Best video conversion settings for Premiere Pro CS6

[Tero Ahlfors]

You really shouldn’t mess with the folder structure that the camera makes. You might want to try using the media browser inside Premiere and see if you can bring the footage in that way.

[Ryan Holmes]

You may be getting the error because the card structure was incorrectly copied.

If you want to transcode the files you can use virtually any program that reads Canon MXF files. Adobe Media Encoder is what we typically use for transcoding. I would look at a mezzanine codec like DNxHD or ProRes for your transcode. If you’re on a Windows box DNxHD is the way to go, if you’re on a Mac you can use either codec.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Omar Ayoub]

Thank you for your replies.
@Ryan: The problem is, I borrowed two CF cards from a friend of mine and when he wanted to re-use them, he copied the entire root folder of each card onto an external hard disk. So now I have both “Contents” folders from cards A and B on my HDD. I tried importing them via the Premiere Pro media folder but it gives the “generic error” message. Any workaround?

[Ryan Holmes]

Can you navigate into the folder and see the actual .MXF file?

If so, grab that file and drop it into Media Encoder. That’s worked for me in the past. You’ll likely have to do that for each clip on the card (labor intensive).

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Omar Ayoub]

Ryan, my external hard disk contains two “CONTENTS” folders (each was directly copied from one of the Canon CF cards). In it, there’s another folder, “CLIPS001”, which contains the following files:

AA0315.CIF
AA0315.XML
AA0315.XMP

then the .MXF videos themselves, with corresponding .SIF files:

AA031501.MXF
AA031501.SIF

AA031502.MXF
AA031502.SIF

.
.
.

According to an Adobe source on the subject: the files with the similar names which are numbered, are all part of a single video clip, but are automatically separated by the camera when it switches recording from the internal memory to SD cards when the former is full. This is known as Relay Recording, and it creates these spanned clips which the Adobe Media Browser in PP should interpret as a single asset.. Unfortunately, it displayed a “generic error” message (as I’ve mentioned before).

I have the exact files that were in the Canon root folders and when I dragged them to Adobe Media Encoder, it gave an error message which read: “___ could not be imported. Could not read from the source. Please check the settings and try again.”

What I ended up doing was adding the .MXFs to a queue in Handbrake then converting them to .M4Vs under the following specs:

• Video: H.264 codec, Framerate same as source, Constant Quality: RF: 17.5, Video filters: none
• Audio: AAC (faac) codec, Bitrate: 160

This produced a relatively good quality conversion of each clip, although the size is way smaller (almost 2GB for the original .MXF as opposed to the 450MB for the new .M4V). I wish I can find a solution for the original .MXFs…

[Ryan Holmes]

So the MXF’s would not load in Media Encoder when dragged directly in there? That’s strange.

Did your camera come with software to read the cards? Canon XF Utility reads those files, you may try that.

Using Handbrake may get you to a “usable” file but it’s quite a quality downgrade overall. Handbrake is really used for ripping DVD’s off for your computer (i.e. like for a flight or something). h.264 m4v’s aren’t good for editing (long-GOP codec, reduced color sampling, heavily compressed codec, etc, etc.). You can try it….just be warned! 😉

I would try Canon XF Utility, VLC, or maybe even a Quicktime Pro plugin for MXF to see if that would read the files on your card. Use one of those programs to convert the file to something more editable – ProRes or DNxHD or Uncompressed.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ann Bens]

You need to put the Content directory in it’s own folder e.g. video. The next content in video 2 etc.
Now you can import the files via the Media Browser by clicking on the video directory.
If you do not need the card structure you can download the Canon XF Utility (it also comes with the camera) and export all the files to single mxf files. They can be imported directly into the Project Window and works just great.

———————————————–
Adobe Certified Expert Premiere Pro CS6
Adobe Community Professional

[Omar Ayoub]

Thank you for all the help Ryan, I really appreciate it.
On another note, is there anyway I can educate myself on these things (theoretically speaking)? If you can point me towards some comprehensive resources (as far as the technicalities of cameras/editing/post-production/.. are concerned), it would be great.

[Ryan Holmes]

There’s no one definitive source. It just takes time and lots of reading! 🙂

I use Google Reader (which is being discontinued in July….booooooo) to follow several people’s website that are in the industry. People like Scott Simmons, Walter Biscardi, Oliver Peter, Shane Ross, EOSHD.com, Philip Hodgetts, Tao of Color, Vincet Laforet, Philip Bloom, etc. as they post new blogs I read and learn. You can also listen to podcasts like That Post Show, Digital Production Buzz, The Coloristos, The Digital Convergence podcast, etc. It takes time to absorb all the different information, but as you do you’ll be able to digest more and more.

And also reading sites like the Cow here is a a great resource. Lots of knowledgable people, great tutorials, and lots of news to read through.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Omar Ayoub]

Thank you very much for sharing these wonderful resources, Ryan. I’ll be sure to check them out. It sucks that Google Reader is going to discontinued, but news is getting around that Digg is working on a similar service, and Feedly seems to be the number one replacement at the moment. Anyway.. Thanks again for all the help 🙂