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Editing an Indie Feature in Premiere – Post mortem
I wanted to give a report on my experiences editing an indie feature in Premiere CS4. When I was starting the project, this is the kind of info I was looking for, so I thought I should contribute what I could. I found lots of references to ‘features being made in premiere’ without a lot of real detail. I meant to post along the way, but you know how that goes…
The feature was shot in DVCProHD on the Panasonic HVX200. This was actually four years ago now, so a lot of things have changed in the editing world. It’s an ultra-low budget indie, starting to play at festivals, which was the goal.
Choosing Premiere
I had planned to use Vegas. I had an HDV camera i expected to use on the shoot and expected to edit with what I had. I had edited every movie I’d ever shot in Premiere to that point, with the exception of a project I’d helped on using Final Cut. One reviewer noted that using Vegas revealed all the problems you didn’t know Premiere had, and that was my experience as well. Very easy to use, smart features and stable. I liked premiere, but stability was always an issue, and Vegas was just much easier.The Director of Photography came with his own camera with a then relatively new format which changed the entire workflow. I realized my system was not going to work due to the massive increase in drive space needed and processing power.
Due to the lovely corporate wars, Vegas did not support DVCProHD then, I don’t now if that ever changed either. So Vegas was out. I tried Avid DV Xpress. I was hopeful, given Avid’s reputation, but I was utterly depressed by the software. I expected it to be ahead of other packages and I found it light years behind. It seemed to be totally lacking in usability and geared toward a real film workflow. It did not take advantage of any of the strengths offered by computerized editing in a way I found surprising. Additionally, the way it handled MXF files was clunky. I forget the details, but I quickly ruled it out.
It appeared I would have to use Raylight to work with files, probably in Vegas. However, performance was bad when it shouldn’t have been a problem on a Core2 Quad 2.4 GHz, 64-bit Vista with 4 GB memory. Then CS4 came out with native support for the format, I checked out the trial. It handled footage with no problem, no performance issues. I just about cried with joy and the decision was made.
(My approach was PC=centric. I don’t care for Macs or Final Cut, though I know they are great tools for many pros. There was a pure cost issue at work here too.)
Takeaway: Test your full workflow before you start shooting! From camera to post. Failing to do so can incur huge expenses as you change system components.
Drive Space
Shooting in DVCProHD also meant huge disk space requirements. I set up the machine with a 1 TB hard disk and an additional 750 TB drive. I did not use RAID though obviously it was recommended. I had a very limited budget to work with. I also had a large backup drive to transfer over the whole project at various points.There was constant living in fear of something happening to one of the drives. It feels like you can never have enough backup. It was scary iwth a feature since there was so much data to lose.
Bridge/Media Browser
These were new features for me. They came in very handy. With the mxf format, you can’t just watch files in media player. I started using bridge to help group organize files, then found it easier just to use the Media Browser within premiere. It’s easy to pop files into the viewer which made watching takes easy for taking notes with the team. Media Browser is a great feature.Editing
I find editing in premiere straight forward and easy to do. Not much to say, didn’t really have any issues just cutting together scenes.Stability
Stability was better in CS4 than previous versions, but I still crashed every now and then. It is the worst feeling in the world. Still, by saving frequently, it is usually not a big problem. Due to past experience, every few days or after significant progress, I save the project under a new file name. I have had projects crash before and be unable to open the file afterwards, meaning all progress lost. I did not encounter that thankfully, but I don’t trust Premiere enough to stop doing it.My project file size peaked above 60 MB. In final form it’s down around 50 MB after replacing the audio files with a stereo mix. The few crashes I did have were with larger file size. Reading forums, it seems there was a crash problem for people with only 2 gigs of system memory, starting around 50 MB of project size. I had 4 gigs, and it seemed to work ok.
Once file size got that large though, time to load a project became extreme. 10-20 minutes. So you start loading the file, then take a coffee break.
I was impressed with stability for this version and would say Premiere is absolutely usable for feature length work if you have the system for it. I was running 5-6 tracks of video and 8-10 of audio. My final movie is 107 minutes long.
Audio
I didn’t tap into Premiere’s audio features this time around. I have in previous versions and was always impressed with what it offered for an NLE. This time audio was handled professionally so I didn’t have to worry about. And results were far beyond what I could have ever done!One big issue. OMF export was problematic. The original version of CS4 didn’t support OMF export, it required a patch. Patching is never that fun, since I refused to connect the machine to the internet for fear of catching a virus. So burning DVDs to transfer the patch over. The other issue was that it would crash when trying to export the OMF file of audio for the movie.
The only workaround I found was to export the project in sections. I had to make 5 separate OMF files, breaking the project up into small pieces. This worked. I provided a separate export of video into a quicktime for them to use as the reference track.
Color Correction
Color correction was done in Premiere. For most part the raw footage was good, but a few uncooperative weather days forced some more work. Correction was basically just to get a straightforward clean look, set levels, not a lot of stylistic work.Coming from DV, DVCProHD was a nice improvement in terms of handling color correction. It’s still not great, but I got good results in Premiere.
One annoying part of using effects was that when you’d change a parameter, it would take a significant amount of time to update and lock in. You could type in a number, click away and you’d have to wait a few seconds. Definitely slowed editing significantly. Don’t know if that is directly related to the calculation time required for the format or just a ‘feature’ of premiere.
Export
CS4 integrated with the separate Media Encoder for exports. I suppose this had advantages and disadvantages. You can close Premiere when running Encoder, but given the long load times of opening a project, in practice it was extremely time consuming to export and return to Premiere. I believe they might have improved this in CS5 but I haven’t tried it.The export settings are heavily preset based, which is good to nightmare-ish. For something like making a DVD, it’s pretty straightforward. For other formats it can be quite confusing. The huge variety of file types make this confusing for anyone, but it feels like a specialist job to sort it all out. Like you can use the DVD preset, which produces an mpg file, but you can also choose mpg as an option and get a whole different set of presets. You can customize some parts of the presets, so you have to hunt around to get exactly what you need.
I ran into issues trying to create flash files and quicktimes when needed for specific requests we had around things like the trailer. Quicktime seemed to always have aspect ratio issues. I’m sure I could get what I needed, but it was so time consuming to ‘iterate’ due to the export to media encoder that it was very difficult unless someone provided absolutely detailed guidelines. There were also audio sync issues with flash that don’t appear solvable.
WMV was a great export format though. easy to use and quality was good for the file size. That’s what we ended up using for things like our online screener for festivals.
Overall
i’m not sure Premiere provided the best experience overall, but it could have been a lot worse. I would describe the experience as workmanlike. It wasn’t always pretty, but I was absolutely able to do what I needed to do. Sometimes that’s as much as you can ask for. We were on a very limited budget (though time was our luxury). If I’d had to continually output cuts for others to view, or trying to optimize file size/compression, it would have been a nightmare with Media encoder. But stability was good and playback during editing was usually smooth, even when adding color correction effects (though some other VFX could slow down playback). Premiere supports directly linking to photoshop and after effects files, but I avoided doing so and instead outputted files from those and brought them into the timeline. Again, this was less flexible, but reports were that those experiences were buggy so I avoided them.it would be interesting to see how CS5 would perform and if the issues like long load times have been improved. Sounds like playback with effects should be even better as well.
The big issue is just make sure you plan properly what tools you’re going to be using for the shoot and how they integrate with post. I paid the price for not doing so, though ultimately the result was good. Just with more teething pains.
Premiere handled the job of making a feature using 720p HD footage on a machine that wasn’t outrageously spec’d for the time, much less now. Hope people find this useful.
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1 Reply
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Thanks for taking the time!
Alex
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