Importing H.264 video into PPro CS4 – convert to something else first?

[Alexander Jusay]

Yup, the H264 will really strain your CPU in the timeline. To preserve the quality of the clips, what I do is convert them to uncompressed AVI before importing them to timeline. The problem with this solution is hard drive space and speed. My 1TB hd seem to handle it nicely, better than choppy video playback from h264 files.

Alexander Jusay
http://www.editkovideomo.com

[Mark Hollis]

Remember, with respect to playback speed without dropped frames, if you are looking at HD video that is not compressed, you may need an array to get it to play back well.

One 1T drive will certainly be slower than a 1T array that is striped RAID 0. Such an array would consist of two .5T drives striped for speed. Arrays like that are more expensive than just one drive but the data rate that they can sustain is much higher than the data rate from one drive.

The issue with your h.264 files is certainly a case of Premiere Pro trying to decode at the same time it is playing back and an array doesn’t help in that case because the issue is processing power. But where you have video that is completely uncompressed, you may find that 7200 RPM drives cannot keep up with the speed demanded for HD video — let alone full resolution CCIR 601 NTSC.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Tim Kolb]

I use H264 on the timeline fairly frequently, but not as the mainstay of my projects…

H264 is incredibly space efficient and anything you would convert it to would be somewhat to absurdly larger files…not to mention that converting to another compressed format will likely affect image quality somewhat.

As far as your system goes…it’s lightweight for CS4 with a no-stress format. I’d personally recommend 2 dual-core processors at a minumum and 8 GB of RAM and Vista to run CS4. So part of the issue could be that Premiere Pro CS4 is running RAM-restricted as well…

What sort of camera are we talking about here?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Bobby Misthoni]

Thanks a lot for the responses,

Nothing too special: I opted for a Canon Powershot SD780 IS so I can take it into the jungle in Costa Rica next month and still get HD video from my pocket 🙂

I could upgrade to 64bit Vista or Win7; it’s about time. From there perhaps I could upgrade memory, although I may be still restricted to 4GB by my mobo.

I do have a fair amount of space on the HDD, but it sounds like you think I’d be swapping CPU cycles as my restricting factor now for disk I/O if I convert to uncompressed AVI (can MPEG Streamclip convert to uncompressed AVI?) I’m running a 7,200rpm SATAII drive

Thanks again!
https://www.youtube.com/user/rebelBodhi

[Tim Kolb]

Oh…another DSLR.

I have had no luck with H264 from a DSLR playing back in PPro…I don’t know what the problem with the stuff is…I use H264 compressed footage from video sources all the time, but DSLR footage is not particularly easy or conventional to decode for some reason.

…It’s also -very- aggressively compressed…it’s like a massive-sized FLIP camcorder clip.

Honestly, for most applications I’d not recommend a DSLR for any conventional video acquisition purposes…not to mention that I have yet to see one with a decent microphone jack…

You may have to convert this stuff to something to get it to run, but a quality hit seems unavoidable due to the amount of compression on the original file in all the scenarios I’ve personally tried.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Bobby Misthoni]

Thanks Tim,

Actually, it’s not a DSLR (I do own a DSLR, but use it for photos) this is just a point-and-shoot, but it takes surprisingly high-quality video (Video I made with it and PPCS4 on Youtube)

I am able to directly Import the videos into PP, but as I mentioned, monitoring is jerky and slow (but somewhat usable).

So it sounds like my only (lossless) option is to convert to uncompressed AVI and hope my disk I/O and RAM can keep up, I suppose I’ll give that a shot and see what happens

[Brian Louis]

You might try a trail version of Cineform Neoscene and see if it works, I recently helped a friend who has a EOS install it to use as a intermediate codec with it’s MOVs, I don’t know if its the same compressed format.

[Bastien Francois]

in responce to “oh another DSLR…”

yes DSLR do a great job, we just shot a big budget music video with 3 MK2 D5 when we had largely the money to shoot with the Red and Zeiss ultraprime glass, (I shot contless time with that setup and love it) but we are extremely happy with the result of the mk2. Those DSLRs are changing the game for mid to low budjet productions.
I run a souped up/overclocked quad core 8 gigs of RAM and 8 terra RAID and I still struggle with h264 on the timeline, the only way to work with it is to convert to ful res, which can be a very lenghly process even with a fast machine, only down side of those DSLRs.

bastien francois
direction / dop
https://www.bastienfrancois.com

[Tim Kolb]

[bastien francois] “I still struggle with h264 on the timeline, the only way to work with it is to convert to ful res, which can be a very lenghly process even with a fast machine, only down side of those DSLRs.”

There is no question that DSLRs make fantastic pictures, but the post process is painful at this point in time.

Recently I was involved in a project where the editor used MPEG Streamclip to convert the DSLR footage into a format that worked better for him…in that case he changed it to XDcam. Seemed to work very well…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[David Coldiron]

I know that this was posted some time back, but I am struggling with this issue right now. One problem that I have in particular is that I cannot upgrade the computers as they are school computers, so I need to “down convert” the video from 720P to maybe 480DV. Anybody have any suggestions?