saves me hours of transcoding time (from AVCHD to HDV) and it says it works with XDCAM too, which would be great, but it’s just too much hassle to work around all the problems the program creates.
So if anyone out there has fiddled with this codec and had similar or different problems – or none please let me know (I’d like to compare system set ups then – I read here sometime ago that MPEG Pro HD might not be compatible with AMD CPUs – but MC won’t confirm or deny…) Thanks.
So that’s my story. Now I’ll see how good Mainconcept is about refunding my money.
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3 Replies
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You could give the Panasonic AVCHD to P2 converter a shot.
https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pro-av/support/desk/e/download.htm#avchd
Vince
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hi there
I’ve used the free version (where you get a water mark, but for the rest it’s practicly the same) for my MPEG2 video files. It work great actualy, no problems at all. Only yeah, PP can handly MPEG only gives some unknown error if it doesn’t like a certain frame (so can it handle MPEG? donno) so after trying Mainconcept pro I realy liked it, only not the watermark so I stopt using it.
I’ve used the latest free version on there website.
mayby on HD files it realy needs alot CPU and RAM, but in my case it was very quite and yeah taked virtualy none compared with PP itself with no mainconcept on. I’m running PP2(not CS3).
I think your third problem is realy weird. It shouln’t do that
or it’s a major bug in PP CS3 or your system is “confused”(which stands for alot of things)Bart
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UPDATE:
After sending another update that did install, I still had a problem with playing back DVCProHD and even Standard Def footage. Don’t know if it’ my system or the software, but still no good for me.
MC HAS refunded my money, so I am very happy with them. If I had a system devoted JUST to AVCHD, I’d use their plugin.
I still wish Adobe would add these codecs though….
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