AVCHD in Premiere Pro CC problems

[Dan Destefano]

Hi! I just posted about this, actually. Long story short, Adobe dropped a big fat whopper of a lie when they claim that their timeline can handle any codec. It can’t. Unless you want to watch slideshows when you’re scrubbing for BROLL and wait at least a second every time you press play. (It adds up.) After cursing out Apple and Adobe, I decided to convert to ProRes and I have my sanity back.

Definitely convert, no question. Adobe knows their product can’t handle all these codecs, that’s why they’re offering auto-proxy conversion in their next version. I have the exact iMac 27″ you do, except I have 32GB of RAM and it still chugs like nobody’s business using MXF or AVC or anything but ProRes, really.

Convert! Convert! Convert!

[Bryce Douglass]

so does less Ram mess up the AVCHD files? I sometimes have to edit footage given to me where the frame rates are different for each camera and I can never get all the cameras the same frame rate unless I transcode them all to pro res for example

Bryce

[Bryce Douglass]

Auto Proxy? You mean like how Apple Final Cut X auto makes proxy files? If so does it do it by making proxy files of a pro res file?

Bryce

[Dan Destefano]

There’s a video about it on Adobe’s YouTube page, but yea it essentially does that. And like i said earlier, I have the same computer as you do, but with a ton more RAM and it makes it no better. I have like, 10GB of RAM free and the program still runs like molasses unless I’m using ProRes.

[Bryce Douglass]

Can you link me to this video? I’m not finding it.

Bryce

[Jerry Michaels]

I’ve always worked with AVCHD (from Sony and Canon cameras) directly in PP on Windows, even on my old laptop (dual-core i5 SB with 8 GB RAM and GeForce 410) it worked without a hitch. So maybe there’s something wrong either with your machines, or with MacOS.

[Chris Wright]

@ Jerry,

you using XAVC-S? that’s long GOP interframe compression.
XAVC-I is intraframe.

I’m only asking because there’s like 20 flavors out there and even after 3 years, there’s a split about what works fluidly, even from adobe, :O

[Bryce Douglass]

from my understanding there is a different compression of AVCHD based on what camera you have.

Bryce

[Al Bergstein]

Just to clear something up, it’s my belief that the RAM in the CPU (the 32GBs or whatever) is not what is determining how fast your footage runs, it’s the RAM in the Graphic Card CPU. So if you have 512MB or 1 GB in a graphic card, it will likely not be optimal for playback. I had to move to a 2GB card to get it to play smoothly. I use Canon AVCHD footage. Having the timeline scrub the footage (play through it once to load it into memory) also helps speed it up on future runs through it. But transcode if you feel it’s your best choice. It’s only time, and if you are not being paid for the work it’s just your time and not money. Or let the process run overnight.

Also, make sure that your footage is on a fast hard disk, preferably not the internal one! Also make sure that Pr is using your graphics card to process the footage and not RAM.

For those using a laptop that read this thread in the future, I disable “Automatic Graphics Switching” in the Energy Saver panel of System Preferences to help make sure I get full playback on the high performance card.

Al

[Al Bergstein]

Sorry, it’s been a while since I read the whole post. I see you do have 2 GBs on your video card. So not sure why there is a problem, other than the notion that the SSD drive could be the factor. As mentioned, I usually put my project footage on a RAID 5 to optimize the playback and rendering times.

Al