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CS3 – HDV Import Takes Forever
Seems like I’m asking a new question on the Cow everyday now….
I’ve captured HDV tape footage in PPro CS3 at whatever the default HDV capture settings are (the files are .mpeg). Each clip is no longer than a few minutes in length at most, and there’s around a hundred clips right now. I plan on capturing at least twice as more from the rest of the tapes.
Upon saving the project file and existing, and then returning later to re-open that project file, it takes forever to open up. As I add more footage, it just gets worse. Yesterday it was taking over 20 minutes to open the project file. And then afterward, the progress bar at the bottom is still trying to index each clip. The only things in this project file are the clips sitting in the bin…no sequences, no effects, no titles, nothing.
Trying another method, thinking the project file was corrupt, I created a new one, and re-imported all the footage. It has literally taken 30 minutes to do this, for roughly 32gb of footage.
So I’m thinking it’s a hard drive issue, as the Macs I’m using (tried multiple ones in a lab) are twin dual-core Xeons with 4gb of RAM (while they aren’t ideal, they aren’t bad either). The external drive I’m using is 5400rpm through Firewire 400.
Before I drop $200+ on a newer, faster drive with eSATA and Firewire 800, does anyone think that is even the issue? Or could it be the fact that Premiere just can’t handle the own files it’s capturing? I could transcode them to something more uncompressed than those HDV mpegs.
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3 Replies
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I definitely think the 5400 drive speed is not up to par. but the HDV file structure is keeping the way PPro captures is by holding the long GOP format of the original HDV signal, so having lots of little HDV clips is not ideal.
Try and test it with a longer capture and chop it up or sub-clip it in PPro, this way the indexing and conforming are done once with one long clip which will take a while, but having heaps of multiple short bursts of HDV will drag down the indexing upon loading up.
– Jon Barrie
Jon Barrie
aJBprods
http://www.jonbarrie.net -
I’m assuming there is no option to disable indexing for items in the bins?
Also, in frustration I did some additional testing. Basically trying access those clips with ANY application, including Final Cut, Compressor, and even the Finder, it caused the machine to lock up very badly. So either the Mac just doesn’t like those mpeg files at all, or my drive is too slow (and possibly dying) for them to read efficiently.
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I am having exactly the same issues with regards to captured HD in cs3.
To hopefully shed some light here though, I am using PC (i7, 4GB) and I am capturing entire tapes at a time. So it’s probably not the Mac or the short clips being captured…I have long suspected that it was an issue with my hard drive and have installed a system monitor (Moo0)…I can see the hard drive maxing out in the red while the project attempts to open but my processors and memory are basically idling while the hard drive is working red lining. As soon as the project is finally open, the HD idles too.
I would be very interested to find out if it because the 5400’s are not good enough…sounds like it to me!
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