FCP > Premiere users…should I wait for CS 6?

[David Cherniack]

Phillip. Perhaps you’d like to explain a little more clearly what you’re trying to do with ‘Export unmixed audio’. I have no idea what you’re referring to. You can export your entire timeline audio to OMF if you wish to mix outside Premiere. But you also state:

[Philipp Hampl] “no external monitoring when working with codecs other than those which are cuda-supported! That means: whether monitoring or mercury engine”

Again I apologize but the above statement makes no sense to me. You can external monitor any codec that you place on a timeline that supports your video IO system – Matrox, AJA, or BM. Any codec. CUDA has nothing to do with it. CUDA accelerated effects can be added to any codec whether on an IO or Adobe (no IO) timeline. Mercury is the playback engine on any timeline, again whether it is IO or Adobe.

So please explain more clearly exactly what your problems are because they’re not clear to me.

David
AllinOneFilms.com

[Philipp Hampl]

@david: never had to edit to tape an unmixed master? track 1 interview tack 2 atmo track 3+4 stereo mix music?!!
With xdcam HD 422 it´s up to 8 tracks.

And: for the external monitoring issue: see adobe premier Pro Forum at adobe´s webside.

Both issues (audio and external monitoring) are known and are being well discussed there.
Have a peek:
https://forums.adobe.com/message/3988746#3988746

“24.10.2011 19:23 (in response to bruvinsk)
Re: TV Previewing in Adobe Premiere CS5.5
Everybody has the same problem, and there is no fix. It’s just the way it is. Voice your opinion here: Adobe Feature Request/Bug Report Form”

I had been testing prp 5.5 thoroughly over a periond of 4 weeks and I like it, but as I mentioned allready someplace: it´s not ready, yet.

[David Cherniack]

[Philipp Hampl] “And: for the external monitoring issue: see adobe premier Pro Forum at adobe´s webside.

Both issues (audio and external monitoring) are known and are being well discussed there.
Have a peek:
https://forums.adobe.com/message/3988746#3988746“

So you’re monitoring through a DV camera. You might have said so. Sorry that you have this issue.

[Philipp Hampl] “@david: never had to edit to tape an unmixed master? track 1 interview tack 2 atmo track 3+4 stereo mix music?!!
With xdcam HD 422 it´s up to 8 tracks.”

I still have no idea what kind of tape you’re talking about. I routinely output to 4 channels to digibeta or HDCam. I have no idea what you mean by unmixed. It’s easy to output discrete tracks with an IO system. If you’re trying to do it via firewire I’m sorry, I’ve never needed to do that.

David
AllinOneFilms.com

[Philipp Hampl]

Come on, David. If you do not want to understand, then, well give it one more try… And it is of course no firewire or dv kind of workflow we talk about here. So please just stay reasonable.

And If you still are so sure that this problem does not occure, just try this:

transcode a xdcam hd 422 clip (including 4 audio tracks) from its mpeg status to apple prores in the adobe media encoder, what will you end up with?

Well, you´ll have the choice between: a single mono, stereo or 5.1.
What will you choose, if you need all of those 4 tracks of audio?

And the same problem you´ll end up when you want to export your programm out of prp, e.g. as a xdcam HD 422 file that you´ll need for copying to disk via the U1 (as theres no direct way out of prp to do so): what will you choose, as the tv-station allways wants an unmixed, international master ?

Prp and the Media Encoder just don´t offer any other settings than: mono, stereo or 5.1. Thats all, and that´s poor.

[David Cherniack]

Philipp,

If I didn’t want to understand I wouldn’t have asked you to explain it.

So, if I understand you properly it’s a HDCam file you wish to export, not a tape. (you haven’t been clear about that at all, you know).

You’re right 5.5 offers a limited number of output channels.

David
AllinOneFilms.com

[Tim Kolb]

[Tom Daigon] “” The ‘Use preview files’ option in PPro is exactly that – if there’s a preview file, it decodes the frame out of it, & re-encodes it into the final file. So while it’ll help in (non-CUDA) effects heavy compositions, it also incurs a generation loss. Generally, we don’t recommend using it (hence the default to off) unless you really are sure that’s what you want.””

I have several custom sequence configurations where I use CineForm 10 bit as my “preview” codec. It makes huge preview files, but I can check the “use previews” encode box when I output with no more loss than FCP would have with a ProRes timeline…and on a Mac you can simply set it up with ProRes in the same way.

As far as the “time here vs. time there” comparison…I think the ratio scales the delta in the two workflow concepts. If you have a high shoot ratio project, transcoding everything on the way in will still take longer than it would to simply encode the final, edited timeine.

I suspect the ratios become dependent on how well-configured your system is after that…

ProRes workflow is great because it runs well on a wide variety of configurations whereas decoding H264 DSLR or AVCHD in multiple streams and computing color correction, etc is a load for the system.

There are a lot of user-definable elements to PPro that new users don’t know about that causes a lot of inaccurate recommendations on workflow inside PPro.

(…and I have no doubt this was an Adobe person who said this BTW. They know what the designed pipeline idea is, but the software guys don’t often understand what some of the conditions are “on the ground”.)

