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Best File Formats to Import?
I’m switching from FCP to Premiere CS6. I know that Adobe claims that Premiere works comfortably with all formats, but I’ve imported mp4 and H.264 mov. footage and I’m getting very slow performance, long waits between moving the playhead and the Program image updating, very long render times, and it’s acting exactly like FCP would if I used mp4 or H.264 footage in the timeline rather than first converting to ProRes or Apple Intermediate Codec.
Is there an ideal file format to use for best performance in Premiere? Thanks for your thoughts.
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8 Replies
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Working with the native format is best with APP.
You need a fast machine and a fast raid array for media.Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC -
The only codec I’ve had serious problems with is native AVCHD. I’ve done onlines with DSLR H.264, R3D, DPX, JPG, TIFF etc. footage and it just works fine natively.
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Thanks. It may be that my computer is on the lower end of what’s recommended – a MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM. I find especially that mixing frame rates in a sequence will affect performance, more than codecs.
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Anyone out there who IS converting to a standard codec (like ProRes) and having success editing with that codec? If we go Premier I want to have a tried and true workflow in place with our older MacPros. Editing native is not the option I want.
Can the Media Browser be told to convert the native footage files to a different editing codec like in FCP Log and Transfer? If so I would guess ProRes should work as good as it did in FCP on the same machine.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com -
I’ve used ProRes with success, but I did find that it wasn’t necessary to transcode from native as long as my footage was all the same frame rate as the sequence.
One comment I will make though, is that Adobe Media Encoder is a more limited program than Compressor. AME has no preview window, so you can’t scrub through footage to select in and out points. This is very inconvenient for me, since my workflow involves taking short clips out of very long video files and collecting those clips into a project-specific folder. I still use Compressor to prepare my files for Premiere. Some people use a combo of Premiere’s timeline output to Media Encoder, but to me that’s much less elegant than just doing everything in Compressor.
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One comment I will make though, is that Adobe Media Encoder is a more limited program than Compressor. AME has no preview window, so you can’t scrub through footage to select in and out points.
Not true. See pic:
Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC -
[Rich Rubasch] “Anyone out there who IS converting to a standard codec (like ProRes) and having success editing with that codec?
Can the Media Browser be told to convert the native footage files to a different editing codec like in FCP Log and Transfer?”
Prores works fine and Prelude is a pretty good tool if you need to transcode a bunch of files. You can also add markers and make some rough cuts in Prelude and send the clips to Premiere.
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On the subject, what do people choose as the rendering codec in the P-pro project setup? I usually set the project to Desktop, import h.264 and set the rendering to AIC. I imagine that’ll give me better depth and better speed when rendering effects, instead of setting it to h.264? Though, presumably, if I’m editing DV, I’ll have rendering set to DV.
(I’m using CS3 by the way)
Thanks
– Paddy
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