In the case of FCP users coming across, this can be a relatively easy process from a block-diagram point of view, but you just have to rethink a couple things in PPro and get it set up to run the way you want it to…it has been and remains more flexible from a workflow and pipeline standpoint than most realize.

In my experience with PPro, I find that traditionally users have not been willing to invest the same kind of resources in building a machine to host the software as Avid or FCP editors do. If PPro has hardware resources, it performs rather well in my experience for an application as wide and deep as it is.

As far as hardware interaction…I suspect if you really look at these vendors, you’ll have to admit that the effort they’ve invested in FCP has appeared to be far greater than they’ve invested in the Adobe side of things for years running… I work closely with several and I think they’ve made Premiere Pro a lower priority than FCP based on the numbers of FCP users in the market for their product vs PPro users in the past…but that is shifting…and fast. PPro (and perhaps more accurately, “PPro’s ecosystem”) needs to catch up.

As far as stability…everyone’s experiences are different. I’d say that PPro’s everyday bread-and-butter timeline editing tools ar not as refined as Avid’s…that’s been Avid’s wheelhouse from the beginning. I do think that Adobe’s pipeline architecture has been a priority and the way they handle digital media has been their focus, and i think they have the lead in that area…now the editing functionality is getting more attention, which is good.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor

[Tom Daigon]

Tim, just for clarity, that quote you featured was of an Adobe technician (Wil) and his thoughts on using Preview files for final output.

The bottom line is Adobe discourages that practice due to generational loss.And from my findings it doesn’t speed up the export by much. I hope there is some way to shorten the export process (so it competes with the FCP export experience) that is the norm now.

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[Tim Kolb]

[Philipp Hampl] “and surely hope cs 6 will solve the problems (e.g no external monitoring when working with codecs other than those which are cuda-supported! That means: whether monitoring or mercury engine – and as prp is a resource eating monster you need the extra speed -at least on a Mac!!); but untill that: not “pro” enough.”

…this statement is incorrect.

There are no “CUDA” supported codecs or unsupported codecs…compression/decompression is done on the CPU…that’s not Adobe, that’s every company who has created a video codec…

CUDA helps in a variety of ways with general workflow in that it handles much of the scaling and effects work, freeing up the CPU to be able to concentrate on the decode/encode activities…which does help you play back video of course…but it’s secondary to the transfer of the other functions to CUDA.

When you say “external monitoring” I assume you mean an I/O card like AJA or Black Magic?

You can create a sequence for these cards and put any sort of media you want on it, but those cards interact with the computer through the PCIe buss…the motherboard. CUDA accelerated effects and functions that happen on the display card, and need to be piped back to the motherboard to go out the card. The bottleneck is being attended to by the hardware vendors and Adobe, but it has nothing to do with codec support within CUDA.

This isn’t an Adobe restriction…and there’s been some progress, but overall this is a computer architecture situation that is evolving. The CUDA processor cores are not on the motherboard (unless you are running a Tesla system), they’re on the display card.

I can slap a 4K RED file on a Kona sequence and see the images come out on the HDSDI monitor (I’m on Windows…so Mac may have different circumstances), it’s just that it isn’t as fast as running in non-I/O mode because of the frame back haul through the motherboard.

I understand what you’re attempting to say, but this is how some of the misinformation about how PPro actually works gets started. With so many people migrating from FCP, it makes it very difficult for them to sort out what’s real…and make an informed decision.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor

[Tim Kolb]

Yes, I know…and it’s Adobe’s corporate philosophy that nothing should be transcoded intermediately just as Apple’s is that everything should be transcoded to ProRes…

Let’s be honest, there are situations where either approach is just not adequate, efficient, or a good fit. There are advantages and disadvantages to both and i don’t advocate one way of thinking over the other if the situation you have calls for an alternative.

Sure, it’s not like a “smart render” direct transfer of the frame material. Adobe-designed preview files overall to be just that, and that’s why they default to fast, small, and “good enough” MPEG 2 I frames. However, FCP users can create a mastering workflow by setting up sequences for it and specifying the preview render codec, thereby generating preview files in that codec.

But the effect will scale depending on what you’re doing with the footage of course. Heavy effects should be a substantial difference in encode time if you’re using preview files as the single frame transcode will still be quicker than re-building all the effects…

If you have a 30 second spot, it might be difficult to get much of a delta, but there is a difference.

What sort of tests have you done? Are you strictly outputting to a master clip? Are you feeding a transcode process? (edit timeline to H264…that sort of thing?) Is the source material ProRes already?…or is it some camera format and you’re ‘previewing’ to ProRes?

I’d be interested in knowing more about this as it seems like some of the FCP>PPro hurdles are real, but some items seem like they simply stem from not being able to think creatively about how to use the feature set in PPro in ways that might be originally unintended, but would still meet many former FCP user’s needs…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor

[Tom Daigon]

Tim,heres a link to a dialog about using a Prores workflow and the attempt to use Preview files to speed up export.

https://forums.adobe.com/message/3945436#3945436

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3